After two years of planning, a group of Renaissance Faire performers founded the Guild of Saint Cuthbert in the Fall of 1974. Led by Don Studebaker a.k.a. Jon Declese, the Guild was to provide people for the Faires' main parades and major in-house stage shows as well as performing pageants to entertain the visitors. The Guild of Saint Audrey was founded the following Spring at the Southern Faire, under the same leadership and with the same purpose. At the time of their inception, and for many years to come, both groups were part of the Performing Arts Division of the Living History Centre, which originally ran the Renaissance Faire.

Once he had been Guildmaster for a couple of years, "Don Jon", as he was known, moved on to other pursuits within the Faire. Our second Guildmaster was Rosanne Reynolds, who stayed on until Spring of 1978. At that time, outside obligations prevented Rosanne from working at the Southern Faire. Sue Honor, who had been parade director at the Dickens Fair the previous season, took over at the Southern Faire of 1978 and has been Guildmistress ever since.

Shortly after that {I need a year} the Living History Centre determined that the Guild should only go by one name for both contingents. Sue chose to stay with St Cuthbert, as it was the name of the original group. However we still perform pageants honouring St Audrey.

In 1984, the Northern Faire site expanded and the Guild was granted some space in whch to maintain an environmental area. Two years later, the Guild also began a tradition of serving a lunch feast, both as an entertainment and as a means of preventing Guild members from collapsing mid-day from overexertion and lack of sustenance. The first Feast Mistress was Karin Dunwoody. At the Southern Faire site, the Guild shared an environmental area with the Guild of St Alban's, until a separate Guild house was built in 1986.

questions for sue and masters who have been around for a while:

what about our participation in Dickens Fairs?
in particular, when did we start playing court, and what years did we have an environmental area at Dickens?
when did we start performing pageants on stage?
what else have we done of note and when?
when did we stop being a part of RennCo and go independent?
what people (and groups/guilds/troupes) of note has the Guild fostered and then provided to move on to other groups at the Faire?
Alban's, Ives, and Blaise all split from us - when and under what circumstances?
when did the "water otter" tradition get started and by whom?
how is our group related to Teddy's group?