English Gilds.*

There was an alderman at the head of the gild , and often stewards by his side as assistants . Other officials are also now and then to be met with . The reception of a member depended upon the whole sssociation . If any one living in the

country , or a foreigner , wished to become a member of the gild , a citizen had to pledge himself for his honour . In an association so closely united , the honour of every single member was to a certain extent the honour uf the whole body . Pure life

and spotless reputation must therefore appear as ihe condition of gild freedom . Besides this , the gild statutes demand no other condition for admission . Everybody entering the gild had to bind himself by oath to keep the gild statutes .

Women also might become members of the gilds . They were , however , generally the wives or daughters of gild brothers . It is only an exception when in several of the gilds women became free of the gild in their own right . They ,

however , shared only in the advantages and burdens of the gilds , and never took part in its administrations or its councils .

Many of the towns whose government was in the hands of such gilds , especially those accessible by the sea , had been founded by merchants . But in all other towns also the great majority of the more respectable burghers lived by trade . " When

the Normans approached the haibour of Tiel , " ¦ says a writer of the eleventh , century , " the population living on the Wahal fled , leaving behind all its goods , money excepted : for it consisted of merchants . " It is therefore evident that a gild

of merchants existed there , who governed the town . Gant ( Ghent ) is described as flourishing by trade and fishing ; and the same may be said of a number of other Belgian and French

towns-The magistrates of Paris are said to have been called nautai in the time of the Romans ; and in deeds of the twelfth century the words burgenscs and mercatores , or mercatores per aquam , are used as synonymous . The corporation of the Paris

merchants stood at the head of the tow a . It was the same with the towns in Germany . Of the foundation of Freiburg in Brisgau we are told , that when Berthold of Zahringen intended to found a free city , with the same liberties and laws

as the men of Cologne had in their city , he first assembled a number of respected merchants , to whom he allotted ground for the building of bouses on the place destined as the market-place . From their number he took also the consuls of

English Gilds.*

the town . Lubeck was founded likewise on the basis of a free merchant community . And as it was in these towns , so it was in their prototypes . At Cologne , in the eleventh century , the terms "burghers ''' and " merchants" are alternately

used as synonymous . At Spire the patrician families of the town , from whose ranks the council was taken , carried on trade . In like manner the leading families of Ratisbon consisted of merchants . As to Denmark , the Danish word for

town—Kiobsted ( bargain place)—sufficiently denotes its character . There is no doubt as to the mercantile character of the later town gilds in England ; they are even called there gildee mercatorke ; and the words by which the king confirms their gild

to the burghers of a town , are often " quod habeant gilclam mercatoriam . " In Scotland , too , the gildee mercatorioe stood at the head of the towns . ( To be Continued . )

The St. Clair Charters

THE ST . CLAIR CHARTERS

By BRO . D . MUKEAY LYOX , Hon . Corresponding Member of the Union of German Freemasons , and of the Bosicruaian Society of England ; Hon . Felloiv of the London Literary Union ; one of the Grand Stewards in the Grand Lodge of Scotland ; P . M . Lodge Scarborough , Tobago , West Indies ; OAithor of ihe " History of Mother Kilwinning , " etc .

I now send for insertion in the MAGAZINE copies of the transcripts which in the course of my preparation of the History of the Lodge of Edinburgh ( Mary ' s Chapel ) I had made from the originals of the St . Clair Charters . These

MSS . were several years ago accidentally discovered by David Laing , Esq ., of the Signet Library , who gave them to the late Bro , Aytoun , Professor of Belles Lettres in the University of Edinburgh , in exchange for some

antique documents he had . The Professor presented them to the Grand Lodge of Scotland , in . whose repositories they are now . There can be no doubt of their identity as originals . I have compared several of the signatures with

autographs in other MSS . of the time . The Charters are in scrolls of paper , the one 15 by ll inches , the other 26 by 11-i inches , and for their better preservation have been affixed to cloth . The caligraphy is beautiful , and though the edges of

the paper have been frayed and holes worn in one or two places where the sheets had been folded , there is no difficulty in supplying the few words that have been obliterated , and making out the