comparatively large quantities, joists, boards, laths, plaster, sand and tiles, and the fact that of the labour, the carpenters are the largest item, points to this conclusion; the items for the masons' labour are comparatively insignificant, and seem to contradict the idea that the timber building had a ground storey of stone. Nor does it seem likely that the accounts refer to a building that had been partly erected before the accounts begin, for the purchase and sawing of the timber would occur at a very early stage of the work. But whatever view may be taken of the details of the work the fact is incontestable, that in the year 1356 the gild acquired land, and in the year 1357 the land was in the hands of workpeople. Nearly ninety pounds was expended on it that year; the expenditure fell in 1358, but rose in 1359 to £123 11s. 6d. A voluminous vellum roll for the year 13683 contains many interesting items. During the intervening four years the gild had evidently become so popular that it had attracted members from Newcastle, Whitby, and Hull. Butchers, spicers, potters figure among the members and benefactors. Building must have gone on rapidly during this period; a certain house within the "mansum" on the pavement pays a considerable rent; the entry points to some dwelling possibly on the site, where the shops still belonging to the company stand, on either side of the entrance to the courtyard. Bricks and plaster in increasing quantities are being delivered. There are three references to the erection of a great hall in a garden. The evidence with regard to the existence of a chapel is not absolutely conclusive; the allusion may be to the chapel in the church of St. Crux, though against this theory there is the evidence of the licence, which proves

1 This paragraph is founded on a report made by Mr. John Bilson, F.S.A., of Hull. He very kindly went over the hall with me, then studied the account roll, and gave me the inestimable advantage of his expert opinion.

2 Deferring to the judgment of better scholars than myself, I have not translated the money items into terms of modern money, but I may point out that approximately £90 in 1357 would be equivalent at the lowest calculation to £350 in modern times.

3 Text, pp. 16–26.

Ibid., pp. 16, 17, 23.

5 Ibid., p. 17.

• Ibid., p. 24.

? Ibid., pp. 20, 22, 25.

REORGANISATION BY THE ARCHBISHOP (1373)

vii

that the chapel had been an ancient ruin for years previous to 1411. A chaplain had been appointed and paid forty-six shillings. All the building operations were in charge of John Craneby, carpenter, and John Bolton, plasterer, who received salaries, the rest of the workpeople were paid by piece. The master carpenter received twelve pounds a year, the master plasterer only a third of that sum. The gild had already availed itself of the right of acquiring property given by the incorporation deed of 1357; houses in Walmgate, Castlegate, Fishergate, and the parish of St. Denis are mentioned as being in its possession. Both the religious and social side of the members' aspirations had been satisfied; there was a hall for feasts, a church for devotion. The roll gives glimpses of a healthy rollicking people, who shared alike their joys and sorrows. Members entertain each other periodically; the brother and sisters living at Whitby are given a feast2; but the darker side of life also appears, side by side with payments for provisions for the junketings, fees to the priests who sing mass, to those who bid to funerals, are entered; money, too, is paid for candles to burn round the hearses of the dead brothers and sisters. The easy interdependence of the social and religious life forms an attractive picture.

4

Three years later the gild obtained from the king a second deed of incorporation, which enabled it to enlarge the scope of its work and found a hospital. John Rouclyffe was the principal mover in this new development, but in 1373 Archbishop Thoresby appears as the reorganiser of the whole scheme.5 The document which deals with the matter is long and verbose. The dual nature of the institution is proved by the fact that the deed is enrolled both in the archiepiscopal and municipal register. The main provisions are that a hospital should be 1 In modern money this is equivalent to about £3 58. 6d. weekly wage. 2 Text, p. 23.

3 Text, pp. 21, 24, 25.

Ibid., pp. 27-30. Surtees Soc., vol. xci, p. 76.

5 Ibid., p. 28.

❝ Archiepis. Reg. Thoresby, fo. 169. Munic. Rec. fos. 113, 114. Doubtless, however, both enrolments were made primarily from the point of view of an ecclesiastical benefice, the object being to safeguard the respective rights of the archbishop and corporation to presentation in case of lapse.

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)

ix

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.

2

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, 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 historythe phase of ecclesiastical predominance.

66

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.3 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.

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.

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.