Intimately connected with the subject of the care of the poor in pre-Reformation days is obviously that of the mediæval guilds which, more than anything else, tended to foster the idea of the Christian brotherhood up to the eve of the religious changes.
It would probably be a mistake to suppose that these societies existed everywhere throughout the country in equal numbers. Mr. Thorold Rogers, it is true, says--and the opinion of one who has done so much work in every kind of local record must carry great weight--that “few parishes were probably without guild lands.” But there is certainly no distinct evidence that this was the case, especially in counties say like Hampshire, always sparsely populated as compared with other districts in the east of England, and where the people largely depended on agricultural pursuits for a living. It was in the great centres of trade and manufacture that the guilds were most numerous and most important, for it was precisely in those parts that the advantages of mutual help and co-operation outside the parish bond were most apparent and combination was practically possible.
An examination of the existing records leads to a general division of mediæval guilds into two classes--_Craft_ or _Trade_ associations, and _Religious_ or, as some prefer now to call them, _Social_ guilds. The former, as their name implies, had, as the special object of their existence, the protection of some work, trade or handicraft, and in this for practical purposes we may include those associations of traders or merchants known under the name of “guild-merchants.” Such, for instance, were the great companies of the city of London, and it was in reality under the plea that they were trading societies that they were saved in the general destruction which overtook all similar fraternities and associations in the sixteenth century. The division of guilds into the two classes named above is, however, after all more a matter of convenience than a real distinction founded on fact. All guilds, no matter for what special purpose they were founded, had the same general characteristic of brotherly aid and social charity; and no guild was divorced from the ordinary religious observances commonly practised by all such bodies in those days.