Note 401 — Chapter VIII

Accounts of the Guild of Corpus Christi are preserved from 1488. The brethren and sisters of the Guild seem to have been spread all over England, and are mentioned at London, Lynn, and Birmingham. They were of all ranks and of all trades and callings. (Hist. MSS. Com. i. 101.) The Prior of the cathedral, the Prior’s bailiff, the vicar of Trinity, various craftsmen of the town and vicars of the neighbourhood, merchants of Queenborough, Dublin, Drogheda, Bristol, Kingston-on-Hull, London, and many other places, a “merchant of the Staple,” and great men of the neighbourhood, such as Thomas Grey, the Marquis of Dorset, Lord Hastings, and others belonged to its association.