This excellent new volume published by the London Record Society makes a remarkable set of fraternity accounts, licences, ordinances and miscellanea records, available to a wide audience. They form an important record of one of the most prestigious and popular guilds in late medieval and Tudor society which met, unusually, in the crypt of old St Paul's cathedral in the City of London. The guild offered elaborate and high-profile liturgical celebrations, the public commendation of souls and prayers for benefactors, all of which was celebrated in the very heart of religious London.
The guild had been founded by Thomas Lisieux, dean of St Paul's, in the mid-fifteenth century and the evidence suggests a high-status association from the beginning (including Henry VI as patron). Testamentary evidence reveals a constant flow of fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century post-mortem bequests from its members; others gave in their lifetime such as the mass book given by the composer Robert Fayrfax. But this set of Tudor accounts and the documents in this edition are largely from the second, third and fourth decades of the sixteenth century and survive from the period after the reorganisation of the guild by Dean John Colet in 1506/7. It was Colet who reorganised the cathedral clergy and choristers and employed them in the liturgical celebrations of the living and of the dead; this added a further layer of prestige on this already popular fraternity. Membership of the fraternity inevitably brought networking opportunities – again seen in testamentary evidence – and the social side of the guild is further revealed in payments in the accounts for food and drink at the main feasts and frequent ‘drinkings’. The guild provided a network for its members with a chance for them to meet new business contacts; Thomas Hynd, mercer and sheriff of London, for example, who served as warden, assistant and auditor of the guild, left memorial rings to three members of the fraternity in his will of 1528. Others were named as executors. The accounts reveal that it was a largely high-status guild with members from the royal household and the city's affluent merchant class and this enabled court and city to mix during a time of high politics and an appetite for change. Further, there was a particularly strong, albeit informal, association with the Mercers’ Company; the guild's relationship with the Waxchandler's Company is clearer with, for example, its officers elected on the Feast of the Transfiguration and with the obits of dead members of the company celebrated by the Jesus Guild on the Feast of the Holy Name.
The accounts survive continuously from 1514/5 until 1534/5. They are fair copies which were compiled from bills, receipts and working accounts, which is comparable to practices adopted by other fraternities and also churchwardens’ accounts. They are presented in a standard format with single entry book-keeping and largely written in English (some are in Latin). Income came from four different sources – rent from property, bequests in wills, sale of goods which were surplus to requirements and farming out the right to collect offerings and membership fees. This is carefully set out in the accounts. Clear records of expenditure were also maintained, including the maintenance of the Jesus Chapel (in the crypt of old St Paul's) with regular payments to workmen and craftsmen such as glaziers, carpenters and vestment makers. Other outgoings record the costs for furnishing and fitting out the chapel such as in 1514 when the warden Henry Hill, for example, bought a pair of organs, four new desks for the anthem books, a new brass candlestick and ‘a boke withe lessons’ (p. 86) or payments for liturgical celebrations, including to the fraternity's officers and staff, account for substantial spend at religious services, sermons and the annual feast days of the Transfiguration and Holy Name. What is particularly striking from the accounts is not only the process to draw up the final accounts but that they were read out during the annual audit; this almost certainly reflects the cause of Colet's reorganisation of the guild in 1506/7 following a period of embezzlement by past masters.
This edition concludes with two important appendices. The first reprints in full the 1552 inventory of church goods for the parish of St Faith's which took over the Jesus chapel after the suppression of the fraternity in 1548. This reveals a little on the fixtures and fittings from the former chapel: the green and white vestment sold to William Bull; silver crosses, a pyx, candlesticks, a censer, an incense ship and chalice sold to Richard Grace, Gregory Railton and John Lewis. One Mistress Cooke bought an old marble stone; Roger Sylvester was paid 4s. to take down the altars and a ‘standing tombe’ and also the brass plate from the marble stones marking the graves of the dead buried in the former guild chapel. The gifts to the guild recorded in the accounts, testamentary bequests and the descriptions of sold goods after the fraternity's end, reveal a little on what the members witnessed during the liturgical celebrations. Appendix II provides potted biographies of twenty-four wardens who can be identified in the accounts. They represent a ‘who was who’ of influential Londoners within the city and at the royal court and reflect the importance of the guild as a forum for networking where new contacts were met and business deals agreed. The choice of warden is notable and the accounts reveal a good mix of different craft backgrounds; for example, three mercers and three haberdashers. Wardens were also goldsmiths, painter stainers, merchant tailors and waxchandlers. It is also notable a clerk of the Privy Seal, another of the exchequer and a third, William Paver, common clerk of London. The guild was managed by able and capable businessmen and government – national and civic – administrators.
It is rare to find such a good set of fraternity accounts and both the editor, and the London Record Society, are to be congratulated on publishing this remarkable manuscript and for making it accessible to anyone interested in Tudor London.
