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Rh Gilds were founded in this county at High Wycombe, Bucking- ham, Aylesbury, Fenny Stratford, Burnham, Olney, and Stony Strat- ford ; there were probably others of which no record is preserved. None of these were of great importance, and little is known of them except what is given in the Chantry certificates. From these it appears that they had as their object the relief of the poor and the maintenance of one or two chaplains to pray for the brethren living and dead. At Fenny Stratford and in Stony Stratford (St. Mary Magdalene) the brotherhood entirely maintained a chapel for the benefit of the hamlet in which it was built ; the gild at High Wycombe appears in the same way to have partly maintained the chapel of St. Mary called the ' charnell,' which stood in the churchyard. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries two parochial chapels, at Hedgerley and Wexham, became independent parish churches : four others, at Chesham Bois, Weston Underwood, Boarstall and Chearsley, by acquiring the right of burial became very nearly free of subjection to their mother churches sometimes, as in the case of Weston Under- wood, only after a long struggle with the rector. Within the same period, the shifting or decrease of population made it necessary to unite the two churches of Great and Little Loughton ; and somewhat later those of St. Mary and St. Nicholas at Saunderton ; the parish church