One item in the description of the Kelvedon parsonage requires special consideration, and opens up a rather important question as to the domestic economy of the parochial clergy over and above what we have hitherto gleaned. "The convenient chamber for guests" there mentioned was not a best bedroom for any friend who might pay him a visit. It was a provision for the efficient exercise of the hospitality to which the beneficed parochial clergy were bound. It is a subject which perhaps needs a little explanation. In England there were no inns where travellers could obtain food and lodging until the middle of the fourteenth century; and for long after that period they could only be found in the largest and most important towns; and it was held to be a part of the duty of the clergy to "entertain strangers," and be "given to hospitality." It was a charity not very likely to be abused; for, thanks to bad roads, unbridged fords, no inns, wild moors, and vast forests haunted by lawless men, very few travelled, except for serious business; and it was a real act of Christian charity to afford to such travellers the food and shelter which they needed, and would have been hard put to it to have obtained otherwise. The monasteries, we all know, exercised this hospitality on so large a scale, that in order to avoid the interruption a constant succession of guests would have made in the seclusion and regularity of conventual life, they provided special buildings for it, called the hospitium or guest house, a kind of inn within the walls, and they appointed one of the monks, under the name of the hospitaller or guest master, to represent the convent in entertaining the guests. Hermitages also, we have seen, were frequently built along the high roads, especially near bridges and fords, for the purpose of aiding travellers. Along the road which led towards some famous place of pilgrimage hospitals, which were always religious foundations, were founded especially for the entertainment of poor pilgrims. And the parochial clergy were expected to exercise a similar hospitality. Thus in the replies of the rectors of Berkshire to the papal legate, in 1240 A.D., they say that "their churches were endowed and enriched by their patrons with lands and revenues for the especial purpose that the rectors of them should receive guests, rich as well as poor, and show hospitality to laity as well as clergy, according to their means, as the custom of the place required."[316] Again, in 1246, the clergy, on a similar occasion, stated that "a custom has hitherto prevailed, and been observed in England, that the rectors of parochial churches have always been remarkable for hospitality, and have made a practice of supplying food to their parishioners who were in want, ... and if a portion of their benefices be taken away from them, they will be under the necessity of refusing their hospitality, and abandoning their accustomed offices of piety.