The following entries are also curious and characteristic:—

1642.—To Mrs. Mabb, a poet’s wife, her husband being dead £010
Paid to Goody Parish, to buy her boys two shirts; and
Charles, their father, a waterman at Chiswick, to
keep him at £20 a year from Christmas
030
1648.—Gave to the Lady Pigot, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, poor
and deserving relief
026
1670.—Given to the Lady Thornbury, being poor and indigent 0100
1641.—To old Goodman Street and old Goody Malthus, very
poor
———
1645.—To Mother Cole and Mother Johnson, xiid. a-piece 020
1646.—To William Burnett, in a cellar in Raggedstaff Yard,
being poor and very sick
016
To Goody Sherlock, in Maidenhead-fields Lane, one
linen-wheel, and gave her money to buy flax
010

There are also some interesting entries showing what a sink for the poverty of all the world the St. Giles’s cellars had become, even before the Restoration.

1640.—Gave to Signor Lifecatha, a distressed Grecian ———
1642.—To Laylish Milchitaire, of Chimaica, in Armenia,
to pass him to his own country, and to redeem his
sons in slavery under the Turks
£050
1654.—Paid towards the relief of the mariners, maimed
soldiers, widows and orphans of such as have died
in the service of Parliament
4110

These were for Cromwell’s soldiers; and this year Oliver himself gave £40 to the parish to buy coals for the poor.

1666.—Collected at several times towards the relief of the poor
sufferers burnt out by the late dreadful fire of London
£2584

In 1670 nearly £185 was collected in this parish towards the redemption of slaves.

After 1648 the Irish are seldom mentioned by name. They had grown by this time part and parcel of the district, and dragged all round them down to poverty. In 1653 an assistant beadle was appointed specially to search out and report all new arrivals of chargeable persons. In 1659 a monthly vestry-meeting was instituted to receive the constable’s report as to new vagrants.

In 1675 French refugees began to increase, and in 1679-1680, 1690 and 1692 fresh efforts were made to search out and investigate the cases of all new-comers. In 1710 the churchwardens reported to the commissioners for building new churches, that “a great number of French Protestants were inhabitants of the parish.”