Two new kinds of craft fraternities appear in the 14th century and become more prominent in the 15th, namely, the merchants' and the journeymen's companies.
Now, many fraternities and sororities play an active role in campus life.
Some writers regard them as a continuation of the Roman collegia and sodalitates, but there is little evidence to prove the unbroken continuity of existence of the Roman and Germanic fraternities.
The laws of Ine speak of gegildan who help each other pay the wergeld, but it is not entirely certain that they were members of gild fraternities in the later sense.
Prayers for the dead, attendance at funerals of gildsmen, periodical banquets, the solemn entrance oath, fines for neglect of duty and for improper conduct, contributions to a common purse, mutual assistance in distress, periodical meetings in the gildhall, - in short, all the characteristic features of the later gilds already appear in the statutes of these Anglo-Saxon fraternities.
