Editorial Commentary
[This Gild is a direct off-shoot of the Gild of the Holy Cross. An endowment was put into the hands of feoffees, who were, after the death of the founder's wife, to do the same sorts of "works of charity" as the Gild of the Holy Cross was established to do, "according as the ordering and will of the Bailiffs and Commonalty shall appoint." Had this endowment been merged in the gild, it would have been lost to the town.*. [No doubt the feoffees of William Lenche carefully avoided using the name of "Gild," after the legislative plunder which had befallen the bodies so called. But for this, the "Trust" would assuredly have soon been called a "Gild." There is, in the British Museum, among the Harleian MSS., a curious instance of a body of feoffees formed, as far as can be made out from wills and ordinances, under circumstances very much like those of Lenche's Trust. But these feoffees having unfortunately been in too great a hurry to call themselves a "gild," they fell, with the others, on the hapless day of the massacre of the gilds and the plunder of their property. This case happened in Bury St. Edmund's.]
Many instances have already been given of the foundation, as well as the endowment, of gilds by one or more persons. In several cases it has been seen that, though the property was used towards the purposes of the gild, it remained still in the hands of persons generally called "feoffees," and was subject, in fact, to their disposition; and that, sometimes, no license of mortmain was, through whatever cause, obtained for many years, perhaps never.*. [Two marked instances of this will be found in the cases of the Gild of SS. Fabian and Sebastian, Aldersgate, London (before, pp. 12, 13), and of the Gild Merchant of Coventry (before, pp. 226 note, 231). In each case the independence of the feoffees is expressly admitted on the face of the Return. Numerous other illustrations of the same thing could be given. In such cases, if no license of mortmain was got, as well from the Crown as from all the middle lords, before the year 1547, the feoffees may, by skilful tact, have saved their trust from the general plunder. But I do not know of any other case in which this happened than that of "Lenche's Trust."] The present is another case, though happily a more lasting one, of this kind.
One William Lenche, living in Birmingham at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, and the owner of lands there and in the neighbourhood, wished, being Page 252 childless, to follow the example of the first endowers of the Gild of the Holy Cross. But he wished, at the same time, to assure to his wife, while she lived, the income from his estate. So, instead of getting licenses in mortmain to enable him to vest his lands in the Gild of the Holy Cross, he made a deed of feoffment, vesting them in persons therein named; but requiring these feoffees to pay the income to his wife while she lived, and afterwards to apply it to identically the same "works of charity" as it has been seen that the Gild of the Holy Cross charged itself with fulfilling.*. [That this was so, is made certain by the deed of re-feoffment of 1540; which expressed, in terms, the precise intentions of the endower, after the wife's death. (See after, pp. 255, 256.)]
The original deed of feoffment still exists, together with the declaration by William Lenche of his intentions. In 1628, an Inquisition was made under the Statute of 43 Elizabeth, cap. 4. This inquisition was made on the spot, by a jury of the indwellers of Birmingham, to learn what had been done in the matter of Lenche's endowment. The inquisition was duly made and recorded, in the same manner as the inquisition had been made and recorded before the founding of the Gild of the Holy Cross itself. A Decree followed upon that inquisition, which reaffirmed the purposes of the original endowment. From these documents and records, the purposes and ordinances of this relic of the old English gilds become plainly learned.]