We obtain some interesting side-lights on the condition of the people in the past from old-time charities. Several of the prison charities founded in bygone times are extremely quaint and full of historic interest. One Frances Thornhill appears to have had a desire to make the prison beds comfortable. She left the sum of £30 for the Corporation of the city of York to provide straw for the beds of the prisoners confined in York Castle. The local authorities in these later years appear to have received the interest on the capital without carrying out the conditions of the charity.

Bequests of fuel suggest to the mind the time when persons not only suffered from imprisonment but also from cold. At Bury St. Edmund’s, £10 was left by Margaret Odiam for a minister to say mass to the inmates of the jail, and for providing faggots to warm the long ward in which the poor prisoners were lodged. In 1787, Elizabeth Dean, of Reading, left £156 17s. 5d., the interest of which she directed to be spent in buying firewood for the county jail.

At Norwich, a worthy man named John Norris left Consols to the value of £300 for buying beef and books for the felons confined in the jail. The prison food is now regulated by law and the charity beef is banished, but we believe the interest is spent in supplying the prisoners with literature. Even as late as 1821, John Hall left Consols to the value of £127 16s. for providing a Christmas dinner of the good old English fare of roast beef and plum pudding for the criminals in the Northampton county prison. In 1556, Thomas Cattell left a rent charge of £35 a year for buying beef and oatmeal for the poor prisoners of Newgate and other London prisons.

A singular bequest was made in the year 1556, by Griffith Ameridith, of Exeter, and it amounted to £524 4s. 11d. in Consols, “for providing shrouds for prisoners executed at Kingswell, and for the maintenance of a wall round the burial ground.” “But,” says a writer on this theme, “probably for want of subjects for shrouds, the income is now, without any authority, applied to a distribution of serge petticoats to old women.” One advantage of the change is that the new recipients can at least express their gratitude. In the olden time it was by no means an uncommon practice for criminals about to be executed to proceed to the gallows in shrouds. On July 30th, 1766, two men were hanged at Nottingham for robbery. “On the morning of their execution,” says a local record, “they were taken to St. Mary’s Church, where they heard ‘the condemned sermon,’ and then to their graves, in which they were permitted to lie down to see if they would fit. They walked to the place of execution in their shrouds.” At an execution in the same town in 1784, we read in a local newspaper report that the unfortunate men were attired in their shrouds. To add to the impressiveness of the condemned sermon, the coffins in which the condemned criminals were to be buried, were exhibited during the service.

Charities and collections in churches were formerly very common in this country for freeing British subjects from slavery in foreign lands. In 1655, Alicia, Duchess of Dudley, by a deed poll, directed £100 per annum to be drawn from the rents of certain lands situated in the parish of Bidford, Warwickshire, for redeeming poor English Christian slaves or captives from the Turks. Thomas Betson, of Hoxton Square, London, by will dated 15th February, 1723, left a considerable fortune for the redemption of British slaves in Turkey and Barbary. He died in 1725, and five years later the property was estimated to be worth about £22,000, and the interest on half the amount was to be devoted to ransoming his countrymen from slavery. In the year 1734, it is stated that 135 men were freed by this charity. Between the years 1734 and 1826, the large sum of £21,088 8s. 2½d. was expended in the admirable cause of freeing the captive. Many of the old church books contain entries respecting collections for this object. In the books of Holy Cross, Westgate, Canterbury, is a long list of the names of persons in the parish in March, 1670, contributing £02 07s. 04d., for “Redeeming the Captives in Turkye.”

Sir John Gayer, was in his time a leading London merchant, an Alderman for the ward of Aldgate, and a popular Lord Mayor. He lived in the reigns of James I. and Charles I., and was a man of great enterprise, ready to encounter perils in foreign lands to forward his commercial projects. On one memorable occasion he was travelling with a caravan of merchants across the desert of Arabia, and by some accidental means managed to separate himself from his friends, and at night-fall was alone. His position was one of great peril: he heard the roaring of wild animals, but failed to find any place of refuge. We gather from the story of his life that:—“He knelt down and prayed fervently, and devoutly promised, that if God would rescue him from his impending danger the whole produce of his merchandise should be given as an offering in benefactions to the poor, on his return to his native country. At this extremity a lion of an unusually large size was approaching him. Death appeared inevitable, but the prayer of the good man had ascended to heaven, and he was delivered. The lion came up close to him. After prowling round him, smelling him, bristling his shaggy hair, and eyeing him fiercely, he stopped short, turned round, and trotted quietly away, without doing the slightest injury. It is said that Sir John Gayer remained in the same suppliant posture till the morning dawned, when he pursued his journey, and happily came up with his friends, who had given up all hope of again seeing him.” The journey was concluded without further misadventure, a ready market found for the goods, and old England reached in safety with increased wealth. Sir John did not forget his vow, and many were the deeds of charity he performed, more especially to the poor of his own parish of St. Katharine Cree. One of bequests amounting to £200 was left to the needy of that parish on condition that a “sermon should be occasionally preached in the church to commemorate his deliverance from the jaws of the lion.” The sermon is known as the “Lion Sermon.”

In the church of St. Katharine Cree within the altar rails is a carved head of Gayer. On the right hand side is a text, as follows:—“The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers—Ps. 34, v. 15;” on the left hand side this text appears:—“The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much—James V., xvi.;” and under the figure this motto:—“Super Astra Spero.” There is a brass bearing the following inscription:—

There are a number of ancient bequests for ringing bells and lighting beacons to guide travellers by night. These were very useful charities, for in the days of old, lands were generally unenclosed, and the roads poorly constructed. It was difficult for the wayfarer to find his way when the nights were dark. At the ancient village of Hessle, near Hull, a bell is still rung every night except Sunday, at 7 o’clock. Long, long ago, so runs the local story, a lady was lost on a dark night near the place, and was in sore distress, fearing that she would have to wander about in the cold until daylight. Happily, the ringing of the Hessle bells enabled her to direct her course to the village in safety, although she had to wend her weary steps over a trackless country. In gratitude for her delivery she left a piece of land to the parish clerk, on condition that he rang every evening one of the church bells.

A similar story is related respecting a Barton-on-Humber bell ringing custom. Richard Palmer left in 1664 a bequest to the sexton of Workingham, Berkshire, for ringing a bell every evening at eight, and every morning at four o’clock. One reason for ringing this, was “that strangers and others who should happen, on winter nights, within hearing of the ringing of the said bell, to lose their way in the country, might be informed of the time of the night, and receive some guidance into the right way.”

John Wardall, in his will dated 29th August, 1656, provided for a payment of £4 per annum being made to the Churchwardens of St. Botolph’s, Billingsgate, London, “to provide a good and sufficient iron and glass lanthorn, with a candle, for the direction of passengers to go with more security to and from the water-side, all night long, to be fixed at the north-east corner of the parish church, from the feast-day of St. Bartholomew to Lady-Day; out of which sum £1 was to be paid to the sexton for taking care of the lanthorn.” In 1662 a man named John Cooke made a similar bequest for providing a lamp at the corner of St. Michael’s Lane, next Thames Street.

In past ages churches were frequently unpaved and the floor usually covered with rushes. Not a few persons have left money and land for providing rushes for churches. In these latter days rushes are no longer strewn on the floor for keeping the feet warm in cold weather, but at a number of places old rights are maintained by the carrying out of the custom. At Clee, Lincolnshire, for example, the parish officials possess the right of cutting rushes from a certain piece of land for strewing the floor of the church every Trinity Sunday. The churchwardens preserve their rights by cutting a small quantity of grass annually and strewing it on the church floor. At Old Weston, Huntingdonshire, a similar custom still lingers. “A piece of land,” says Edwards in his “Remarkable Charities,” “belongs, by custom, to the parish clerk for the time being, subject to the condition of the land being mown immediately before Weston feast, which occurs in July, and the cutting thereof strewed on the church floor, previous to divine service on the feast Sunday, and continuing there during divine service.” At Pavenham, Bedfordshire, the church is annually strewn with grass cut from a certain field, on the first Sunday after the 11th July. “Until recently,” says a well-informed correspondent, “the custom was for the churchwardens to claim the right of removing from the field in question as much grass as they could ‘cut and cart away from sunrise to sunset.’ A few years ago this arrangement was altered into a yearly payment on the part of the tenant of the field of one guinea.” The money is spent in purchasing grass for spreading on the church floor. The parishioners have always taken a deep interest in this old custom. On the benefaction table of Deptford Church is recorded that “a person unknown gave half-a-quarter of wheat, to be given in bread on Good Friday, and half a load of rushes at Whitsuntide, and a load of pea-straw at Christmas yearly, for the use of the church.” In 1721, an offer of 21s. per annum was accepted in lieu of the straw and rushes, and in 1744, the sum of 10s. yearly in place of the half-quarter of wheat.

John Rudge, by his will dated 17th April, 1725, left a pound a year to a poor man to go round the parish church of Trysull, Staffordshire, during the delivery of the sermon, to keep people awake and drive out of the church any dogs which might come in. Richard Brooke left 5s. a year for a person to keep quiet during divine service the boys in the Wolverhampton church and churchyard.

At Stockton-in-the-Forest, Yorkshire, is a piece of land called “Petticoat Hole,” and it is held on the condition of providing a poor woman of the place every year with a new petticoat.

We will close this chapter with particulars of a novel mode of distributing a charity. At Bulkeley, Cheshire, a charity of 19s. 2d. was given to the poor as follows. The overseer obtained the amount in coppers, placed them in a peck measure, and invited each of the poor folks to help himself or herself to a handful.