4. ADMISSION FEES
A considerable pecuniary benefit accrued to hospitals by the custom of receiving contributions from newly-admitted members of the household. In some cases a benefaction was made when persons were received into a community; thus Archbishop Wichwane as patron granted permission for a certain Gilbert and his wife to bestow their goods upon Bawtry hospital and dwell there (1281).[111] p184
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.
(6) VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTIONS
(a) Donations.—At first, freewill-offerings were mainly in kind. The earliest collector whose name occurs is Alfune, Rahere’s friend. While the founder was occupied at St. Bartholomew’s, Alfune was wont “to cumpasse and go abowte the nye placys of the chirche besily to seke and prouyde necessaries to the nede of the poer men, that lay in the hospitall.” It fell on a day that as Alfune visited the meat-market, he came to a butcher whose persistent refusal of help grieved him. After working what was regarded as a miracle, Alfune won him over, and departed with flesh in his vessel: henceforth butchers were more prompt to give their alms. Almsmen used sometimes to collect in person. It was customary for some of the brothers of St. John’s House to “attend the churches in Sandwich every Sunday, with a pewter dish, soliciting money to buy meat for dinner on that day.” Another brother was deputed to travel on an ass through Kent asking alms—“and he collects sometimes ten shillings a year, sometimes a mark, above his expenses.”
All save richly-endowed houses were dependent upon p186 casual charity. In St. Mary’s, Yarmouth, it is recorded “live a multitude of poor brethren and sisters, for whose sustenance a daily quest has to be made.” One of the London statutes, enrolled in Liber Albus, directs that lepers shall have a common attorney to go every Sunday into the parish-churches to gather alms for their sustenance. Lest charitable offerings should diminish when lepers were removed from sight, a clause was added to the proclamation of 1348:—“it is the king’s intention that all who wish to give alms to lepers shall do so freely, and the sheriff shall incite the men of his bailiwick to give alms to those so expelled from the communion of men.” It would appear from a London will of 1369, that special chests were afterwards provided; for bequests are then made to the alms-boxes (pixidibus) for lepers around London. Alms-boxes were carried about by collectors, and also hung at the gate or within the hospital. The proctor of the staff went on his mission with a portable money-box; upon one occasion, a false proctor was convicted of pretending to collect for St. Mary of Bethlehem, for which fraud he was pilloried, the iron-bound box with which he had paraded the streets being tied round his neck. Boxes of this kind, sometimes having a chain attached, remain in almshouses at Canterbury, Leicester and Stamford. It was directed by the statutes of Higham Ferrers that a common box with a hole in the top should be set in the midst of the dormitory so that well-disposed people might put in their charity; at certain times also two of the poor men were to “go abroad to gather up the devotions of the brotherhood,” the contents being afterwards divided.
(b) Small Subscriptions.—Some fraternities formed p187 associations for the maintenance of charities. That of St. John Baptist, Winchester, helped to support St. John’s hospital with the shillings contributed by its 107 members. The modern hospital of St. Leonard, Bedford, is kept up on this principle.
(c) Appeals authorized by the King.—The work of the proctor was not confined to the neighbourhood. Having first possessed himself of letters-testimonial, he journeyed in England, or even in Wales and Ireland. A “protection” or warrant was necessary, for unauthorized collectors were liable to arrest; it was in the form of a royal letter addressed to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, bailiffs, lieges, etc. Henry III pleads with his subjects the cause of St. Giles’, Shrewsbury:—“that when the brethren come to you to beg alms, you will favourably admit them, and mercifully impart to them your alms of the goods conferred by God upon you.” Many letters-patent license the proctors, messengers or attorneys to collect in churches, or, as at St. Anthony’s, Lenton (1332), in towns, fairs and markets. Sometimes the collector went forth supported by Church and State; as when the king issued mandates (1317, 1331) to welcome the proctor of the Romsey lepers “authorized by John, Bishop of Winchester and other prelates.”