Curious Charities.
We obtain some interesting side-lights on the condition of the people in the past from old-time charities. Several of the prison charities founded in bygone times are extremely quaint and full of historic interest. One Frances Thornhill appears to have had a desire to make the prison beds comfortable. She left the sum of £30 for the Corporation of the city of York to provide straw for the beds of the prisoners confined in York Castle. The local authorities in these later years appear to have received the interest on the capital without carrying out the conditions of the charity.
Bequests of fuel suggest to the mind the time when persons not only suffered from imprisonment but also from cold. At Bury St. Edmund’s, £10 was left by Margaret Odiam for a minister to say mass to the inmates of the jail, and for providing faggots to warm the long ward in which the poor prisoners were lodged. In 1787, Elizabeth Dean, of Reading, left £156 17s. 5d., the interest of which she directed to be spent in buying firewood for the county jail.
At Norwich, a worthy man named John Norris left Consols to the value of £300 for buying beef and books for the felons confined in the jail. The prison food is now regulated by law and the charity beef is banished, but we believe the interest is spent in supplying the prisoners with literature. Even as late as 1821, John Hall left Consols to the value of £127 16s. for providing a Christmas dinner of the good old English fare of roast beef and plum pudding for the criminals in the Northampton county prison. In 1556, Thomas Cattell left a rent charge of £35 a year for buying beef and oatmeal for the poor prisoners of Newgate and other London prisons.
A singular bequest was made in the year 1556, by Griffith Ameridith, of Exeter, and it amounted to £524 4s. 11d. in Consols, “for providing shrouds for prisoners executed at Kingswell, and for the maintenance of a wall round the burial ground.” “But,” says a writer on this theme, “probably for want of subjects for shrouds, the income is now, without any authority, applied to a distribution of serge petticoats to old women.” One advantage of the change is that the new recipients can at least express their gratitude. In the olden time it was by no means an uncommon practice for criminals about to be executed to proceed to the gallows in shrouds. On July 30th, 1766, two men were hanged at Nottingham for robbery. “On the morning of their execution,” says a local record, “they were taken to St. Mary’s Church, where they heard ‘the condemned sermon,’ and then to their graves, in which they were permitted to lie down to see if they would fit. They walked to the place of execution in their shrouds.” At an execution in the same town in 1784, we read in a local newspaper report that the unfortunate men were attired in their shrouds. To add to the impressiveness of the condemned sermon, the coffins in which the condemned criminals were to be buried, were exhibited during the service.
Charities and collections in churches were formerly very common in this country for freeing British subjects from slavery in foreign lands. In 1655, Alicia, Duchess of Dudley, by a deed poll, directed £100 per annum to be drawn from the rents of certain lands situated in the parish of Bidford, Warwickshire, for redeeming poor English Christian slaves or captives from the Turks. Thomas Betson, of Hoxton Square, London, by will dated 15th February, 1723, left a considerable fortune for the redemption of British slaves in Turkey and Barbary. He died in 1725, and five years later the property was estimated to be worth about £22,000, and the interest on half the amount was to be devoted to ransoming his countrymen from slavery. In the year 1734, it is stated that 135 men were freed by this charity. Between the years 1734 and 1826, the large sum of £21,088 8s. 2½d. was expended in the admirable cause of freeing the captive. Many of the old church books contain entries respecting collections for this object. In the books of Holy Cross, Westgate, Canterbury, is a long list of the names of persons in the parish in March, 1670, contributing £02 07s. 04d., for “Redeeming the Captives in Turkye.”
Sir John Gayer, was in his time a leading London merchant, an Alderman for the ward of Aldgate, and a popular Lord Mayor. He lived in the reigns of James I. and Charles I., and was a man of great enterprise, ready to encounter perils in foreign lands to forward his commercial projects. On one memorable occasion he was travelling with a caravan of merchants across the desert of Arabia, and by some accidental means managed to separate himself from his friends, and at night-fall was alone. His position was one of great peril: he heard the roaring of wild animals, but failed to find any place of refuge. We gather from the story of his life that:—“He knelt down and prayed fervently, and devoutly promised, that if God would rescue him from his impending danger the whole produce of his merchandise should be given as an offering in benefactions to the poor, on his return to his native country. At this extremity a lion of an unusually large size was approaching him. Death appeared inevitable, but the prayer of the good man had ascended to heaven, and he was delivered. The lion came up close to him. After prowling round him, smelling him, bristling his shaggy hair, and eyeing him fiercely, he stopped short, turned round, and trotted quietly away, without doing the slightest injury. It is said that Sir John Gayer remained in the same suppliant posture till the morning dawned, when he pursued his journey, and happily came up with his friends, who had given up all hope of again seeing him.” The journey was concluded without further misadventure, a ready market found for the goods, and old England reached in safety with increased wealth. Sir John did not forget his vow, and many were the deeds of charity he performed, more especially to the poor of his own parish of St. Katharine Cree. One of bequests amounting to £200 was left to the needy of that parish on condition that a “sermon should be occasionally preached in the church to commemorate his deliverance from the jaws of the lion.” The sermon is known as the “Lion Sermon.”
In the church of St. Katharine Cree within the altar rails is a carved head of Gayer. On the right hand side is a text, as follows:—“The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers—Ps. 34, v. 15;” on the left hand side this text appears:—“The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much—James V., xvi.;” and under the figure this motto:—“Super Astra Spero.” There is a brass bearing the following inscription:—
In Memory of
SIR JOHN GAYER, Knt.,
Founder of the “Lion Sermon” who was descended from
the Old West Country Family of Gayer,
and was born at Plymouth,
and became Sheriff of this City of London in 1635,
and Lord Mayor of London in 1647.
He was a member of the Levant or Turkey Company, and of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers, London, and President of Christ’s Hospital, London, and a liberal donor to and pious founder of Charities.