Guild

or GILD. A brotherhood or company governed by certain rules and orders made among themselves by king's license; a guild, the members pay an assessment, or tax (gild) towards defraying its charges, Termes de la Ley; Du Cange. A guild held generally more or less property in common, —often a hall, called a "guild hall," for the purposes of the association. The name of "guild" was not, however, confined to mercantile companies, but was applied also to religious, municipal, and other corporations. A friborg, that is, among the Saxons, ten families' mutual pledges for each other to the king.

Spelman.