Conclusion

During his itineraries, the Tudor antiquarian John Leland spoke of Ludlow largely in terms of the Palmers’ Guild, or, as he called it, ‘a brothar-hode therein foundyd in the name of St. John the Evangeliste’.¹ Leland credited the Palmers with having ‘muche avauncyd’ the church of St Laurence, which was ‘very faire, and large, and richely adornyd, and taken for the fayrest in all those quartars’. He highlighted the Palmers’ legacy of building projects, specifically the construction of a ‘fayr howse at the west end of the paroche churche yard’ for its priests and the maintenance of a ‘hospitall or almeshouse of a 30. pore folks’.² The central place occupied by the Palmers in Leland’s description of the town makes it clear that he saw the guild as one of the defining features of Ludlow. Yet the Palmers’ role in Ludlow was the least remarkable aspect of this fraternity. The guild drew in members from across Wales, through England in the north-west, midlands, south-west, London, the home counties, East Anglia, and Yorkshire (to a small extent), as well as a small number from Ireland, modern-day France and Iberia. Crossing rural and urban divides, it proved accessible for members from diverse socio-economic backgrounds. The guild’s membership brought together the multiple, frequently distinct communal spheres of late medieval England – public and private, lay and religious, social and political – encompassing over 18,000 members, and probably many thousands more.

One of the main arguments of this book has been that membership of large fraternities was an integral aspect of late medieval society – it was not simply a feature but was ingrained in the everyday experiences of men and women. The meanings associated with joining a religious guild were varied, assigned by localised groups of members as suited their specific needs and circumstances. Due to this conceptual malleability, membership of the guild could, for instance, be employed in local areas as a benchmark of the suitability of an individual for involvement in urban and rural governance. But despite this, the Palmers’ Guild never became an exclusive organisation and instead inducted individuals from all socio-economic backgrounds. Any real or imagined hierarchies within the guild’s membership cannot now be discerned, thanks to the patterns of survival among the records; what can be substantially – if not wholly – reconstructed, however, is the diversity of its brothers and sisters, and this book speaks to the insights that can be gained through the systematic study of this diversity.

Of course, central to the approach of this study has been to read against the grain of the surviving records to understand exactly what and, indeed, who, influenced the decisions made by thousands of individuals to join one particular fraternity. The location of the guild at Ludlow partially explains the attractions of membership and the meanings that membership assumed in a regional context. The Council of the Marches dominated the structures of the region’s governing spheres, generating interaction between individuals, urban and rural, lay and ecclesiastical alike, through its judicial and administrative roles. Upon Prince Arthur’s arrival at Ludlow in 1493, he assumed responsibility for the Welsh Marches alongside the Council, whose membership overlapped with that of his own household. The integration of Arthur’s councillors and their servants, as well as his own probable involvement with the Palmers, transformed the significance of guild membership in the late fifteenth century. The increased enrolment of major players in the governance of the Marches is testament to the perceived power and potential opportunity for the cultivation of useful social ties offered by guild membership. While it is challenging to discern the extent to which individuals took advantage of this opportunity, especially given the loss (or absence) of records of attendance at feasts or informal gatherings of brethren, the patterns identified in this book have shown clearly the rise of guild membership after the integration of the Council with the Palmers.

The household and family were two additional influences upon the popularity of membership of the Palmers’ Guild in the late middle ages. Expectations of good order, reputation and pious provision permeated urban, rural, mercantile, gentry and noble households alike. It is within this context that households, comprising servants and masters, engaged widely with the Palmers’ Guild. The acceleration of this trend at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries reveals the importance of the precedent set by Arthur and his household, as well as the power of familial networks, illustrated so clearly in the example of the Staffords. Family expectations, specifically patrilineal relationships, brought continued involvement in the Palmers over multiple generations.

While different individuals, but particularly groups, encouraged guild membership, the guild itself stimulated membership through its structures and actions. The system of payment-by-instalment was undoubtedly a factor that accounted for the wide social range of brethren. It made fraternal membership accessible to either previously under-represented groups of society or to those, like the urban and rural elites, who would otherwise have joined further on in their career, but who instead were able to join many years before taking an active role in local governance. Assisting the accessibility of membership were the actions of the guild across the country, for the stewards collected fees from the villages, towns or cities of brethren; in each respective location, they facilitated and enacted a sense of shared community and conviviality on their rides through expenditure on food and drink for brethren. In contrast to the transient presence of the guild stewards, solesters provided a permanent reminder of, and conduit to, the council of the guild at Ludlow, and worked to encourage microcosms of membership. The guild enacted a deliberate policy of inclusion and engagement among its members.

We might, of course, ask why the guild decided to undertake to encourage a greater and more diverse membership. While any conclusions drawn can only be speculative (as the surviving records do not explicitly explain policy changes nor are they a complete run), they repay consideration. It is tempting to suggest that the principal concern was financial but a quick appraisal of guild finances casts doubt on this (somewhat pessimistic) assumption. The guild’s two different streams of income – rents and membership fees – worked to support each other. Rent from the guild’s substantial portfolio of properties went towards maintaining the guild priests and their college. In a cyclical manner, the membership fees contributed to the building works and repairs of those properties that supported the priests.³ The rental income from their property in 1501/2 was £81 21 ½ d and £80 12d in 1503/4, far surpassing rental incomes of other parish fraternities in the early sixteenth century, like Louth’s guilds of Holy Trinity and Blessed Virgin Mary who respectively collected annual sums of £25 5s 2d and £56 8s 6d.⁴ After expenses for a number of spiritual provisions (for example, the paying of guild priests, the keeping of lights and the wages of singing men), expenses due to the bailiffs and lords of each respective location in which the guild had property, and the fees of the guild officers, they were in debt for just over £9 and £4 for each respective year. The nearest year for which membership income is recorded, unfortunately, is not until 1514/15, when the guild received approximately £156 in membership fees.⁵ Assuming that this figure aligns fairly closely with the income from membership in the early years of the century, then the guild could easily make up a deficit of £9 or £4.⁶ Their building projects averaged a cost of £50 per year during 1505–8, but most years were less than that.⁷ If the policy changes begun in the late fifteenth century had been born out of financial need then within a relatively short period of time this was overcome and the guild had established an apparatus by which to remain financially secure. This, surely, provided both the rationale and the means to encourage a diversified membership, but it was one that was mutually beneficial to both the guild and its members.

Individuals were genuinely spurred by piety and by an interest in engagement with networks of community and friendship, and the outlet through which they fulfilled those aims was influenced by their social environment. The social and geographical reach of the Palmers, and of other large fraternities, was therefore the result of individual preferences and persuasions but also of varying pressures and influences that were woven into the fabric of late medieval society. I have argued throughout this book that localised, corporate groups – the family, the lay or ecclesiastical household, or the ruling groups of local or regional elites in town and country – influenced decisions to join a fraternity. Family, in particular, swayed the decision to join the Palmers, transmuting the artificiality of the familial language adopted by guilds (‘brother’ and ‘sister’) into the world of real blood relations. In this, and in other respects, the reasons for joining late medieval fraternities are entangled in histories of domesticity and mentalities and the practices of urban and rural politics. As has become apparent, individual volition is not a wholly appropriate viewpoint from which to understand the membership of guilds; more than anything, it has become clear that historians should not proffer singular explanations for their composition.

The answers to why certain groups of individuals joined the Palmers’ Guild are, in all likelihood, equally applicable to other major guilds, with membership that was both regional and national. Large fraternities activated, and were embedded within, the social and political processes of various kinds of community. In this sense, the utility of fraternities such as the Palmers extended far beyond spiritual support, in terms of pro anima prayers, indulgences and fraternal prayers. Their appeal was instead rather more social and political in nature, which is demonstrated especially in the membership patterns of the urban and rural governing elites. While the nuances of what guild membership meant in each respective community varied, a uniting factor was the guild’s embodiment and enhancement of the common values of shared identity, whatever form this identity took in each situation or locality.

The relationship between the Council of the Marches and the Palmers’ Guild raises the possibility that other devolved royal agencies, such as the Council of the North (initially established in 1483), might have had a similar effect in their sphere of geographical influence. But in particular, the evidence provided in this book argues strongly for the centrality of the household as the motivation for, and enabling mechanism of, guild membership. It might be that the Palmers’ Guild is unique in this respect (with both masters and servants joining due to their unusual system of payment-by-instalments), and future studies might reveal that servants were more likely to join separate, cheaper, fraternities than their masters; in any case, the enrolling of servants in any guild bolstered the good governance of a household. This is a consideration conspicuous by its absence in current discussions on the morality and operation of households. Certainly, household guild membership bridges some gaps in the study of domesticity, expanding our understanding of the short- and long-term influences within a master–servant relationship, the extension of the domestic sphere into institutions, and the social and religious obligations placed upon householders.

While guilds sit across sub-sections of research into medieval society – interacting with social, religious, political and economic historical study – the methodology used in this book can be deployed in future studies more broadly. Firstly, records that were created for one organisation rarely, if ever, solely relate to that organisation. They reflect larger trends in society and should be read against the grain to draw conclusions beyond the purposes for which they were created. Secondly, records that may at first glance appear restricted in their use – a list of thousands of names, for example – should be treated with as much interest as accounts, letters or litigation. When used in conjunction with other records, such historical sources – as is shown throughout this book – can be the key to revealing fundamental relationships, the creation of communities and networks, and the beliefs held by society. The Palmers’ Guild of Ludlow encapsulates this by leaving piles of accounts, deeds, and membership lists that have allowed the multifaceted lives of ordinary and extraordinary people of medieval society to be revealed in this book.