Word Finder - gild

definition

To cover with a thin layer of gold; to cover with gold leaf.

definition

To adorn.

definition

To decorate with a golden surface appearance.

definition

To give a bright or pleasing aspect to.

definition

To make appear drunk.

Dunstable had also a gild merchant and was affiliated to London.

In 18 3 0 there were twelve Meistersinger alive in Ulm, but in 1839 the four survivors formally made over their insignia and gild property to a modern singing society and closed the record of the Meistergesang in Germany.

The town was incorporated in 1467 by Edward IV., who granted a gild merchant and appointed that the town should be governed by a mayor and two serjeants-at-mace elected every year by the burgesses.

We find roughly 419 paragraphs devoted to criminal law and 1 The Judicia civitatis Lundoniae are a gild statute confirmed by King Æthelstan.

The gild brothers associated in mutual defence and support, and they had to share in the payment of fines.

Early meanings of the root gild or geld were expiation, penalty, sacrifice or worship, feast or banquet, and contribution or payment; it is difficult to determine which is the earliest meaning, and we are not certain whether the gildsmen were originally those who contributed to a common fund or those who worshipped or feasted together.

The laws of Ine speak of gegildan who help each other pay the wergeld, but it is not entirely certain that they were members of gild fraternities in the later sense.

They are important because they form the oldest body of gild ordinances extant in Europe.

The thanes' gild at Cambridge afforded help in blood-feuds, and provided for the payment of the wergeld in case a member killed any one.

That Chesterfield was early a thriving centre is shown by the charter of John Lord Wake, lord of the manor, granting a gild merchant to the town.

Thus far the constitution of the city had been wholly aristocratic; in the 13th century the patricians seem to have been united into a gild (Commans-gulde) from whose members the magistrates were chosen.

The foundation of the chapel of the gild of the Holy Cross was laid by Robert de Stratford.

The right to leave the pale is indeed granted to merchants of the first gild, to those possessed of certain educational diplomas, to veteran soldiers and to certain classes of skilled artisans.

In1180-1181they rendered account of 5 marks for erecting a gild without licence.

Among the most remarkable buildings in Venice are the scuole, or gild halls, of the various confraternities.

The Gild of the Holy Trinity is mentioned in 1 379, and grew rich and powerful.

Ath is famous for its gild of archers, whose butts are erected on the plain of the Esplanade in the centre of the town.

The religious element was more prominent in Orcy's gild at Abbotsbury and in the fraternity at Exeter; their ordinances exhibit much solicitude for the salvation of the brethren's souls.

Until clearer evidence of foreign influence is found, it may, however, be safer to regard it simply as a new application of the old gild principle, though this new application may have been stimulated by continental example.

Giovanni Evangelista, San Marco, della Misericordia and San Rocco, on the other hand, built themselves magnificent gild halls.

Its most important early charter was that granted in 1340 by Hugh le Despenser, whereby the burgesses acquired the right to nominate persons from whom the constable of the castle should select a bailiff and other officers, two ancient fairs, held on the 29th of June and, 9th of September, were confirmed, and extensive trading privileges were granted, including the right to form a merchant gild.

The rules of the art were set down in the so-called Tabulatur or law-book of the gild.

The evidence seems to indicate the pre-existence of the gild merchant in Normandy, but it is not mentioned anywhere on the continent before the 11th century.

The ordinances of a gild merchant thus aim to protect the brethren from the commercial competition of strangers or non-gildsmen.

It has often been asserted that the gild merchant and the borough were identical, and that the former was the basis of the whole municipal constitution.

Much evidence has been produced to show that gild and borough, gildsmen and burgesses, were originally distinct conceptions, and that they continued to be discriminated in most towns throughout the middle ages.

Admission to the gild was not restricted to burgesses; nor did the brethren form an aristocratic body having control over the whole municipal polity.

No good evidence has, moreover, been advanced to prove that this or any other kind of gild was the germ of the municipal constitution.

On the other hand, the gild merchant was certainly an official organ or department of the borough administration, and it exerted considerable influence upon the economic and corporative growth of the English municipalities.

Historians have expressed divergent views regarding the early relations of the craftsmen and their fraternities to the gild merchant.

One of the main questions in dispute is whether artisans were excluded from the gild merchant.

Separate societies of craftsmen were formed in England soon after the gild merchant came into existence; but at first they were few in number.

The gild merchant did not give birth to craft fraternities or have anything to do with their origin; nor did it delegate its authority to them.

As has already been intimated, however, many artisans probably belonged both to their own craft fraternity and to the gild merchant, and the latter, owing to its great power in the town, may have exercised some sort of supervision over the craftsmen and their societies.

When the king bestowed upon the tanners or weavers or any other body of artisans the right to have a gild, they secured the monopoly of working and trading in their branch of industry.

Thus with every creation of a craft fraternity the gild merchant was weakened and its sphere of activity was diminished, though the new bodies were subsidiary to the older and larger fraternity.

The old gild merchant remained longest intact and powerful in the smaller boroughs, in which, owing to the predominance of agriculture, few or no craft gilds were formed.

When these various unions of dealers and of craftsmen embraced all the trades and branches of production in the town, little or no vitality remained in the old gild merchant; it ceased to have an independent sphere of activity.

In short, the function of guarding and supervising the trade monopoly split up into various fragments, the aggregate of the crafts superseding the old general gild merchant.

While in most towns the name and the old organization of the gild merchant thus disappeared and the institution was displaced by the aggregate of the crafts towards the close of the middle ages, in some places it survived long after the 15th century either as a religious fraternity, shorn of its old functions, or as a periodical feast, or as a vague term applied to the whole municipal corporation.

On the continent of Europe the medieval gild merchant played a less important role than in England.

Such a fraternity was commonly called a "mistery" or "company" in the 15th and 16th centuries, though the old term "gild" was not yet obsolete.

In the 14th century they were fully developed and in a flourishing condition; by that time each branch of industry in every large town had its gild.

Officers, commonly called wardens in England, were elected by the members, and their chief function was to supervise the quality of the wares produced, so as to secure good and honest workmanship. Therefore, ordinances were made regulating the hours of labour and the terms of admission to the gild, including apprenticeship. Other ordinances required members to make periodical payments to a common fund, and to participate in certain common religious observances, festivities and pageants.

But the regulation of industry was always paramount to social and religious aims; the chief object of the craft gild was to supervise the processes of manufacture and to control the monopoly of working and dealing in a particular branch of industry.

We have already called attention to the gradual displacement of the gild merchant by the craft organizations.

There was at no time a general struggle in England between the gild merchant and the craft gilds, though in a few towns there seems to have been some friction between merchants and artisans.

Whatever power they did secure, whether as potent subsidiary organs of the municipal polity for the regulation of trade, or as the chief or sole medium for the acquisition of citizenship, or as integral parts of the common council, was, generally speaking, the logical sequence of a gradual economic development, and not the outgrowth of a revolutionary movement by which oppressed craftsmen endeavoured to throw off the yoke of an arrogant patrician gild merchant.

Hence they should not be confused with the old gild merchant, which originally comprised both merchants and artisans, and had the whole monopoly of the trade of the town.

In most cases, the company of merchants was merely one of the craft organizations which superseded the gild merchant.