A dominant instruction in late-medieval Ludlow was the Palmer's Guild,
founded in the mid-13th century. This was a religious guild which originally
endowed three chaplains to pray for the dead and in honour of the cross. The
guild prospered, employing eight priests, owning many properties in the town,
and attracting members from all over the southern half of Britain.
it was responsible for much of the late-medieval adornment of the church of
St. Laurence, for the music in the church, for the founding of such charitable
institutions as almshouses and, from the early 15th century, for the administration
of a school. The guild was dissolved in 1551, when its property and many of
its functions passed to the town corporation.
From the mid-15th century until 1689 Ludlow Castle was the main centre of administration
for the Council in the Marches and Wales, a commission set up the Crown to dispense
justice in the turbulent Borderland region. The trade generated by Ludlow's
role as an administrative centre, together with the flourishing cloth trade,
made it a most prosperous town in the late medieval and Tudor periods. |
