5. INVOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTIONS
Rates were levied for hospital maintenance on an organized system in some foreign countries. Sometimes a compulsory Hospital Sunday Fund was instituted, one penny being demanded from the richer, one halfpenny from the middle-class, and a loaf from lesser folk. In England, however, the only obligatory support was an occasional toll on produce, perhaps first ordered by the feudal lord, but afterwards granted by custom. The Bishop of Exeter (1163) confirmed to lepers their ancient right to collect food twice a week in the market, and alms on two other days,—a custom resented by the citizens. (See p. [54].) King John conferred upon Shrewsbury lazars the privilege of taking handfuls of corn and flour from sacks exposed in the market (1204). By charter of the Earls, the Chester lepers were entitled to extensive tolls—upon salt, fish, grain, malt, fruit and vegetables, to a cheese or salmon from every load, and even one horse from the horse-fair. The lepers of St. Mary Magdalene’s, Southampton, received “from time immemorial” a penny upon every tun of wine imported.
The mayor and commonalty of Carlisle granted every Sunday to the lepers a pottle of ale from each brew-house of the city, and a farthing loaf from every baker who displayed his bread for sale on Saturday. Their hospital was also endowed “time out of mind” with a corn-tax known as the “thraves of St. Nicholas” from every carucate of land in Cumberland. (The thrave is variously computed at twelve, twenty or twenty-four sheaves.) This county had a heavy poor-rate, for the great York hospital collected likewise from every plough working in p185 the northern Archiepiscopate (Cumberland, Westmorland, Lancashire and Yorkshire). These “thraves of St. Leonard,” or “Petercorn,” belonged to the hospital by virtue of Athelstan’s gift, which had been originally granted to him by his northern subjects in recognition of his destruction of wolves. The lands of the Durham Bishopric contributed “thraves of St. Giles” to Kepier hospital. The collection of such tolls was a constant difficulty, for it was resented by landowners, who had also the ordinary tithes to pay.