Early English Charities - International Institute

Introduction
Early charities were usual local ones benefitting the parish or town in which the benefactor lived, but others were to a hospital or guild that served a wider geographical area.

Worthy causes were mainly deemed to be assistance for the poor in the form of clothing, food, fuel, school fees or cash, provision of schools, schoolmasters and almshouses, upkeep of the church, and to pay the fees and new outfit of clothes needed for apprenticing orphans and pauper children, even to provide a marriage portion for a maid (Alexander). Benefactions may have been lifetime deeds of settlement, but most were of money, shares or land bequeathed by a will.

Charities are often listed in contemporary directories and local histories, and there is detailed information in the comprehensive summary of charities made in the early 19th century by a national commission. The latter does not give names of recipients but details of the benefactor and the charity itself.

Sources of Charity Income
Records are not always on paper or parchment. Charity boards dating from the 18-19th centuries still hang inside parish church towers or porches listing the charitable endowments of the parish. Some parish churches still have their dole cupboards in which bread was kept for distribution to the poor; a term which is preserved in the phraseon the dole.

Below shows an undated list of benefactors and benefactions found at the back of a Pew Book, normally used for recording rentals of the church pews.

Benefactors and Benefactions List of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, Middlesex

Extract from Will of John Mann, Whippingham, Isle of Wight, Hampshire 1706

Charities Left in Graffham, Sussex 1598-1699

This is accompanied by annual accounts of the disbursements to the needy, examples being shown below.

Church Ale
Another form of Middle Ages fund-raising for the maintenance of the parish church and the poor was the Church Ale, to which reference is occasionally found in parish materials. Home-brewed ales were sold in the nave of the church, or in a neighbouring church-house, some of which still survive from the 16th century. Church ales were mainly suppressed at the Reformation, but some of the church-houses became secular alehouses and may have had a name and sign reflecting the former clerical connection.

Similar fund raising social functions organized by the churchwardens were the bid ale, in aid of deserving persons in perhaps temporary distress, and the bride ale to help a young couple set up house. Another term seen in records is a harkye or harkey, which is a harvest supper announced in church at the official end of the harvest by the parson saying Hark ye...

Charity Disbursements
The records of recipients are usually in the parish chest until 1812 when they were then kept by the Clerk of the Peace and are thus more likely to be with the county records, but both of these are now in the county archives.

Mann Charity Disbursements 1708 

 Mann Charity Disbursements 1726 

Discovery of a long run of years of charity disbursements can really help the researcher understand the family’s economic situation and relationships.

My 4th great grandparents John Allingham and his wife Elizabeth née Potter were considered deserving of a clothing charity given at Christmas time in the early 19th century. Their son William also received similar aid from 1821 to 1828, so he was in no position to assist his parents. Times were tough after the men came back from the Napoleonic Wars and agricultural wages were too low to support a family, with the resultant Swing Riots and eventual reforms. This sequence for my family provides further items for the three pieces of proof needed to document John’s death, (buried 12 Jan 1823) and his widow’s remarriage to William Crayford (7 Nov 1825).

Hadlow, Kent Parish Chest Poors Meads Charity Recipients

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