DEATH OF A MEDIÆVAL GUILD.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 4441, 18 July 1887, Page 3

DEATH OF A MEDIÆVAL GUILD.

A link which bound modern Europe to the Middle Ages has just been severed at Gilent by the disolution of the ancient guild of Crossbowmen in that city. It had existed since the eleventh century, but with ever diminishing utility since crossbows and long bows are no longer in fashion ; and the society came lately to conclusion that it had ceased to have any raison d’etre. Its massive plate has all been sold, including a suberb chased silver cup, presented to the association by the Archduke Albert and the Archduchess Isabella, which has now become the property of Baron Rothschild at the price of 25,000 francs. The closing hours of the old guild were celebrated by a banquet, at which it is not to be doubted that the burghers feasted as proudly as did those of Antwerp, who when they were entertained by the Prince of Orange, finding their benches hard, spread their jewelled velvet cloaks over them, and afterward left them to lackeys, saying, ‘We do not carry away our dinner cushions.’ After this final act of comradeship, when the antique crossbows were hung upon the tapestry for the last time, and the great goblet of the association, brimmed with spiced Rhenish, went round for the ultimate toast, the members still had a matter of 10,000 guilders in hand. This sum they transmitted to the Charity Commission at Ghent, and the existence of the antique confraternity terminated. | Great and famous are the men who | have belonged to it in by-gone days. Its sturdy burghers and the stalwart men-at-arms maintained and drilled by them were the terror of the Duke of Alva—if anything could ever terrify that fierce and arrogant soldier who, in sixty years of warfare, was never once beaten or surprised. In his time the society was a power in the State. We slay each other now by neater means and these ancient weapons have no longer any existence except as toys at archery meetings and in the sports of little boys. They were grimly useful, nevertheless, in the days when this guild of Ghent was flourishing, and in their time have sent about as many souls of heroes to the other world as any invention of that eminently destructive animal, man.