In Bread Street Salters’ Almshouses for 8 poor people.
In Trinity Lane Ironmongers’ Houses for 8 poor people.
In Peter’s Hill David Smith’s for 6 poor widows.
On College Hill Whittington’s College and almshouses for 13 poor men.
II. Charitable Endowment Generally
As for charities and charitable endowments generally, one cannot do better than quote Stow himself:—
“I myself, in that declining time of charity, have oft seen at the Lord Cromwell’s gate in London more than two hundred persons served twice every day with bread, meat, and drink sufficient; for he observed that ancient and charitable custom, as all prelates, noblemen, or men of honour and worship, his predecessors, had done before him; whereof somewhat to note for example, Venerable Bede writeth, that prelates of his time having peradventure but wooden churches, had notwithstanding on their board at their meals one alms dish, into the which was carved some good portion of meat out of every other dish brought to their table; all which was given to the poor, besides the fragments left, in so much as in a hard time, a poor prelate wanting victuals, hath caused his alms dish, being silver, to be divided among the poor, therewith to shift as they could, till God should send them better store.
Such a prelate was Ethelwald, Bishop of Winchester, in the reign of King Edgar, about the year of Christ 963: he in a great famine sold away all the sacred vessels of his church for to relieve the almost starved people, saying that there was no reason that the senseless temples of God should abound in riches, and lively temples of the Holy Ghost to lack it.
Walter de Suffilde, Bishop of Norwich, was of the like mind; about the year 1245, in a time of great dearth, he sold all his plate, and distributed it to the poor every pennyworth.
Robert Winchelsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, about the year 1093, besides the daily fragments of his house, gave every Friday and Sunday, unto every beggar that came to his gate, a loaf of bread sufficient for that day, and there were usually, every such alms day, in time of dearth, to the number of five thousand, and otherwise four thousand, at the least; more, he used every great festival day to give one hundred and fifty pence to so many poor people, to send daily meat, bread and drink, to such as by age or sickness were not able to fetch his alms, and to send meat, money, and apparel to such as he thought needed it.