Excerpt from Cambridge Gild Records

The traces of craft gilds at Cambridge are scanty: this was not due to the absence of artisans; the shearmen in Shearers' Row and the wool-combers, who held a procession on St Blaise's day, have left their traces, but there does not appear to have been any local gild or company in connection with the clothing trade. Some Skinners had indeed formed a gild of their own in honour of St Katherine, but they made no effort to keep the membership or management of the gild entirely in the hands of men of their own craft, and they do not seem to have contemplated any trade objects in founding their society. It is possible that the existence of the University, and the rights of market supervision which it possessed, interfered with the development of bodies of townsmen, under municipal au thority, for the purpose of mutual supervision. It is interesting to notice that, however widely diffused and common the practice of association for common objects might be, consider able pains were taken to control it and that while towns were vigilant in permitting the existing or overhauling the proposed regulations of such bodies as professed to regulate trade, the ecclesiastical authorities were on the alert to protect the parishioners from the intrusion of private corporations in the use of the churches of the town. The most clearly defined line which we can hope to draw between merely 'social' gilds and 'religious' or 'craft' gilds, is likely to be found by noting the purpose for which any particular body desired to obtain special powers, and the nature of the public authority which it had to approach in order to secure them.

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