At the end of the Mass a loaf of bread, called the “holy loaf,” or “holy bread,” was brought into the chancel, and, after being blessed by the priest, was cut into small pieces and distributed to the people. Then all came up to the chancel steps and received the morsel from the celebrant, whose hands they kissed. This blessed bread signified the fraternal love that always ought to bind Christians together, and the practice of distributing it at the principal Sunday Mass continued until the religious changes in the reign of Edward IV. That the custom should be restored to them was one of the demands of the Devonshire insurgents in that reign. The churchwardens’ accounts contain many references to this pious practice: the purchase of baskets for the distribution of the bread, for instance, is recorded at St. Michael’s, Cornhill, St. Mary the Great, Cambridge, at Cratfield, and elsewhere. At Bromley, in Surrey, the churchwardens collected from the people the money to furnish the bread. In 1523, for instance, they acknowledge a collection of 2_s._ for this purpose, and double that amount the following year. Evidently, however, the custom which still prevails in France, of families taking it in turn to give the bread to be blessed, was not unknown in England in pre-Reformation days. Dr. Rock quotes from some churchwardens’ accounts of Stamford-in-the-Vale, Berks, to show that the custom was revived in Queen Mary’s days. A piece of land there, “called Gander’s,” provided at least a portion of the expense. “The whole value of the chargis,” says the document, “comyth to 2½_d._ and it is thus divided. They offer to the curatis hand too penyworth of bread with halfepeny candull--brought uppe to the preste at the highe altar. Of the too penyworthe of breade they reserve a halfepenny lofe whole for to be delyvered to the next that shul geve the holy lofe, for a knowledge to prepare against the Sonneday followyng.” The remainder of the Sunday, with the exception of the time--from half an hour to three-quarters--spent in taking part in the Evensong or Vespers, which were probably sung about two or three o’clock in the afternoon, was devoted to rest and reasonable recreation, about which something will be said in a subsequent chapter. For the priest Sunday was the day when by law he had to visit the aged, infirm, and sick in his parish. “Let the priests,” says the Constitution of Gilbert, Bishop of Chichester, in 1289, “see the sick every Sunday and feast day, and let them visit them with diligence. Let them take heed that they make no difficulty about attending to the sick at whatever hour they may be asked for.” This same order is repeated in the Constitutions for the Province of York in 1518, more than two centuries after.