“Faith, but a little: they’ll do it non-upstant.”[216]
From this we gather that it was customary at that time to put money in the parish poor’s-box on Sundays, and that the trustees of the poor were sometimes suspected of misapplying it.
The neglect of this mode of public contribution is noted in Hogarth’s marriage scene of the “Rake’s Progress,” by a cobweb covering the poor’s-box in the church. There is an intimation to the same effect in one of Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays, which further intimates that poor’s-boxes had posies—
The poor man’s box is there too: if ye find any thing
Besides the posy, and that half rubb’d out too,
For fear it should awaken too much charity,
Give it to pious uses: that is, spend it.
Spanish Curate, 1647.
The posies or mottoes on poor’s-boxes were short sentences to incite benevolence—such as, “He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord,” &c.
[214] Fosbroke’s Encyclopædia of Antiquities.
[215] This communication from J. A. Repton, Esq., is printed, with engravings from his drawings, in the “Archæologia,” 1821.
[216] Non-upstant, notwithstanding.