All monastic custumals lay down the most careful directions as to the duties of the almoner. “Every conventual almoner,” says one English mediæval writer, “must have his heart aglow with charity; his pity should know no bounds, and he should possess the love of others in a most marked degree; he must show himself as the helper of orphans, the father of the needy, and as one who is ever ready to cheer the lot of the poor and help them to bear their hard life.” As alms were a chief daily function of every monastic house, the almoner had leave of absence from the morning offices whenever his duties required him. He was not only the distributor of the alms of the house to those who sought them, but he was to visit all the aged, blind, or bedridden poor within a reasonable distance. According to the wording of the custumal of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, recently printed by the Henry Bradshaw Society, the almoner was to make the most solicitous enquiry, through some trustworthy servant, as to the cases of illness and infirmity in the neighbourhood. When he went in person on visits of inquiry, two servants accompanied him, carrying the materials for immediate or urgent relief. If perchance the sick man asked for anything that the almoner did not possess, he was to do all in his power to acquire it for him. Although the poor in their need were never sent empty away from the monastery gate on whatever day they might apply, every house had its general day or days in the week when a general distribution was made to all the needy. At St. Augustine’s there were two such days every week throughout the year, when the needy attended at the monastic almshouse for the general distribution of food and broken meat that had been collected from the refectory, the “misericorde,” and the abbot’s chamber and hall. For this purpose attendants went round after meals with baskets, and vessels for beer. Moreover, such was their care that no needy applicant should fall short, that the almoner had full power to go to the granary and take sufficient grain for the making of fresh bread for these two days of general relief if there was any probability of the surplus bread falling short. In most monasteries the whole commons of a deceased monk were distributed to the poor for thirty days after his death. To the almoner and his subordinates were entrusted the old clothes of the convent for distribution to the necessitous. Nor were such gifts always second-hand, for the almoner was instructed to lay in a store of stockings and shoes and other small presents for widows and orphans before the Christmas season.