A good instance of this occurs in the later rolls of the abbey of St. Benet’s, Holme, many of which are at the Bodleian, and have never been published or printed. John Takylston was both prior and pittancer of this abbey at the beginning of Henry VIII.’s reign. His accounts for 1511-12 show that his total receipts as pittancer for that year were £9 17_s._ 1½_d._, which would have been a monstrous sum to spend on extra fare. In genuine food-pittance the only expenditure was in providing figs and other fruit for the convent at a cost of 3_s._ 4_d._, and in a sum of 12_d._ spent on peas and beans and butter, probably for some tasty dish of vegetables specially cooked, for peas and beans had for some time been considered only fit for cattle. The seven principal feasts of the year were brightened by a very moderate expenditure on wine; the total cost for the whole seven occasions was but 16_s._, and as the monks of St. Benet’s then numbered twenty-three, the individual consumption on each occasion, even if the wine was strictly confined to the professed monks, must have been diminutive. Three definite pittances, of early bequest, intended to provide an extra dish for each inmate, were at this time commuted for money payments, each monk receiving at different periods of the year the respective sums of 6_d._, 10_d._, and 12_d._, the abbot and prior both receiving double the amount. Small sums of money for each religious to provide personal necessaries, or to serve as pocket-money when on exterior service, were not unusually allowed in the later days of English monasticism. The considerable balance still left in the hands of this pittancer was used in a variety of ways towards the relief of the needs of the house. Thus the pittancer that year found his own clothes and the wages and clothes of his servant; made payments for collection of rents, for felling trees and making faggots for fuel, for mowing the grass of the cloister-garth; discharged the abbey’s share of 33_s._ due to the King as voted by Convocation, and the sum of 4_s._ as the abbey’s subsidy to the general chapter of the Benedictines; paid for the repairing of the glass windows of his own apartments, and the re-thatching it with reed; and had withal 3_s._ left to distribute in alms during Lent. Those who know the dreary swamps and general surroundings of St. Benet’s will not be surprised that early benefactors desired to fortify the inmates against damp and chills by the relief of a more generous diet; and we cannot but admire the self-restraint and wise economy that directed the superfluity of these pittances into other channels. The Benedictines, in their practical dealings with the benefactions of the piety or pity of former centuries, set an example which might with profit be followed by modern Charity Commissioners.