We enter the old-fashioned little parlour, or office, on the left-hand side, "warm in winter and cool in summer. It has a look of homely welcome and soothing rest. It has a remarkably cosy fireside, the very blink of which, gleaming out into the street upon a winter's night, is enough to warm all Rochester's heart." The matron receives us politely, and shows us two large books of foolscap size with ruled columns, one of these containing a record of the visitors to the Charity, and the other a list of the recipients thereof. A little pleasantry is caused by one of us entering his name in the wrong book, but this mistake is promptly rectified by the matron, who informs us that we are scarcely objects for relief as "Poor Travellers." She then kindly repeats to us the two legends respecting the origin of the Charity, the first of which is tolerably well known, but the other is less familiar. Before recording these, it may be well to give an extract from the will of Master Richard Watts (a very curious and lengthy document), which was industriously hunted up by the late Mr. Charles Bullard, author of the Romance of Rochester, and by him contributed to the Rochester and Chatham Journal, of which it fills a whole column.
The will (dated, as previously stated, August 22nd, 1579) directs, inter alia, that "First the Alms-house already erected and standing beside the Markett Crosse, within the Citty of Rochester aforesaid, which Almshouses my Will Purpose and Desire is that there be reedified added and provided with such Roomes as be there already provided Six Severall Roomes with Chimneys for the Comfort placeing and abideing of the Poore within the said Citty, and alsoe to be made apt and convenient places therein for Six good Matrices or Flock Bedds and other good and sufficient Furniture to harbour or lodge in poore Travellers or Wayfareing Men being noe Common Rogues nor Proctors, and they the said Wayfareing Men to harbour and lodge therein noe longer than one Night unlesse Sickness be the farther Cause thereof and those poore Folkes there dwelling shall keepe the House sweete make the Bedds see to the Furniture keepe the same sweete and courteously intreate the said poore Travellers and to every of the said poore Travellers att their first comeing in to have fourpence and they shall warme them at the Fire of the Residents within the said House if Need be."
The reason for the exception in the testator's will as regards rogues is sufficiently obvious, and therefore all the point of this singular bequest lies in the word "Proctors." Who were they? One of the legends has it that the obsolete word "Proctors" referred to certain sturdy mendicants who swarmed in the south of England, and went about extracting money from the charitable public under the pretence of collecting "Peter's Pence" for the Pope; or, as the compiler of Murray's Handbook to the County of Kent suggests, "were probably the bearers of licences to collect alms for hospitals," etc. Possibly the worthy Master Richard Watts objected to the levying of this blackmail; or he may in his walks have been subjected to the proctors' importunities, and consequently in his will rigorously debarred them in all futurity from any share in his Charity.
The other legend is that Master Watts, being grievously sick and sore to die, sent for his lawyer, who in those days acted as proctor as well,—Steerforth in David Copperfield calls the proctor "a monkish kind of attorney,"—and bade him prepare his will according to certain instructions. The will was made, but not in the manner directed, and subsequently, on the testator regaining his health, he discovered the fraud which the crafty lawyer or proctor had tried to perpetrate—which was, in fact, to make himself the sole legatee. In his just indignation he made another will, and in it for ever excluded the fraternity of proctors from benefiting thereby. The reader is at liberty to accept whichever of the two legends he chooses. It is right to say that Mr. Roach Smith utterly rejects the second story. He says proctors were simply rogues, although some of them may have been licensed.
The following is a foot-note to Fisher's History and Antiquities of Rochester and its Environs, MDCCLXXII.
"It is generally thought that the reason of Mr. Watts's excluding proctors from the benefit of the Charity, was that a proctor had been employed to make his will, whereby he had given all the estates to himself; but I am inclined to believe that the word proctor is derived from procurator, who was an itinerant priest, and had dispensations from the Pope to absolve the subjects of this realm from the oath of allegiance to Queen Elizabeth, in whose reign there were many such priests."
When the identity of Miss Adelaide Anne Procter, the gifted author of the pure and pathetic Legends and Lyrics (who had been an anonymous contributor to Household Words for some time under the nom de plume of "Mary Berwick"), became known to Charles Dickens, he sent her a charming and kindly letter of congratulation and appreciation, dated 17th December, 1854 (just at the time that the Christmas stories of the Seven Poor Travellers were published), which thus concludes:—