e citie, and divers and many worshipful comoners,
chosen out of evry crafte, in their liveries, in barges freshly
furnished with banners and streamers of silke, rechly beaton
with the arms and bagges of their craftes; and in especiall a
barge, called the bachelors' barge, garnished and apparelled,
passing all other, wherein was ordeyned a great redd dragon,
spowting flames of fyer into the Thames; and many other
gentlemanlie pagiaunts, well and curiously devised, to do Her
Highness sport and pleasure with."

CHARITY AND RELIGION

But pleasure, pomp, and pageantry were not the sole uses of these guilds
in olden days. A study of the preamble to their numerous charters shows
that to maintain the poor members of their companies was one of their
chief objects. The Fishmongers had a grant of power to hold land "for
the sustentation of the poor men and women of the said commonalty." The
Goldsmiths' charter recites that

"... many persons of that trade, by fire and the smoke of
quicksilver, had lost their sight, and that others of them by
working in that trade became so crazed and infirm that they
were disabled to subsist but of relief from others; and that
divers of the said city, compassionating the condition of such,
were disposed to give and grant divers tenements and rents in
the said city to the value of twenty pounds per annum to the
company of the said craft towards the maintenance of the said
blind, weak and infirm."

Legacies were also bequeathed to the companies for the same object, and
thus we find them in the fourteenth century administering large
charities for the benefit of the poor of London, and with the help of
the monasteries providing a system of relief and educational
organisation in the absence of any poor-law administration or State
education.

[Illustration: FURNIVAL'S INN.

_From an old print published in 1804._]

These city guilds were also of a distinctly religious character, and
prescribed rules for the attendance of members at the services of the
Church, for pilgrimages, and the celebration of masses for the dead.
Each company had its patron saint, and maintained a chantry priest or
chaplain. They founded altars in churches in honour of their patron
saint, who was usually selected on account of his emblem or symbol being
in some way connected with the particular trade of the guild. Thus, St.
Dunstan, who