Note 160 — Chapter II · THE COLLEGES

The fact that we have a guild college built in Cambridge is especially interesting, for, as Dr. Stubbs has shown, Cambridge ranks highest among English towns for its guild history. Even the Exeter statutes do not rival those of one of its ancient guilds which united the craft or religious guild with the frith-guild—the guild instituted for the religious interests of its members or to protect craftsmen and their craft, and the guild which was an attempt “on the part of the public authorities to supplement the defective execution of the law by measures for mutual defence.” The Cambridge statutes, in fact, show us the guild as an element in the development of the township or burgh, one of those communities within a community which was the earliest expedient of civilisation, the earliest essay in organisation, everywhere. The guild which combined these two institutions was a thanes guild. It made and enforced legal enactments; it paid the blood-money if a member slew a man with righteous cause, and exacted eight pounds from any one who robbed a member. “It is improbable” writes Dr. Stubbs “that any institution on so large a scale existed in any other town than London.” In Athelstan’s reign we have a complete code of such a London frith-guild. (Constitutional History of England, vol. i. p. 414.)

It is against this historic background that we find the guilds of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin uniting to add a common scholastic interest to interests civil and religious, by founding a college. The guilds were lay institutions; in two of the best known Cambridge guilds priests were either excluded, or, if admitted, denied a share in the government; and a chaplain for the guild of the Blessed Virgin was only to be maintained if the necessary assistance to the poorer members permitted of it.