only for the meetings and suppers of the Guild, but also for the transaction of municipal affairs. The connection of the Town authorities and the Corpus Christi Guild had been extremely close ever since the Guild was founded in the middle of the 14th century. The men who governed the borough were always, to a very large extent, the same as those who managed the Guild; and as time passed on, the co-operation of the two bodies became constantly more noticeable. Thus, it is evident from an ordination passed by the Mayor and his Brethren in the year 1477 that, as North has pointed out, "the two masters of the Corpus Christi Guild were at that time closely connected with the Corporation in the Government of the town, and to some extent were invested by the Mayor and his Brethren with superior authority, inasmuch as they had power to inflict penalties on the Mayor himself in case he neglected his duty."
The earliest allusion to the Hall and Parlour of the Guild occurs in their Accounts for 1493-4, when a payment was made "for sweeping of the parlour and the hall." In the preceding year the rent collectors also took credit for some repairs done to the Chantry, or residence of the guild priests, which is then first mentioned.
Now, in the year 1862, Mr. Gordon Hills examined these buildings, and reported upon them to the Meeting of the British Archaeological Association which was held at Leicester in that year.[1] The conclusion which he drew from a very close and critical survey of the architectural features of the buildings was that they were built in the reign of Henry VII. If that is so, they must have been put up somewhere about the year 1490, replacing "cottages" and "ground" in St. Martin's Church Lane, which appeared in older rentals of the guild.
At that time, the Guild was a rich body, its income being larger than that of the town, and the shrewd burgesses who managed the concerns of both felt, no doubt, that the resources of the guild might be well employed in providing that accommodation
- ↑ Not the Meeting of the Royal Archaeological Institute, as Kelly inadvertently named it in his account of the old Guildhalls. The meeting of that body at Leicester took place in 1870.
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