Gilds: The Closest Thing to a Backup Family
If medieval English peasants did not have the extensive and complex social webs of obligation and association usually associated with large families, then what else might serve to satisfy such needs? One answer, which was available to many, was the parish social-religious gild, a voluntary association which used terms and images of kinship to describe its activities and which provided some of the functions of an extended family.
Gild members addressed one another as brothers and sisters and to the gild’s elected officials in the image of a father. But above all, the gild provided protection in death; almost three-quarters of gilds that registered their statutes in a national survey of 1389 listed provision for a decent funeral as an object of their foundation.
This could be a fitting reward for life membership of a gild, for it is recorded that members received a proper funeral cortège, including candles and even the gild banner, plus continued prayers from their fellow gildsmen for the dead’s release from purgatory on the anniversary of their death, long after any close relatives might have been expected to abandon the effort.
Gilds provided another service normally available only to those with great wealth and extensive lands, in acting as a credit union and a sharing agency for such things as animals and equipment. Gild members could borrow freely from the stock of goods, returning a small percentage of the value when repayment was due, and thus add to gild funds. For example, rural gilds that owned breeding cattle, swine, and especially oxen usually hired out animals to their members in need.
These local gilds helped spread out payments for such expensive purchases as agricultural implements among more gild members, thus easing the burden on any one peasant household. A similar system was used when a natural disaster or domestic emergency such as illness made work impossible. Almost a fifth of gilds, according to the 1389 survey, undertook to give their members a small weekly stipend in time of need.
At the same time, it should be noted that while such gilds provided many of the services of an extended family, their members always knew that they were not families and that they belonged to voluntary associations, however satisfying such associations might be.
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