Membership · How to Apply
Five Steps to the Society's Table
The process is friendly and unhurried, and the Clerk guides every applicant through it.
Check Your Qualification
You qualify if your parent and grandparent were Burgesses and Guild Brethren or Sisters of Glasgow in direct line — or if you are the husband or wife of someone who does. Children and children-in-law of existing members qualify at the Near Hand.
Unsure? Send the Clerk a name and a rough date — the Burgess Rolls reach back to 1573 and we will gladly check.
Become a Burgess, If You Are Not One Already
Applicants who qualify by descent but do not yet hold their own Burgess Ticket can obtain one as part of their application (see Fees). New Burgess-ship in Glasgow is otherwise obtained through the Fourteen Incorporated Crafts of the Trades House of Glasgow — the Hammermen, Tailors, Cordiners, Maltmen, Weavers, Bakers, Skinners & Glovers, Wrights, Coopers, Fleshers, Masons, Gardeners, Barbers, and Bonnetmakers & Dyers — and the Clerk can make an introduction.
Choose Your Form: Near Hand or Far Hand
Near Hand — for sons, daughters, sons-in-law and daughters-in-law of a Member of the Society.
Far Hand — for the first qualifying generation of a family new to the Society, and their spouses. Read which applies to you.
Send Your Application to the Clerk
Complete the form — download it or enquire online — and return it with the entry payment. A proposer from within the Society helps where needed; the Clerk will arrange this for Far Hand applicants.
Admission & Your Diploma
Applications are approved by the Society's Directors. On admission your name is entered in the rolls kept since 1756, and you receive the Society's Diploma — yours for life, with no annual subscription ever asked.
No interview, no waiting list, no annual fee — only the qualification of descent that has defined the Society since 1756, and a warm welcome at the end of it.