GILD

(Sax. gild an, to pay: said to be derived from payments made by a member of a guild on admi ion.) A fraternity or a ociation, generally of merchants. The Collegia Opificum of the later Roman empire appear to have been societies of this description, in which a body of artizans 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 purposes, religious and social as well as commercial; and the oldest 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 guild, and the guild and corporate body of the borough became co-extensive. A more remarkable change took place in the constitution of London, where the several trading companies by degrees so completely engro ed the government that admi ion into one or the other of them <the liveried companies) became a nece ary qualification for the exercise of municipal rights; while some relics still remain (such as the division of the city into wards) of the more ancient state of things. The name guild is still preserved in the ancient boroughs of Scotland, and the dean of guild is the second municipal magistrate of a Scottish borough. The ziinfte of German cities, and the trading companies of those of France and Italy, have acted an equally important part in the history of those countries. [s. 546]