faithfulness of
journeymen and apprentices. There were provisions for assistance to
members of the craft when in need, or to their widows and orphans, for
the visitation of those sick or in prison, for common attendance at
the burial services of deceased members, and for other charitable and
philanthropic objects. Thus the craft gild, like the gild merchant,
combined close social relationship with a distinctly recognized and
enforced regulation of the trade. This regulation provided for the
protection of members of the organization from outside competition,
and it also prevented any considerable amount of competition among
members; it supported the interests of the full master members of the
craft as against those in the journeyman stage, and enforced the
custom of the trade in hours, materials, methods of manufacture, and
often in prices.

[Illustration: Table of Assize of Bread in Record Book of City of
Hull. (Lambert: _Two Thousand Years of Gild Life_. Published by A.
Brown & Sons, Hull.)]

The officers were usually known as masters, wardens, or stewards.
Their powers extended to the preservation of order among the master
members of the craft at the meetings, and among the journeymen and
apprentices of the craft at all times; to the supervision, either
directly or through deputies, of the work of the members, seeing that
it conformed to the rules and was not false in any way; to the
settlement, if possible, of disputes among members of the craft; to
the administration of its charitable work; and to the representation
of the organized body of the craft before town or other authorities.

Common religious observances were held by the craftsmen not only at
the funerals of members, but on the day of the saint to which the gild
was especially dedicated. Most fraternities kept up a shrine or chapel
in some parish church. Fines for the breach of gild rules were often
ordered to be paid in wax that the candles about the body of dead
brethren and in the gild chapel should never be wanting. All the
brethren of the gild, dressed in common suits of livery, walked in
procession from their hall or meeting room to the church, performed
their devotions and joined in the services in commemoration of the
dead. Members of the craft frequently bequeathed property for the
partial support of a chaplain and payment of other expenses connected
with their "obits," or masses for the repose of their souls and those
of their relatives.

C