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ScholarWorks > Arts & Sciences > Medieval Institute Publications > medpros > Vol. 38 (2023) > Iss. 1

 

Abstract

This study seeks to explain how and why a minor and initially impoverished London fraternity became a great one in the face of intense competition within the capital’s spiritual economy. It demonstrates how strategic alliances and royal patronage boosted its profile and popularity and how the Clerks came to dominate a significant part of the funeral market. It also explores the ways in which the brotherhood managed to engage with the City authorities to become a key element in civic life, as London, in common with other great urban centers, sought religious support to validate and underpin the position of the ruling elite and to boost civic prestige with a richer liturgical offering at Guildhall Chapel during the course of the 15th century. Finally, the inclusivity of the guild is examined and the likely reasons for its ability to recruit a wide cross-section of Londoners as love brethren, along with the differences from the composition of the other greater London guilds for which evidence survives. It is argued that the apparently low level of admission fees and subscriptions for the Parish Clerks’ fraternity gave this new body a marketing advantage over rival fraternities. So too, did the enrolment of the heads of religious communities in, around, and beyond London, together with some of their inmates, which seems to have brought benefits of confraternity with those houses. In a spiritual market place where London’s citizen master craftsmen aspired to accumulate prestige and spiritual benefits for themselves, and the cachet of a more elaborate funeral, often by joining several fraternities, the Clerks consequently enjoyed a range of advantages. Overall, the examination of the guild concludes that the Clerks’ brotherhood was the nearest that London had to an overarching civic guild but that the pull of other elite guilds prevented the Clerks from achieving a more complete dominance. Nevertheless, the roll call of the membership of the Brotherhood of Master Parish Clerks, with its aldermen, noblemen, senior churchmen and royalty on the one hand, and its more modest householders, single women and unbeneficed clergy on the other, witnesses to the success of its alliances and strategies. These allowed development and expansion without recourse to the indulgences acquired by several other great guilds in London and elsewhere.

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