The Accounts of the Guild of the Holy Trinity, Luton
Title Details

380 Pages

23.4 x 15.6 cm

9 colour, 2 line illus.

Series: Publications Bedfordshire Hist Rec Soc

Series Vol. Number: 91

Imprint: Bedfordshire Historical Record Society

The Accounts of the Guild of the Holy Trinity, Luton

1526/7-1546/7

Edited by Barbara Tearle

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Religious guilds or fraternities proliferated throughout England until their dissolution in the late 1540s, yet remarkably few of their records have survived.

Religious guilds or fraternities proliferated throughout England until their dissolution in the late 1540s, yet remarkably few of their records have survived. Amongst the survivals are the last twenty-one years of the accounts of the Luton Guild of the Holy Trinity, hitherto unpublished in full.
The accounts record several hundred transactions each year, including rents for the guild's properties, and expenditure on wages to priests and clerks and dirges sung for deceased members of the guild. Purchases of food, the cost of hiring cooks, kitchen helpers and utensils and expenditure on entertainment show what extraordinarily lavish provision was made for the annual feast. The quantity of building materials which was purchased for the guild`s properties suggests not only repairs but also modernisation and may be sufficient to attempt to reconstruct some of the houses.
The majority of `brothers and systers` of the guild were drawn from a radius of about twenty-five miles of Luton and included the towns and villages in neighbouring Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. A small, but noticeable, group were from London, Canterbury, Boston and Kendal. The guild was prosperous, well-connected and active, and its accounts provide an insight into daily life in mid-sixteenth-century south Bedfordshire and the surrounding area.
The book contains a complete transcription of the accounts and an introduction presenting an overview of the guild`s activities. It is fully indexed.

BARBARA TEARLE is a long-standing member of Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, previously its General Editor and the editor of the 2012 volume The Accounts of the Luton Guild of the Holy Trinity, 1526/7-1546/7. She is a retired librarian, most recently working in the Bodleian Law Library, Oxford.

Ebook (EPDF)

9781800107793

August 2012

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Title Details

380 Pages

2.34 x 1.56 cm

9 colour, 2 line illus.

Series: Publications Bedfordshire Hist Rec Soc

Series Vol. Number: 91

Imprint: Bedfordshire Historical Record Society