It remains to mention under this heading that many a monastery, in fact the great majority of the larger houses, were the chief supporters of subsidiary hospitals under their control, where beds were provided for the sick and infirm, and where food and lodging were also given to needy wayfarers. This was specially the case when the religious house was on the confines of or within a town. Derby, Coventry, and Northampton are among the many towns that afford examples of this kind of charitable work. In many other instances a modicum of assistance to hospital work formed a regular charge on the eleemosynary funds of the greater foundation. Thus the bursar’s rolls of the great priory of Durham, for the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, show under the head of customary alms--in addition to £5 4_s._ 8_d._ distributed to the poor on Maundy Thursday, and £13 on the thirteen principal feasts--a sum of about half a mark for shoes for the poor of the Domus Dei or God’s House, and a furthur sum for a like purpose for five widows of the hospital of St. Mary Magdalen. The actual almoner’s rolls of the same priory of the fourteenth century and onwards show that they maintained a great infirmary at Durham for the poor entirely in their own management, £5 6_s._ being the annual charge merely for the garments and shoes supplied to the inmates. There was also a hospital at Witton, originally designed for lepers, which was managed and supported by the Durham priory. Like evidence can be readily produced all over the country. An interesting item of practical charity in the West of England may fittingly conclude these brief gleanings as to instances of monastic charity. The priory of Bath supported the hospital that was designed to help the poorest to the use of the city’s curative waters. [Illustration: BYLAND ABBEY (Cistercian)] CHAPTER V MONASTIC DIET One of the commonest and cheapest ways of abusing the religious, and bringing monastic life into contempt, has always been to depict the monk, and sometimes the nun, as usually given up to extravagant living in the satisfying of the appetite for food and drink. The coarse ballad of older times flung such charges broadcast, and today the tenors and basses of high-class concerts continue to sustain popular delusions by songs of “Simon the Cellarer” stamp. Moreover, the modern poster and smaller advertisements appear to think that nothing tends so much to increase the sale of wines and spirits as the often cleverly rendered pictures of jovial monks tippling beer or sampling vintages amid impossible surroundings.