Sittings in the church were paid for yearly, at the rate of from 4d. to 6d. each. In 1567, a Mr. Doctor gave 5s. for a seat "which the parishioners promised should remain to his house for ever." Also, in the same year, "received of Mrs. Bland for the seat that her husband paid for her frendes to knele in, 12d.;" and the keeper of the Castle (then the county gaol) paid the like sum for himself and wife. A Mr. Richard Jones was paid 3s. 4d. for preaching two sermons on Palm Sunday in the year 1624; but the usual mode of paying ministers who did not belong to the parish when they preached was by treating them with a quart of sack, claret, or other wine. The Bishop sometimes preached here; and on one occasion the vestry treated his lordship to a rundlett of sack, costing £1. 10s. 10d., besides a quart of sack and a quart of white wine--the rundlett probably for the use of the numerous suite which bishops in those days always brought in their train, and the other for his lordship's own dinner table on the day that he honoured St. Michael's pulpit. On the same occasion a silk girdle, costing 8s., was given to Mr. Parr, one of the Bishop's chaplains, for preaching twice. The number of needy and itinerant preachers in the seventeenth century must have been considerable, judging from the frequent relief allowed them. Probably one of these is referred to in the following curious entry: "Given to one that come with Tres patents out of Turkie, that had bin long in prison for the maintenance of the ghospel, vi_d_."