A custom which is still more opposed to our sense of propriety was that of holding church ales in the sacred building. A church ale was the old form of parish tea. It was connected with works of piety or charity, or of Christian fellowship, and in the eyes of the people of those times perhaps partook of the nature of the primitive love-feasts. They made a collection for the poor of the parish at a Whitsun Ale, started a young couple with a little sum by a Bride Ale, or got a man out of difficulties by a Bid Ale (from biddan, to pray or beg). So persistent was the custom, that in our latest English canons of 1603 it is thought necessary to prohibit any holding of feasts, banquets, suppers, or church ale drinkings in church.[331]
CHAPTER XXII.
ABUSES.
ven a book like this, which professes to deal with the humbler details of parochial life, rather than with the greater matters of ecclesiastical history, would be defective if it failed to take some note of the administrative abuses against which all Europe complained for centuries, and tried in vain to get them amended in the three great Councils at Pisa, Constance, and Basle. We shall treat of them very briefly, and chiefly in their relation to our special subject.