founded in Fossgate in honour of our Lord Jesus Christ and the blessed Mary, and endowed with houses, possessions, and goods, presumably the property of the gild. The government was to be in the hands of a chaplain; the presentation to be vested in the heirs of John Rouclyffe; in case of non-appointment the presentation to go after eight months first to the archbishop, then in case of neglect the vacancy was to be filled by the mayor and citizens of York. The spiritual and temporal welfare "of thirteen poor and feeble persons was in charge of a master who was "continually and personally to dwell there." Two poor scholars were to be elected by the master and receive four pence a week.1 The salary of the master was to be ten marks a year; as the funds increased additional chaplains were to be appointed, and more poor people admitted; each day the office of the dead was to be recited, and three times a week the seven penitential psalms with the litany for the king, John Rouclyffe, the mayor of York, the brothers, sisters, and benefactors of the gild. Any chaplain proved guilty of incontinency was to be removed at once. This document shows the ecclesiastical power over the gild at its climax. For the next twenty-five years little is known of the gild's or the hospital's history, for the terms have now become synonymous. The last years of the reign of Edward III and the reign of Richard II were too full of foreign wars and political intrigues to admit of any concentration on peaceful social development. But from an inquisition taken in 1396, it is clear that the hospital continued to grow. It was then under the management of two chaplains and five York citizens; four houses, nine cottages, seven shops, and thirty-two shillings of rent summed up its worldly possessions, in addition to the group of buildings on the Fossgate site.2

1 A. F. Leach, English Schools at the Reformation, pp. 99, 283. Mr. Leach alludes to a chantry school in connection with Trinity Hospital; I have found no traces of this. Probably he founded his statement on the "ij poore scolars " in the 1546 certificate of the hospital. Yorks. Chantry Surveys (Surtees Soc.), i, p. 76. This certificate is peculiarly open to criticism. It is, however, possible that the two chaplains had at one time a school. In 1692 Mrs. Jane Stainton left a small yearly sum to pay a school mistress for teaching six girls to read, knit, and sew. Text, p. 289.

2 Text, p. 26.

REBUILDING OF THE CHAPEL (1411)

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Fifteen years later it was fully organised. The master was then assisted by two chaplains and two clerks, the thirteen pensioners had increased to thirty.

The licence of 14111 clears up all difficulties with regard to the date of the chapel. It is evident that the little chapel referred to in the roll of 1368 had become much dilapidated, and been rebuilt by the pious generosity of the citizens of York on a much larger scale. The new altar would need consecration,2 and this might have included a formal dedication of the enlarged building. The form of the licence, however, makes this improbable. It is a perpetual licence, without limit of time, and so explicitly worded that all necessaries for divine service are included; had consecration taken place the licence would have been supererogatory. The hanging pyx, of which the classical example is the silver pelican which hung above the high altar at Durham, was the standard English custom. The unsightly wall that now divides chapel and hospital had not been built, and the eyes of the inmates could be fixed on "that most excellent sacrament of the body of our Lord," which was suspended "in a seemly vessel" before the altar of the chapel. Doubtless, in an age of unquestioned faith, this mystic Presence would console the dying, and even the living, while pursuing the routine of their transitory lives, would be strengthened by this reminder of the divine nearness.3 This document fitly closes the first phase of the gild's history— the phase of ecclesiastical predominance.

1 Archiepis. Reg. Hen. Bowet, fo. 100.

2 I am indebted to Mr. Hamilton Thompson for many suggestions with regard to this document. The legate Oddo, in 1237, laid down the principle that mass should be celebrated only in places dedicated to God, and decreed that all cathedral, conventual, and parochial churches should be consecrated within two years of their completion or be subject to interdict until the act of consecration had been performed; but inferior chapels were expressly excluded from the decree, their consecration was left to the diocesan's judgment. In 1435 a licence for two chantry chaplains to celebrate at two side altars in Brampton-by-Dingley church, Northants, was issued before the consecration of the building. Lincoln Reg. Gray, fo. 180d. But the exclusion of churches not matrices ecclesiæ from the legatine decree makes it very probable that many lesser buildings never received formal consecration, but that a licence for the celebration of mass was considered sufficient.

3 Mr. Hamilton Thompson has drawn my attention to several references to the reservation of the Sacrament in a hanging pyx. Rock, Church of our Fathers, ed. Hart and Frere, vol. iv, pp. 234–242. Major Heales' paper on

2

THE SECOND PHASE, 1420–1580.

The second and most interesting phase of the merchants' history begins in 1420; from that date to the present day a careful list of all the members of the fraternity and mistery has been kept. The inscription at the beginning of the register seems to point to one of those periodical attempts at reorganisation, which are characteristic of all healthy developments, having taken place at that date. The adoption of a new patron is alluded to1; but as in 1396 the hospital is already called the Holy Trinity, the explanation seems to be both names, "the gild of the Lord Jesus Christ" and "the gild of the Holy Trinity," were used indiscriminately in the early days. Evidently in 1420 an attempt was being made towards a more systematic nomenclature. The hospital with the interdependent fraternity seems to have retained the older name; the mistery to have adopted the new designation. This view is strengthened by the fact that the hospital and mistery had different seals. The hospital seal with its impression of the Adjuncts, etc., of the Altar in Transactions of the St. Paul's Ecclesiological Soc., vol. i, pp. 156-158. J. N. Comper's Practical Considerations on the Gothic or English Altar, ibid., vol. iii, pp. 199–204. The modern Roman customs of exposition, benediction with the Sacrament, and visits to the Blessed Sacrament seem to have no analogy in medieval usage; it seems clear that the primary object of reservation was for the communion of the sick. excellent instance of the medieval use of reservation is found in Litt. Jo. Peckham (Rolls Ser.), vol. i. Peckham, in his injunctions to Barking Abbey, condemns the practice of the nunnery chaplains in keeping the reserved Sacrament for the sick in their private apartments, because it was easier than going into church for it.

3

An

1 "Anno adopcionis patronatus eiusdem hospitalis anno Domini millesimo cccc vicesimo."

2 Text, p. 16. cf. La Société des Antiquaires de l'Ouest, troisième série, tome 1 (1909), p. 676.

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3 The seal of the fraternity represents the coronation of the Virgin, and carries the legend Sigillum commune hospitaliter fratrum et sororum beate Marie virginis, juxta ponte Fosse Ebor'." The British Museum catalogue has " juxta porte Fosse, but the n of ponte is quite clear, and the proximity of the hospital to Fossbridge renders it appropriate. The seal of the mistery, not bought until 1435, represents the Trinity between two merchant ships; on each side in the field is a branch of foliage, the dove does not appear, only a star in the horizon. The legend is Sigillum communitatis mercatorum S. Trinitatis Eoboraci." After having been lost for many centuries it was dug up in Shap Abbey and restored to the Company by Mrs. Clayton of the Chesters, Humshaugh, Northumberland. The windows put into the committee-room by Mr. George Crombie to commemorate his mastership contain reproductions of both seals.

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THE TRINITY GILD DISPUTE (1418)

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coronation of the blessed Virgin, and its legend, "the seal of the brothers and sisters of the hospital of the blessed Mary the Virgin," seems to emphasise its connection with the original conception; whereas the seal of the mistery, with its impression of the Father in pity exhibiting His crucified Son, with the star in the horizon, and the legend, "the seal of the community of merchants of Holy Trinity, York," seems to refer to the new patronatus of 1420.1 In the same way, Thomas Wrangwis, the master of the mistery, calls the fraternity of which he claims that he is also the master, "the fraternity of the Holy Trinity," but William Cleveland, the ecclesiastical head of the dual organisation, anxious to draw a distinction between hospital and mistery, calls himself master of "the hospital of our Lord Jesus Christ and the blessed Mary the Virgin," even as late as 1497.3 The double name is not in itself unusual, but the differentiation in its application points to some practical reason behind it.

There is no connection between the gild of Holy Trinity, which was suppressed as adulterine in 1418, and the Fossgate institution. Still it is possible that the existence of this gild of a similar name may have prevented the general adoption of the same title by the Fossgate brothers and sisters; and its disappearance may have induced the merchants in 1420 to put on record their claim to the unappropriated designation. The fact, however, that there were in York two flourishing gilds of the same name at the same time, shows what an important part the organisation must have played in the economy of the city. Among the complexities of modern life, with its specialisations and differentiations, it is difficult for us to grasp the real power of an institution, which had flung over England a net,

1 Mr. Hamilton Thompson has kindly drawn my attention to the following facts, which explain the double name. Dedications to our Lord were always equivalent to dedications to the Holy Trinity, probably in acknowledgment of His inseparability from the Triune Godhead. The churches of the Holy Trinity in York and Bristol were known popularly as Christ Church, and the priories of the Holy Trinity in London and Ipswich were generally called Christ Church. In Leicester the hospital of Christ and the Annunciation of the B.V.M., later the Newarke College, held its chief festival on Trinity Sunday, and became known as Trinity Hospital.

whose meshes included kings and princes, barons and knights, canons and rectors, lawyers, wealthy merchants, comfortable shop-keepers and poor journeymen, peasants, and even, according to Professor Unwin, football players.1 Incidentally, another point of interest emerges from the details of this dispute. The thirty-seven brothers, whose refusal to obey the verdict of the majority to join the gild of St. Antony was the casus belli, still wished to keep their hands on the fraternity paraphernalia. As these disputed possessions were kept in the church of the friars' preachers, the prior of the monastery was drawn into the quarrel. The more belligerent members of the majority party broke into the church, and carried off the property. This outrage enlisted the sympathies of the prior on the side of the minority party, but all the disputants agreed to submit the case to the arbitration of the mayor of the city. This acknowledgment of the power of the civic authority is significant. The mayor's verdict gave some of the spoil to the prior, the rest to the municipal chapel of Saint William on Ousebridge. The money, still remaining in the coffers of the dissolved Trinity gild, was to be devoted to the building of a chapel on Fossbridge.2 The whole story of this 1418 scandal seems to foreshadow the confiscation of gild property in 1547, with the mayor instead of the king as confiscator, the city instead of the council as receiver; for the bridges were municipal property, the chapels on them were regarded in a peculiar sense as under the city's aegis.3

But apart from any specialisation of name and function, there is a marked contrast between the documentary evidence for the two periods of the history of the institution. The data in the first period is taken from official, ecclesiastical, state, and municipal documents. It is difficult to breathe life into these dry bones. The account rolls (except the one for 1368) deal chiefly with timber, stone, plaster; the master of the gild, John Freboys, the master of the works, John Colwik, the

1 G. Unwin, The Gilds of London, pp. 97, 98.

2 J. Solloway, article in British Association Handbook for York, pp. 165-168. 3 York Memorandum Book, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 71, 72.