The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects

by Sedley Lynch Ware

[236] The crie of the poore for the death of the right Honourable Earle of Huntington (printed 1596), Joseph Lilly, A Collection of Seventy-Nine Black-Letter Ballads and Broadsides, 1559-1597 (1870), 230.

[237] Ibid., 263.

[238] The poore people's complaynt, Bewayling the death of their famous benefactor, the worthy Earle of Bedford (Died 1585). Bedford was described as "a person of such great hospitality that Queen Elizabeth was wont to say of him that he made all the beggars." Clark, Shirburn Ballads, 256.

[239] J.C. Cox, Three Centuries of Derbyshire Annals, i, 136.

[240] E. Freshfield, St. Bartholomew, Exchange, Acc'ts, s.a. 1598, et passim. Freshfield, St. Margaret, Lothbury, Vestry Book, 32 (1595). St. Margaret's, Westminster, Overseers' Acc'ts in The Westminster Tobacco Box, Pt. ii (1887), e.g., s.a. 1572-3, where we find donations from Lord Burghley, the Lord Chief Justice, the Dean of Westminster, the Earl of Derby, the Earl of Hertford, etc.

[241] Though by 37 Hen. VIII c. 9, sec. 3 (Stats. of Realm, iii, 996) interest up to 10 per cent. per annum was permitted, all interest was prohibited by the 5 & 6 Ed. VI, c. 20, sec. 2 (Stats. of Realm, iv, Pt. i, 155). Interest is here dubbed usury, "a vice most odyous and detestable." Interest up to 10 per cent. was, however, again made lawful by the 13 Eliz. c. 8, sec. 4 (Stats. of Realm, iv, Pt. i, 542) which, however, stigmatizes usury as sinful.

[242] Examples are, Vestry Minutes of St. Margaret, Lothbury, 32 (Gift of £20 in 1595 to be employed in wood and coal for the use of the poor. A committee of four was appointed to invest and make sales. See their account for 1596, p. 34). The Westminster Tobacco Box, Pt. ii, 22 (One of the overseers of St. Margaret's to keep a gift of £42 "untill the same may be bestowed upon somme good bargaine as a lease or somme other such like commoditie w[hi]ch may yeelde a yerely rente to the pore." 1578). Cf. St. Bartholomew, Exchange, Acc'ts Books, 3 ff., where in 1598, and regularly in subsequent years, appears the item: "Alowed to this account for the geft of the Lady Wilfordes xx li for the pore xx." Also another item, likewise of 20s. yearly, on Mr. Nutmaker's £20—in other words, 10 per cent. in each case every year. Cf. Jas. Stockdale, Annals of Cartmel (Lancashire, pub. 1872), 37-8 (£65 6s., money belonging to Cartmel grammar school "placed" in the hands of various persons, some of whom give pledges, others mortgages, for repayment. The revenue from this is £6 10s. 7d., i.e., 10 per cent. in 1598). In 1613, in allowing the overseer's accounts of Swyre, Dorset, the local justices indorse: "Upon this condition that from henceforth the overseers and Churchwardens do yearlie charge themselves with the some of xxs. for thuse of a stocke of xli [i.e., 10 per cent.] giuen to the poore by the testam[en]t of James Rawlinge." The practice above illustrated is simply that enjoined by 18 Eliz. c. 3, amended and completed by 39 Eliz. c. 3 and 43 Eliz. c. 2, with an object of making the poor administration self-supporting as far as might be. The fact that Elizabethan poor laws were based on the best-approved parish customs made them perdurable. For a model administration of parish stock according to the poor laws see the Cowden Overseers Acc'ts, Sussex Arch. Coll., xx, 95 ff. (1599 ff.).

[243] E.g., in St. Michael's in Bedwardine (Acc'ts ed. John Amphlett) one Stanton left 50s. to the poor in 1588 (Acc'ts, p. 97-8). Robt. Chadbourne paid 5s. for the use of this money for several years (Acc'ts, p. 108, etc.). It then was loaned to John Brayne, an entry being made from time to time that the principal was owing as well as the interest (Acc'ts p. 108). Brayne paid the 50s. to the wardens in Sept., 1595. Cf. preceding note (Cartmel school money).

[244] St. Michael's in Bedwardine Acc'ts, supra, 96 (One Fletcher loaned 30s. in 1586, he depositing with the wardens "a gilt salt with a cover"). For numerous gratuitous loans of parish money, see the Mere Acc'ts, Wilts Arch. and Nat. Hist. Mag., xxxv (1907), passim. Cf. also the document of 1586 relating to the parish of Heavitree, in Devon Notes and Quer., i (1901), 61, where it is stipulated (inter alia) that if any parishioner of good character upon reasonable cause shall desire to borrow from any surplus funds of the church for a season, "such a one shall not be denyed."

[245] See Wilts Arch. Mag., xxxv. Cf. J.E. Foster, St. Mary the Great (Cambridge) Acc'ts (1905), 208.