The land is now called South Whitbreads, and the owner of the property regularly pays the sum of £l yearly, which is distributed amongst the poor at Christmas by the churchwardens and overseers.
Encouragement to attend Divine Service
Thomas Walker, of St. James’s, Bristol, England, by his will, dated 25th of April, 1666, ordered as follows: “I give and bequeath to that poor parish of St. James the sum of £200, to purchase for ever the sum of £10 8s. 0d. a year for eight poor house-keepers that are known to live in the fear of God, and to come unto the church every Lord’s day, a six-penny loaf of bread every Sabbath day, after morning prayer, unto these eight poor house-keepers for ever; but for God’s sake let them be no drunkards nor common swearers—no, nor that do beg in the streets from door to door, but let them be quiet people that do desire to live in the fear of God. Pray let their bread be wheaten bread, and weight as it ought to be.”
Stormy Days
Thomas Williamson, of Castlerigg, Cumberland, England, by will, dated 14th of December, 1674, gave the sum of £20 to be laid out in land to be bestowed upon poor people, born within St. John’s Chapelry or Castlerigg, in mutton or veal, at Martinmas yearly, when flesh might be thought cheapest, to be by them pickled or hung up and dried, that they might have something to keep them within doors upon stormy days.
Snuff and Tobacco for the Sick
Dr. F. W. Cumming left six hundred pounds to the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, to provide poor patients, male and female, with snuff and tobacco, giving the following reason for his unusual bequest: “I know how to feel for the suffering of those, who in addition to the irksomeness of pain and the tedium of confinement, have to endure the privation of what long habit has rendered in a great degree a necessity of life.”
To toll the Bell
William Minta, of Great Gonerby, Lincolnshire, who died 8th of June, 1724, gave £5 to the poor of Gonerby, to be distributed in bread to sixteen aged people, on Good Friday, yearly, a “threepenny dole a piece,” and the clerk was “to toll the bell at three o’clock, and to read the Epistle and Gospel, and sing the Lamentation of a Sinner,” and to have one shilling reward.
Christmas Festivities