“The immense treasures in the churches,” writes Dr. Jessopp, “were the joy and boast of every man and woman and child in England, who, day by day and week by week, assembled to worship in the old houses of God which they and their fathers had built, and whose every vestment and chalice, and candlestick and banner, organ and bells, and pictures and images, and altar and shrine, they look upon as their own, and part of their birthright.” It might reasonably be supposed that this was true only of the greater churches; but this is not so. What strikes one so much in these parish accounts of bygone days is the richness of even small, out-of-the-way village churches. Where we would naturally be inclined to look for poverty and meanness, there is evidence to the contrary. To take an example or two. Morebath is a small, uplandish, remote parish of little importance on the borders of Exmoor; the population, for the most part, have spent their energies in daily labour to secure the bare necessaries of life, and riches, at any rate, could never have been abundant. Morebath may consequently be taken as a fair sample of an obscure and poor village. For this hamlet we possess full accounts from the year 1530, and we find that at this time, and in this very poor, out-of-the-way place, there were no less than eight separate accounts kept of money intended for the support of different altars of devotions. For example, we have the “Stores” of the Chapels of our Lady and St. George, etc., and the Gilds of the young men and maidens of the parish. All these were kept and managed by the lay-elected officials of the societies--confraternities, I suppose, we should call them--and to their credit are entered numerous gifts of money and specific gifts of value of kind, such as cows, and swarms of bees, etc. Most of them had their little capital funds invested in cattle and sheep, the rent of which proved a considerable part of their revenues. In a word, these accounts furnish abundant and unmistakeable evidence of the active and intelligent interest in the duty of supporting and adorning their church on the part of these simple country folk at large. What is true of this is true of every other similar account to a greater or less degree, and all these accounts show unmistakeably that the entire management of these parish funds was in the hands of the people.