GILD

(Sax. gild an, to pay; sard to be de rived from payments made by a member of a guild on admi ion.)A fraternity or a ociation, generally of mer chants. The Collegia Opificum of the hilcr Roman onipirf appear to have been societies of this description, in which a body of artisans or traders exercising the same craft were united together for purposes of mutual a istance, and po e ed what we should term corporate rights. The Anglo Saxon guilds were voluntary a ociations for various purpo ses, religious and social as well as commercial; and the old est English guild of which the history is at all ascertained is said to have been the Cnighten guild of London, which has been thought by its name to have been a military company; but this is doubtful, and its history is altogether extremely obscure. But the more important guilds of later times have been all mercantile. The guild-merchant, in many boroughs of England, seems to have been a trading society, into which all persons wishing to exercise trade within the borough were obliged to be admitted; and hence, in proce of time, the freedom of the borough, which, originally depended upon mere inhabitancy, became connected with admi ion to the [s. 550]