In this post, Rachael Harkes introduces her new book — ‘Forging Fraternity in Late Medieval Society. The Palmers’ Guild of Ludlow’ — which is published in the Society’s ‘New Historical Perspectives’ series with University of London Press.
Using the Palmers’ Guild of Ludlow as a prism, Rachael considers the almost ubiquitous membership of religious guilds in both urban and rural society on the eve of the Reformation.
With more than 18,000 members recorded in the guild’s massive extant archive, drawn from across the social spectrum and spread throughout Wales, England, Iberia, Ireland and France, the Palmers offer a unique opportunity to investigate the interplay between institutions and individuals in the Middle Ages.
‘Forging Fraternity in Late Medieval Society‘ is the 25th title in the Society’s New Historical Perspectives series for early career historians. Rachael’s book, and all other titles in the series are published free, Open Access, and in paperback print.
The title of my new book, Forging Fraternity in Late Medieval Society: The Palmers’ Guild of Ludlow, immediately raises several fundamental questions. What was the Palmers’ Guild and in what ways did it ‘forge’ late medieval society? What does fraternity have to do with it? How, indeed, can one claim that a single institution – positioned at the fringes of both Wales and England – had such an impact at all?
Forging Fraternity answers these questions through a close examination of a large, unwieldy, and idiosyncratic corpus of contemporary medieval documentation: the records generated and used by the guild of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St John the Evangelist (more commonly called the Palmers’ Guild) in the Shropshire market town of Ludlow.
Its origins are obscure, shrouded in a mythology eloquently and beautifully rendered in the extant stained-glass window in the guild’s chapel in the town’s parish church, but over the course of three hundred years it developed a sophisticated administrative bureaucracy that – remarkably – has resulted in a significant and varied archive surviving to this day.
This is the first study to systematically survey these records, which include membership lists detailing over 18,000 individual men, women, and children who lived in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.
Fifteenth-century stained-glass window depicting the guild’s foundation myth involving Edward the Confessor and St John the Evangelist. St Laurence’s Church, Ludlow. Photo by Granpic.
Royalty, nobility, priests, monks, nuns, merchants, farmers, tradesmen, midwives, and paupers all became members of the guild, from towns, cities, villages, and hamlets the length and breadth of England and Wales.
Guilds (or fraternities), as they existed in the later Middle Ages, were in essence voluntary socio-religious organisations that offered spiritual provisions, opportunities for ‘networking’ (to consciously use an anachronism), and social occasions such as feasts, all couched in the ideals of piety and brotherhood.
The Palmers followed this basic model but differed in the degree of their success: the guild was one of a handful of ‘great’ fraternities that existed in late medieval England and Wales, and through judicious policy making expanded its membership reach across regional, national, and socio-economic boundaries.
Royalty, nobility, priests, monks, nuns, merchants, farmers, tradesmen, midwives, and paupers all became members of the guild, from towns, cities, villages, and hamlets the length and breadth of England and Wales. A clutch of members was even recruited from Ireland, France, and Iberia too. For an age in which communication is traditionally seen as limited and people’s outlook and networks as insular and provincial, the evidence of the Palmers’ Guild presents an important corrective.
It is with this that Forging Fraternity is concerned, and it therefore breaks new ground by conceptualising how and why the Palmers’ Guild at this particular moment in time grew from a small, parish-based organisation to one of the greatest (at least in terms of sheer numbers) organisations in late medieval Britain.
But, significantly, this is not a study of the guild itself; rather an examination of the people who populated it, the people who defined it, and of how it reached deep into their lives and communities.
Recruitment of new members to the Palmers’ Guild
This is examined through five chapters with several overarching themes. At its heart lies an investigation of decision-making in medieval society: what were the factors that influenced an individual’s decision to join a guild like the one in Ludlow?
Over and above the basic truism that joining a guild possessed intangible but important spiritual returns in an intensely spiritual age, it is revealed that there were both ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors and that individual motivations were both varied and specific. The guild, for its part, consciously sought to make membership an attractive prospect, offering incentives such as the payment of membership fees in instalments, or the fostering of local ‘microcosms’ of membership through social events, thereby setting itself apart from other organisations. But family, household, and career also shaped expectations about guild membership, and the Palmers managed successfully to integrate itself in countless lives in this respect.
Through the records of the guild, these communities that influenced the decision to join the Palmers can be reconstructed, with a remarkable degree of clarity in some cases. We see the heads of households – a fundamental building block of medieval society, which was far more encompassing than modern conceptions of the nuclear family – turning to guild membership as a way of demonstrating and performing the piety and respectability of their family, servants, and apprentices, which in turn reflected well on themselves. Whole monastic communities sought to join, again often influenced by the direction set by the head of the house, but also mirroring a unifying pious force among deeply religious groups.
Among the major themes that dominated membership of the guild was regional and national politics. This began through the ancestral ties of the house of York to the region [and] … where the Yorkists led, their Tudor successors followed.
Those wishing to engage in provincial urban government used the guild as a means to increase their social standing, with membership offering a way to demonstrate the requisite qualities of responsibility and respectability, all cloaked in a godly veneer. Among the major themes that dominated membership of the guild was regional and national politics. This began through the ancestral ties of the house of York to the region: once they had seized the crown from Henry VI, the Palmers’ Guild (like the collegiate church at Fotheringhay and Edward IV’s project to rebuild St George’s chapel, Windsor) became a distinctly Yorkist channel through which the new dynasty could assert its dominance and spiritual pre-eminence while simultaneously piggy-backing off the guild’s extensive network.
Where the Yorkists led, their Tudor successors followed, and the integration of the guild with the Council of the Marches between the 1470s and the 1520s saw a cascading effect on membership, an association with the guild effectively becoming a sine qua non of participation in this most important facet of regional governance.
View of St Laurence’s Church, Ludlow. Photo by Richard Asquith.
Forging Fraternity is not, therefore, a traditional guild study, but one which seeks to answer broader questions through the lens of one medieval institution.
The Palmers’ success was of a particular moment in time and – despite having enrolled in the guild in his youth – its demise was brought about by Henry VIII and his instigation of religious reform.
Given its deep roots in local society and beyond, the Palmers’ Guild did not go down without a fight and argued its cause for several years thereafter. But in Protestant England there was no room for this form of association. Thankfully, many of its records were however transferred to the corporation of Ludlow; without them, our understanding of late medieval society – and of the profound impact one guild could have – would be far poorer.
About the author
Rachael Harkes is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Bristol, having previously held a post as Lecturer in Medieval History at Durham University.
Rachael’s current research focuses on the political and social culture of border regions in the Middle Ages. Forging Fraternity in Late Medieval Society. The Palmers’ Guild of Ludlow (November 2025) is her first monograph.
About the ‘New Historical Perspectives’ book series from the Royal Historical Society
New Historical Perspectives (NHP) is the Society’s book series for early career scholars (within ten years of their doctorate), commissioned and edited by the Royal Historical Society, in association with University of London Press and the Institute of Historical Research, and with support from the Economic History Society.
The series publishes monographs and edited collections by early career historians on all chronologies and histories, worldwide. Contracted authors receive mentoring and an author workshop to develop their manuscript before its final submission.
All titles in the series are published in paperback print and Open Access (as pdf downloads and Manifold reading editions) with costs covered by University of London Press and the Royal Historical Society.
Forging Fraternity in Late Medieval Society. The Palmers’ Guild of Ludlow is the 25th volume published in the series (November 2025). For more on current and forthcoming titles in the series, for 2025 and 2026, please see here.
HEADER IMAGE: Detail from stained-glass window in the Palmers’ Guild Chapel, St Laurence’s Church, Ludlow. Copyright: Granpic
