The parish wardens had their duties, also, towards their poorer brethren in the district. In more than one instance they were guardians of a common chest, out of which temporary loans could be obtained by needy parishioners to enable them to tide over pressing difficulties. These loans were secured by pledges and the additional surety of other parishioners. No interest, however, was charged for the use of the money, and in cases where the pledge had to be sold to recover the original sum, anything over and above was returned to the borrower. In other ways, too, the poorer parishioners were assisted by the corporate property of the parish. The stock managed by the wardens “were,” says one of the early English reformers, “in some towns (_i.e._ townships and villages) six, some eight, and some a dozen kine, given unto the stock for the relief of the poor, and used in some such wise that the poor ‘cottingers,’ which could make any provision for fodder, had the milk for a very small hire; and then the number of the stock reserved (that is, of course, the original number being maintained), all manner of vailes (or profits), besides both the hire of the milk and the prices of the young veals and old fat wares, was disposed to the relief of the poor.”[A] To take one or two specific instances. The churchwardens’ accounts for St. Dunstan’s, Canterbury, show how the funds required for the repair of the parish church and other parish work were obtained. The people of the district were banded together in brotherhoods; those that were authorised to beg wore “scutchons,” or badges, and the special fraternity was called the “schaft.” They received anything that was given to them, in kind as well as in money; and the record speaks of malt, barley, wheat, cows, and sheep belonging to the parish. One Nicholas Reugge left, by will, four cows to be let at a rent, the proceeds to pay for the “paschal light,” which the parishioners had to find, and for which they were to be freed from all further obligation. These cows, valued at 10_s._ each, were leased out at 2_s._ apiece. In 1521 a farmer, John Richardson, hired from the wardens twenty-five sheep, and at the same time the people’s representatives accounted for receipts from lambs, wool, etc. Everything goes to show, says Mr. Cowper, the sympathetic editor of these accounts, “what life and activity there was in the little parish, which never wanted willing men to devote their time and influence to the management of their own affairs.” The churchwardens’ accounts generally, it may be added, tell the same story, and show, as one writer has well said, “the simple-mindedness of the population, their cheerful contentment, the general absence of fraud, their religious feelings, and general goodwill towards each other.”