In the Bibliothèque Municipale of Besançon. From the Web Gallery of Art.
In 1349, as the Black Death swept through Bishop’s Lynn, three townsmen noticed something that troubled them deeply. The consecrated bread, which Catholics believed to be the Body of Christ, was being carried through the streets to the sick and dying, accompanied by just one small candle made from inferior wax. To these men, such a meagre display of reverence was unacceptable. They believed that even two large torches made from the finest wax would scarcely be sufficient. They decided to provide proper lights whenever the sacrament was taken through the town, by day or night.
From this modest beginning emerged the Guild of Corpus Christi, one of Lynn’s wealthiest religious fraternities. Within a century, it possessed a substantial hall on King Street, together with houses, workshops, cellars, and commercial premises stretching towards the River Great Ouse. Its members included some of Lynn’s leading merchants, while its tenants included local craftsmen and traders from the Low Countries. The guild helped organise one of the town’s most elaborate religious processions, employed musicians and specialist craftsmen, and spent considerable sums maintaining the ceremonial equipment used in St Margaret’s Church.
The guildhall has disappeared, but the surviving records offer an unusually detailed account of an institution that combined religious devotion with merchant wealth and the everyday commercial life of medieval Lynn.
Three men and a single candle: the Black Death of 1349
The story of the guild’s foundation survives because its officers described it in a return submitted to the government of Richard II in 1389. Although written some forty years after the events it records, the account is unusually specific.
The plague had struck Lynn with terrible force. According to the guild’s officers, the greater part of the town’s population had died. This was not a precise calculation of mortality, but it conveys the scale of the disaster as remembered by people who had lived through its consequences. Amid the epidemic, priests continued to carry the consecrated Host to those believed to be approaching death. Receiving communion in these circumstances, known as viaticum, was regarded as spiritual provision for the final journey. For medieval Catholics, the Host was not simply a religious symbol. It was believed to be Christ himself, truly present in the consecrated bread.
Herbert Francis Westlake, in The Parish Gilds of Mediaeval England (1919), reproduced a translation of the guild’s foundation account. It describes the sacrament being carried through the town with:
“only a single candle of poor wax”
The three men considered this inadequate and arranged for better lights to accompany the Host whenever it was taken to the sick. Their names are not supplied in Westlake’s account, but their undertaking became the foundation of a permanent religious association.
Initially, the arrangement appears to have centred upon providing candles and torches. The fraternity subsequently undertook responsibility for maintaining lights around a tabernacle in St Margaret’s Church. This was a ceremonial structure associated with the sacrament, although its precise appearance is unknown. The guild also became closely involved in the annual feast of Corpus Christi, which celebrated the Catholic doctrine of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist.
The circumstances of the foundation are particularly striking. These were men responding to an immediate religious need during a devastating epidemic. They intended to ensure that the sacrament was treated with dignity when it was carried to people who might be living through their final hours. The original undertaking was apparently meant to continue during the founders’ lifetimes, but it outlived them and developed into an institution with its own officers, members, financial resources, and considerable property.
From religious fraternity to wealthy institution
Corpus Christi means the Body of Christ. The feast was established in the Western Church during the thirteenth century and became one of the great public celebrations of medieval Catholicism. Falling on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, usually in late May or June, it brought religious ceremonies beyond the walls of the parish church and into the streets. In many English towns, the consecrated Host was carried in a solemn procession accompanied by clergy, civic officials, musicians, and members of religious fraternities. The celebrations could involve elaborate canopies, banners, candles, and sometimes dramatic performances.
Lynn possessed numerous guilds during the later Middle Ages. William Richards, writing in 1812, listed thirty-one, although they differed greatly in size, purpose, and wealth. Some were comparatively modest associations supporting services at a particular altar, while others held extensive property and attracted influential members. The most powerful was the Holy Trinity Guild, which enjoyed an exceptional position within the borough’s government. St George’s Guild was another important fraternity, remembered today because its magnificent medieval hall survives on King Street.
The Corpus Christi Guild belonged among the wealthier associations, but its character was different from that of the Holy Trinity merchant guild. Recent research by Susan Maddock describes Corpus Christi as an exclusive religious fraternity whose members were predominantly drawn from Lynn’s prosperous merchant community. Unlike a craft guild, it did not regulate a particular occupation, and it possessed none of the Holy Trinity Guild’s formal political authority.
This distinction is significant in a town where merchants dominated civic government. Lynn’s craftsmen were largely regulated through the borough authorities rather than independent occupational guilds of the kind found in many other English and Continental towns. Corpus Christi provided another means by which successful merchants could associate with people of similar standing, support religious observances, and contribute towards the ceremonies through which the town expressed its Catholic faith.
By the later fourteenth century, the guild was already acquiring property and income. William Richards reproduced details from the antiquary Charles Parkin concerning transactions involving John de Brunham, John Waryn, Richard Dun, and Thomas de Couteshale, the last of whom was identified as master of the fraternity.
One licence concerned the conveyance of a house and associated property, together with rents amounting to 75 shillings and sevenpence halfpenny. Another involved a shop with an upper room, known as a solar. There were also rights connected with a passage-boat across the river, including an annual payment associated with the ferry from West Lynn. A deed dated 1379–80 identifies further townsmen involved in transactions concerning these rights.
Richards concluded that the guild owned a ferry boat. The original documents would need to be examined before accepting this interpretation, since an entitlement to receive income from a ferry was not necessarily the same thing as owning or operating it. Nevertheless, the transactions demonstrate that the fraternity was acquiring income-producing assets within a generation of its foundation.
Property ownership provided a means of financing religious obligations long after individual benefactors had died. Houses and shops brought in rents, while the income from other rights helped meet the expenses of ceremonies and the maintenance of religious equipment. The guild’s association with the river is also revealing. Lynn’s prosperity depended upon the Great Ouse, which connected the town with inland markets and overseas trade. Even a fraternity established for religious purposes could become involved in the commercial arrangements surrounding the waterfront.
Margery Kempe and the Corpus Christi Guild
The best-known medieval resident associated with the guild’s religious world was Margery Kempe, whose extraordinary spiritual experiences were recorded in The Book of Margery Kempe during the early fifteenth century.
There are possible family connections as well. Margery’s father, John Brunham, was one of Lynn’s most influential merchants. He served five terms as mayor, represented the borough in Parliament, and became alderman of the powerful Holy Trinity Guild. A John Brunham appears in the surviving Corpus Christi membership records, although the identification with Margery’s father is not entirely secure because other townsmen shared the name. A John Kempe, apparently Margery’s husband, has also been identified among the fraternity’s members.
Margery herself belonged to the Holy Trinity Guild, but there is no firm evidence that she was a member of Corpus Christi. Nevertheless, her book contains descriptions of religious ceremonies in Lynn that are particularly relevant to understanding the guild’s activities.
She describes the consecrated Host being carried through the streets while people knelt as it passed. The ceremony affected her profoundly. Seeing the sacrament accompanied by lights could provoke intense religious emotion, accompanied by tears and cries that sometimes alarmed or embarrassed those around her. Elsewhere, she refers to the solemn procession of Corpus Christi itself.
There is a connection here with the events of 1349. The guild had been founded because three townsmen objected to the inadequate lighting accompanying the sacrament as it was taken to the dying. Several generations later, Margery described the Host being carried through Lynn with lights and reverence, its passage acknowledged by people kneeling in the streets.
We cannot attribute every aspect of Margery’s experience directly to the fraternity, but its surviving accounts show that the provision of ceremonial lights remained one of its principal responsibilities. Her testimony also reminds us that the Host was carried through Lynn on occasions other than the annual feast. Visits to the sick were part of ordinary religious life, making the original purpose of Corpus Christi a continuing responsibility.
The great procession through medieval Lynn
By the fifteenth century, the Corpus Christi procession had become a substantial annual undertaking.
James Cummings, who examined the surviving account rolls for his doctoral thesis on religious drama around the Wash, identified a series of expenditures associated with the feast. They included payments for maintaining the tabernacle, preparing torches and other lights, carrying ceremonial equipment, ringing bells, and employing musicians. The records also refer to a canopy used during the celebrations.
The procession required considerable preparation. Candles and torches had to be maintained or replaced, equipment brought out of storage, and the necessary arrangements made with the clergy at St Margaret’s. The sacrist received payments for bell-ringing, including occasions associated with the octave of Corpus Christi, the eighth day following the principal feast. Minstrels also appear in the accounts, providing music for the celebrations and accompanying festivities.
The fraternity held a communal feast, allowing members to eat together and take part in the social life of the association. Such gatherings reinforced relationships between merchants who might already be connected through business dealings, family ties, and civic office. Religious devotion and companionship were not separate activities in medieval guild life. They were closely associated with the fraternity’s understanding of its purpose.
One of the most intriguing objects mentioned in the records was known as the Gesyne, apparently a representation of the Nativity. Payments by the borough authorities refer to lights before this object and to spars used for carrying it in the Corpus Christi procession. It may have been a painting or sculpture depicting the birth of Christ, although its exact appearance and ownership remain uncertain.
Was there also a performance of religious plays? The question is tempting because Corpus Christi became closely associated with the great mystery play cycles of York, Chester, and Coventry. These productions presented biblical history in a succession of dramatic pageants, sometimes performed on movable stages. Lynn certainly had a tradition of religious drama. An interlude concerning St Thomas the Martyr was performed on Corpus Christi Day in 1385–86, while other records indicate theatrical activity associated with the festival.
Yet Cummings found no evidence that Lynn staged a complete cycle of Corpus Christi mystery plays comparable to those of York. The surviving accounts are much stronger evidence for the procession itself. The Gesyne suggests that visual representations of religious subjects formed part of the event, but it would be misleading to reconstruct an elaborate programme of biblical drama without supporting documents.
The precise route of the procession is also unknown. St Margaret’s Church was closely associated with its organisation, but no surviving itinerary establishes which streets were used. The event was nevertheless supported beyond the membership of Corpus Christi. The borough’s regulations for the tailors, drawn up in 1449, directed that certain fees and fines should contribute towards maintaining the procession. A payment of forty pence was required in specified circumstances, including when a non-burgess entered the trade, while penalties for particular breaches of the craft regulations could also be assigned to the festival.
Other groups contributed as well. The skinners and sailors received payments for participating in the procession in 1461–62, while the Guild of St Anthony made provision for two white torches in 1468. These details show that the celebration involved a much wider section of the town than the wealthy merchants who belonged to Corpus Christi.
The procession would have been a conspicuous event in Lynn’s religious calendar. Church bells announced the celebrations, musicians accompanied the ceremonies, and members of the clergy and participating fraternities processed with their lights and ceremonial objects. The cost of organising it was met through a network of guild expenditure, contributions, and civic arrangements.
William Marche and the extraordinary quantity of wax
One of the most revealing surviving documents is a contract between John Pygot, a merchant and master of the Corpus Christi Guild, and William Marche, a wax chandler of Lynn.
The agreement was made in 1448–49, during the twenty-seventh year of Henry VI. Its wording was preserved by the eighteenth-century antiquary Benjamin Mackerell and reproduced by William Richards in his History of Lynn.
Pygot delivered to Marche 106 pounds of clean wax, with further substantial quantities already incorporated into torches and other ceremonial equipment. The document also refers to ten large objects called chapterell, containing wax and rosin, together with smaller examples. Their precise form is uncertain, but they formed part of the stock that the craftsman was expected to maintain.
Marche undertook to look after the materials for ten years. During that period, he was to provide the lights surrounding the Corpus Christi tabernacle in St Margaret’s Church and maintain the torches used by the fraternity. He was also responsible for erecting and dismantling the guild’s hearse each year, meeting the associated expenses himself. In medieval usage, a hearse was a framework designed to support candles during memorial or funerary ceremonies, rather than a vehicle for transporting a coffin.
At the end of the agreement, Marche had to return the specified quantities of wax and ceremonial equipment to the guild. In return for his services, he received five marks and ten shillings annually, equivalent to £3 16s. 8d., payable on the octave of Corpus Christi.
The contract tells us a great deal about the fraternity’s financial administration. Wax was a valuable commodity, especially high-quality beeswax suitable for religious ceremonies. Rather than purchasing everything afresh each year, the guild entrusted a substantial stock to a specialist craftsman who was responsible for its maintenance. The arrangements were carefully defined, including the duration of the contract, the materials supplied, and the obligation to return them.
Marche was doing considerably more than making a few candles. He had responsibility for a substantial part of the ceremonial equipment used in St Margaret’s and during the annual festival. The agreement also illustrates how the guild’s expenditure supported working craftsmen, even though the fraternity itself was dominated by merchants.
Nearly a century had passed since its founders complained about a single inadequate candle. By Marche’s time, the provision of religious lights had become a substantial and professionally managed undertaking.
The lost guildhall on King Street
The Corpus Christi Guild possessed a hall of its own, although its location remained uncertain for many years. William Richards knew of its existence but could not establish where it had stood.
Documentary research by Peter Sykes, published in 2002, identified the site on the western side of King Street, formerly known as the Chequer. The guildhall occupied the southern part of the extensive property now associated with 21 King Street and Old School Court. The fraternity also owned land and buildings on the northern portion of the same site.
This was valuable property in one of Lynn’s most commercially important areas. During the medieval period, the shoreline west of the Chequer had gradually advanced into the Great Ouse as land was reclaimed and developed. What had once been the edge of the river became a succession of quays and commercial premises, eventually supporting substantial houses as well as warehouses and other buildings.
By the fifteenth century, several of Lynn’s wealthiest merchants owned properties extending westwards from King Street towards the river. These sites combined prestigious street frontages with practical facilities for trade. The Corpus Christi estate followed the same pattern, with its guildhall forming part of a larger complex containing houses, workshops, cellars, yards, and storage buildings.
The fraternity received rents from the property, making the site a source of income as well as a place where members could meet. Fortunately, some of the surviving account rolls provide unusually detailed information about the people who occupied its buildings.
Dutch merchants, local craftsmen, and the guild’s waterfront tenants
Susan Maddock’s research into immigrants in late medieval Lynn has brought this aspect of the guild’s history into much sharper focus.
During the 1430s, premises facing King Street were rented annually to local craftsmen. The tenants included tailors, coopers, a smith, and a barber. These occupations were well suited to a busy commercial district. Coopers made and repaired barrels required for the transport and storage of goods, while smiths supplied and maintained equipment used by other trades. The street also provided customers for tailors and other craftsmen serving Lynn’s prosperous inhabitants.
Further west, towards the river, the guild offered cellars and open yards for shorter periods. These premises were particularly useful to merchants who needed somewhere to store goods before shipment or collection. Some tenancies lasted only a few weeks, suggesting that the property served the changing requirements of the port rather than simply providing permanent accommodation.
By the middle of the fifteenth century, foreign traders were among the tenants. In 1459–60, two men described in the accounts as Duchemen each rented storage space for several weeks. The following year, John Clayson and Albright Ducheman hired the great cellar for six months, while another cellar was occupied by several Duchemen for ten weeks.
The term Ducheman should not automatically be understood as meaning Dutch in the modern national sense. Medieval English records used it more broadly for people whose language or origins were associated with the Low Countries and parts of Germany. Maddock’s wider examination of Lynn’s immigrant population indicates that most of the town’s resident foreigners during this period came from the Low Countries, including Holland, Brabant, and Zeeland.
Some tenants stayed much longer than the merchants who rented temporary storage. By 1493–94, a man named Martin Ducheman was living in a house somewhere on the guild’s King Street property.
The accounts also permit comparisons between the rents charged to English and foreign tenants. In 1459–60, Edmund Westhorpe, a merchant-burgess belonging to Lynn’s governing circle, and two unnamed foreign tenants each paid threepence a week for comparable cellars or yards. Maddock concludes that, where comparisons are possible, the guild offered the same rental terms regardless of whether tenants were native or foreign.
This was not necessarily evidence of complete equality. Foreign craftsmen could face special taxes and restrictions, and their opportunities within the borough’s political institutions were limited. Nevertheless, the tenancy records demonstrate that a wealthy religious fraternity was prepared to let valuable commercial premises to overseas traders on ordinary terms.
They also give us a rather different picture of King Street from one based solely upon the surviving merchants’ houses. Behind its imposing frontages were workshops occupied by craftsmen, temporary storage spaces hired by visiting traders, and houses where immigrant families might establish themselves. The guild’s property formed part of this busy commercial environment, with the river and its quays immediately beyond.
Who belonged to the guild?
The surviving records do not provide a complete membership list, but they offer glimpses of the fraternity’s size and organisation.
Ben R. McRee’s research into medieval guild solidarity refers to payments made by twenty-eight Corpus Christi members in 1404–05. This should not necessarily be treated as the total membership, since the surviving account may record only those liable for a particular payment. Nevertheless, it suggests an association of relatively modest size compared with the wider population of the borough.
Its officers included prominent merchants such as John Pygot, while the earlier property records identify Thomas de Couteshale as master. The fraternity attracted men belonging to the same social circles as the members of Lynn’s governing elite. Membership offered opportunities for religious devotion and companionship, but also placed individuals within a network of influential townsmen.
We should be cautious about regarding the institution merely as a social club for wealthy merchants. Its founders had established it for a religious purpose, and its substantial expenditure on lights and ceremonial equipment shows that these obligations remained central to its activities. The merchants who endowed the guild believed that supporting religious observances could benefit their souls and secure prayers after their deaths. Property income enabled such commitments to continue across generations.
The precise extent of charitable assistance offered to poorer members remains uncertain. Many medieval fraternities provided support during sickness or financial hardship, but the evidence examined here is much stronger for Corpus Christi’s religious expenditure and commercial property than for particular payments of poor relief.
The end of the Corpus Christi Guild
The Reformation brought the fraternity’s institutional life to an end.
Under Edward VI, legislation passed in 1547 provided for the suppression of chantries and religious guilds whose property supported traditional Catholic observances. Corpus Christi was particularly vulnerable because its central purpose was the public veneration of the consecrated Host. The guild was dissolved in 1548, ending an institution that had existed for almost two centuries.
Its extensive King Street property subsequently passed into private hands. The site became associated with the Le Strange family of Hunstanton Hall and was later redeveloped by successive merchant owners. The medieval guildhall disappeared during these changes, although the property continued to occupy an important position on King Street.
The buildings now known as Old School Court contain later fabric, including evidence of seventeenth-century construction, but much of their present appearance dates from the eighteenth century and subsequent alterations. The property was later occupied by the High School for Girls. Historic England records its use as a school from 1902 until 1979, followed by conversion into flats between 1982 and 1986.
Little remains above ground to identify the substantial medieval fraternity that once occupied the site. The surviving documents, however, preserve a wealth of incidental information about its property, ceremonies, and members. They record the names of foreign merchants renting cellars near the Ouse, the obligations of a wax chandler entrusted with more than a hundred pounds of wax, and the expenses incurred in carrying the sacrament through the streets of Lynn.
Among those records is the account submitted to Richard II’s government in 1389. It describes how the fraternity began when three unnamed men, witnessing the devastation of the Black Death, decided that a single candle made from poor-quality wax was not a fitting accompaniment for the sacrament as it was carried to the dying.
© James Rye 2026
Book a Walk with a Trained and Qualified King’s Lynn Guide
References
Cummings, James Charles. Contextual Studies of the Dramatic Records in the Area around The Wash, c. 1350–1550. PhD diss., University of Leeds, 2001. https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/635/
Historic England. “Old School Court, 21 King Street, King’s Lynn.” National Heritage List for England, entry 1298221. https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1298221
Kempe, Margery. The Book of Margery Kempe. Edited by Lynn Staley. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1996. https://english.selu.edu/kempe/KempeReaderEditionEntire.html
Maddock, Susan. “Livelihoods and Liberties of Low Countries Immigrants in Late Medieval Lynn.” History 110, no. 390 (2025): 154–172. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-229X.13436
McRee, Ben R. “Charity and Gild Solidarity in Late Medieval England.” Journal of British Studies 32, no. 3 (1993): 195–225. https://doi.org/10.1086/386030
Owen, Dorothy M., ed. The Making of King’s Lynn: A Documentary Survey. Records of Social and Economic History, new series 9. London: British Academy, 1984.
Richards, William. The History of Lynn. Vol. 1. Lynn: W. G. Whittingham, 1812. Especially pp. 447–450. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/62365
Sykes, Peter. “The Site of Corpus Christi Guildhall, King’s Lynn: A Documentary Search.” The Quarterly: The Journal of the Norfolk Archaeological and Historical Research Group 47 (2002). Cited by Susan Maddock. Original article not directly examined.
Westlake, Herbert Francis. The Parish Gilds of Mediaeval England. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1919. Especially pp. 49–51. https://books.google.com/books?id=h8NgAAAAMAAJ