Ecclesiastical revenues of course were voluntary. The expense of educating men for the ministry was met by parents or friends; assistance in some cases being provided out of charitable funds. The Fund Board was established soon after the Revolution, and from its proceeds young candidates received grants. To this fund the Presbyterians contributed £2,000, and the Independents nearly £1,700, a year. Assistance also proceeded from an endowment under the will of a Mr. Trotman, who, after the Act of Uniformity, bequeathed property for Nonconformist purposes. The trustees were ejected ministers, almost all of them belonging to the Independent denomination; and they afforded small exhibitions to persons studying for the ministry. Amongst distinguished beneficiaries were Stephen Lobb, who entered Trinity College, Oxford, in 1679; Benjamin Chandler, who studied at the same University; Samuel Wesley, who, for awhile, as we have seen, contemplated being a Dissenting pastor; William Payne, of Saffron Walden, a friend of John Owen; and the celebrated divine and poet, Isaac Watts, the last of whom received aid from the Fund Board also.[528] [Sidenote: 1688–1702.] The support of Dissenting pastors depended mainly upon their flocks. Sometimes, as we have seen, money was raised for the erection of meeting-houses by the sale of pews, which became the property of the purchasers; but in such cases, as well as others, the salary of the minister principally arose from the subscriptions of the people. Endowments in certain cases increased the revenues, but sometimes, where churches had no such resources and needed sustentation, grants were made from the Fund Board. Trotman’s Trust availed in a small degree for ministerial support, as well as education, so long as any of the ejected survived, and the money bequeathed to them lasted; for by his will he left £500 to poor ministers, who had been removed from “their employment” in the Church of England by the Act of Uniformity. We have noticed the public worship of Nonconformists. It is worth while to advert to Sundays at home. In many a farmhouse and city dwelling, the master called his household round him in the evening, to read a chapter and to ask religious questions; all being catechised, from the old servant by the door to the child who sat beside the cosy hearth, within the folds of mamma’s ornamented apron. Perhaps a discourse was read, a psalm sung, and a prayer offered. The young folks might have looked sleepy before all was over, and some of the older ones might with difficulty have kept their eyes open; but there were men and women who could say at the end of these Puritan Sabbaths, with the Henry family at Broad Oak: “If this be not heaven, it is the way to it.”