When Sir Hugh Clopton came to make his will, Stratford largely benefited in other ways, as Mr. Sidney Lee, to whom we owe most of these details, has noted in his "Stratford-on-Avon" (London: Seeley & Co., 1907, page 94):
"He bequeathed also C. marks to be given to xx. poor maidens of good name and fame dwelling in Stratford, i.e., to each of them five marks apiece at their marriage; and likewise CI. to the poor householders in Stratford; as also Lli. to the new building, 'the cross aisle in the Parish Church there' (Dugdale). The testator did not, at the same time, forget the needs of the poor of London, or their hospitals; and on behalf of poor scholars at the Universities, he established six exhibitions at Cambridge and Oxford, each of the annual value of four pounds for five years." [Footnote 19]
[Footnote 19: It might possibly be thought that there were few opportunities for the making of fortunes of any significance in England at this time, and that therefore Sir Hugh Clopton's example would mean very little. As a matter of fact, however, this was the time when above all, fortunes were made rapidly and money flowed into England more than ever before. Taine in his "History of English Literature" quotes Acts of Parliament, the "Compendious Examination," by William Strafford, and other government documents which make this clear. He sums the situation up by saying:
"Towards the close of the fifteenth century, the impetus was given commerce and the woollen trade made a sudden advance, and such an enormous one that cornfields were changed into pasture lands, 'whereby the inhabitants of the said town (Manchester) have gotten and come into riches and wealthy livings' so that in 1553, forty thousand pieces of cloth were exported in English ships. It was already the England which we see to-day a land of meadows, green, intersected by hedgerows, crowded with cattle, abounding in ships, a manufacturing, opulent land, with a people of beef-eating toilers, who enrich it while they enrich themselves. They improved agriculture to such an extent, that in half a century the produce of an acre was doubled.">[
Sir Hugh Clopton's many benefactions illustrate very thoroughly the feeling of many of those who had made money at this time, that they were stewards of their wealth for the benefit of the community. Civic philanthropy is sometimes supposed to be a much more modern idea than this century, and what was given for charity is sometimes thought to have been but poorly directed. As a matter of fact, wealthy men were [{178}] at least as thoughtful of their benefactions in that time as in our own. If Sir Hugh Clopton's varied works for his towns-people are to be considered as typical, and everything points to such a conclusion, they were even more likely to do enduring good. He did not specialize, but where he found a good work to do he did it. Indeed, the whole story of doing good for others in this time deserves the study of the modern time, because of its solution of many problems that we are facing now.
An interesting phase of their collections for charity was the continuance of the old custom which had existed for several centuries, of having a special day on which everyone who was approached by certain solicitors for charity was expected to give something. This was usually the day after Whit-Sunday. Sometimes in the English villages, at the entrance to a bridge, or across a market place or the main street of the town, a rope was stretched and everyone who passed had to pay a toll for charity. Our modern "tag day" was a revival of this custom, though in the mediaeval towns, where everybody knew everybody else, there were less social dangers in the custom.
The Low Countries were very prosperous at this time and took up seriously the problem of helping the poor. As we have told more in detail in the chapter on "Hospitals and Care for the Insane," the order of Beguines took up the nursing and the visiting of the poor, and in many places the Beguinages assumed the character to some extent of institutions for the care of the poor. The word poorhouses has becomes so unfortunate in its connotations that one would scarcely think of using it in connection with these almost separate village-like communities, with abundance of air and light, in which the young women of the better classes took up their own life in small, neat, attractive houses and cared for the aged poor and children in little houses not far from their own. A great number of dependents were maintained mainly out of the revenues derived from the incomes which these young women of the better classes brought with them into the institution and from the funds contributed by friends who were interested in their good work. Our modern settlements are like them in certain [{179}] ways, but there are so many differences in favor of the older institutions, which represent indeed an almost ideal way of exercising charity, that the contrast is striking.
Many of the religious orders that were doing such good work in Columbus' time have gone through many vicissitudes. Governments have often turned to enrich their favorites at the expense of charitable foundations in their hands, and it has been an easy way for politicians to get money. In spite of all this, some of them continue to do their work even at the present time. Among these the Beguines are particularly worthy of note. After the union of Holland and Belgium, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, William of Holland attempted to abrogate many of the rights of the Beguines and confiscate much of their property. The municipality of Ghent, in which the largest Beguinage was situated, sent a protest, in which they catalogued the great services of the order in times of war and epidemics, and the unfriendly purpose of the Holland Government was changed. In the nineteenth century the list of good works accomplished by the Beguines is very striking and some of them have been listed by Miss Nutting and Miss Dock in their "History of Nursing":
"In 1809-10 the Beguines of Belgium had devoted their whole strength to the service of the army during an epidemic of fever. During the war of 1813 their buildings were turned into hospitals, and after Waterloo they literally gave all they had to relieve the overwhelming distress. In 1832, 1849, and 1853 they again served nobly in cholera epidemics. Besides their readiness as nurses, they have likewise not been wanting as good citizens. In 1821 they contributed a generous sum toward the establishment of municipal industrial workshops, and have often acted as an aid society in dispensing contributions to sufferers from natural disasters, such as inundations and fires." That is a brief nineteenth-century chronicle of a charitable organization that was at an acme of its usefulness in Columbus' Century.