The glossographer on Matthew Paris explains the word _mandatum_, to be alms, from the Saxon _Mandye_, charity. Somner has no such word in his Dictionary; and it seems more probable that Maunday Thursday has originally been Mandate Thursday; _Mandati Dies_ being the name where the Saxon _mands_ were totally unknown. Ælfric, Archbishop of Canterbury, having employed the Latin name of this day, Cœna Domini, gives these directions to the Saxon priests: “On Thursday you shall wash the altars before you celebrate mass, otherwise you must not. After vespers you must uncover the altars and let them remain bare until Saturday, washing them in the interior. You shall then fast until nones. _Imple mandata Domini in cœna ipsius._ ‘Do on Thursday as our Lord commands you;’ wash the feet of the poor, feed and clothe them; and, with humility, wash your feet among yourselves as Christ himself did, and commanded us so to do.” On the whole there seems to be no reason to doubt that the name _maundy_ is derived from the mandate obeyed on this day. The bread given to the poor on Maundy Thursday was named mandate bread, _mandati panes_, in the monasteries; as the coin given was called mandate money.--_Med. Ævi Kalend._ i. 183-185. One of the earliest instances on record of a monarch observing this custom, and which is the more curious as it shows that the practice of regulating the amount of the dole given on Maundy Thursday by the age of the king was then in existence, is preserved in the “_Rotulus Misæ_, or role of the wardrobe expenses of the 14th year of King John,” in which there appears an item of “fourteen shillings and one penny, for alms to thirteen poor persons, every one of whom received thirteen pence at Rochester, on Thursday, in Cœna Domini” (Holy Thursday), John having then reigned thirteen complete years. In the wardrobe expenses of Edward I. we find money given on Easter eve to thirteen poor people whose feet the Queen had washed; which latter custom is said to have been performed by the sovereign so late as the reign of James II.--Thoms, _Book of the Court_, 1844, p. 311. Henry VII. gave, when thirty-eight years old, thirty-eight coins and thirty-eight small purses to as many poor people: “_March 25._ To thirty-eight poor men in almes, £6 0_s._ 4_d._ For thirty-eight small purses, 1_s._ 8_d._ There are several entries for the Maundy in the “Privy Purse expenses” of this sovereign, as in 1496: “April 10. For bote hire for the Maundy and the kinges robe, payed by John Flee, 4_s._” The order of the Maundy, as practised by Queen Elizabeth in 1579 is here given--(from No. 6183, Add. MSS. in the British Museum): “_Order of the Maunday made, at Greenwich, 19th March 1579, 14 Elizabeth._”