Church Ales were a special institution of the mediæval Church to the intent that no parishioner by reason of poverty should lack the means of feasting to his heart’s content on the greater holy-days; all were to assemble and make merry together. “In every parish,” says Aubrey, in the introduction to his “Natural History of Wiltshire,” “there was a Church House, to which belonged spits, crocks, and other utensils for dressing provisions. Here the housekeepers met. The young people were there, too, and had dancing, bowling, shooting at butts, etc., the ancients sitting gravely by and looking on. All things were civil and without scandal.” Whitsuntide was the great feast of early summer before haymaking began, and so these feasts were popularly known as Whitsun-Ales, but Easter and Christmas were not forgotten. From an old Breton legend we learn incidentally that it was customary for the three masses of Christmas to be said consecutively by anticipation, after which all adjourned for a gorgeous feast in the neighbouring Church House. Sometimes two parishes united for the celebration of the Church Ale. In Dodsworth’s manuscripts there is an old indenture preserved, an agreement between the parishioners of Elveston and Okebrook, in Derbyshire, to brew four ales, and every ale of one quarter of malt between Easter and the feast of St. John the Baptist; every inhabitant of the two parishes to attend the several ales. Charitable folks bequeathed funds for the maintenance of these parish banquets on particular festivals. [Illustration: Church House, Penshurst] Just above the western door of Chalk Church, near Gravesend, squats carved in stone a grotesque goblin figure, cross-legged and grinning with a most jovial expression as he grasps a flagon of ale. Charles Dickens in his latter years never omitted to stop and have greeting with this comical old monster. Now, this sculpture commemorates a _give ale_, bequeathed by William May, in 1512, that there should be “every year for his soull, an obit, and to make in bread six bushells of wheat, and in drink ten bushells of malt, and in cheese twenty pence, to give to poor people for the health of his soull.”