'nothing but lamentable ruins upon a most beautiful situation'. The Black Death Early in 1349 the plague reached East Anglia. 'In the Manorial Court Rolls for March....there are very long lists of the death of tenants.'. The rolls cease in September and do not resume until 1360. Yet the Court Rolls of the Borough do not show the same pattern: court leets continue as before, the number of brewers, bakers, butchers and others accused of sharp practices remains constant. The Wentford fair was held as normal. Elizabeth de Burgh's castle records have no mention of the plague nor show any fall in the day-to-day activities. Everything suggests the town was little affected. Guilds Local people organised themselves into guilds, not for mercantile or craft purposes, but as religious fraternities, dedicated to assisting the poor, praying for dead members, contributing to the church and priory. We know of five in Clare: St Augustine, St Peter, St Mary, Corpus Christi and St John the Baptist, the latter based on Chilton Street. Guilds began before the Normans; one of the oldest recorded was in Glemsford, the Fraternity of the Clerks, founded around 1020. The name Corpus Christi dates from the 1340s when that feast day was introduced from the continent; it soon became the most popular holy day in the calendar – see the mystery plays of Norwich and Ely, and all across England. The eponymous college in Cambridge was founded by a guild, in response to the decimation of the Black Death. This event seems to have concentrated people's minds on their heavenly prospects. By prayer and acts of charity (carried out in the guild's name rather than personally), a guild member hoped to ensure a swifter passage for himself and his family through purgatory to heaven. By the time of Henry VIII, most areas of England had as many as 50 public holidays (holy days) a year on which no one worked. The guild whose feast day it was would hold a solemn procession and celebrate mass in the church. They would then provide entertainment such as mummers or miracle plays and food for the poor of their community. The Guild of St John put out casks of ale: 'fyve hockepottes or drinkinges in v stretes or places, namelye, market strete one, nethergate strete kepte another, challice strete a third, higherowe a fourth, and Chilton strete alwayes kepte the fifte'. There