“At Piddle Hinton, Dorsetshire. An ancient custom is for the Rector to give away, on Old Christmas Day, annually, a pound of bread, a pint of ale, and a mince pie to every poor person in the parish. This distribution is regularly made by the Rector to upwards of 300 persons.” “At Swaffham Bulbeck, Cambridgeshire. Before the enclosure, the tenant of the Abbey Farm in this parish, during those years in which the open field land was under tillage, used to give a slice of cake and a glass of ale to all parishioners who applied for it.” “At Giggleswick, Yorkshire. By the will of William Clapham (1603) 4s. 4d. was left towards a potation for the poor scholars of the Freeschool there on St. George’s Day; and the custom was formerly to give figs, bread, and ale.” “At Edgcott, Buckinghamshire. Robert Marcham, Esq., pays the overseers £3 a year, a rent charge upon an acre of land.” This was formerly distributed to the tenants in the shape of two cakes each, and as much beer as they could drink at the time. “At St. Giles’, Norwich. By the will of John Ballestin, 1584, the {278} rent from three tenements was to be distributed to the poor in the following manner: viz., that in the week before Christmas, the week before Michaelmas, and the week after Easter, in the Church of St. Giles, the Minister should request the poor people, all that should receive or have need of alms, to come to Church, and pray for the preservation of the Prince, &c.; that the poor should place themselves four and four together, all that should be above the age of eleven years, and that every four of them should have set before them a twopenny wheat loaf, a gallon of best beer, and four pounds of beef and broth.” “At Prince’s Risborough, Buckinghamshire. Up to 1813, a Bull and a boar, a sack of Wheat, and a sack of Malt were given away to the poor by the Lord of the Manor, every Christmas morning about six o’clock.” In many houses small beer was always kept to dispense in charity, Ben Jonson, in _The Alchemist_, describes a mean, stingy person as—               . . one who could keep The buttery-hatch still locked, and save the chippings, Sell the _dole_ beer to aqua vitæ men. Visitors at Leicester’s Hospital, Warwick, may have noticed a huge copper beer-tankard reposing on a shelf. This great cup holds six quarts, and is filled with strong ale thrice a year on _gaudy_ days, and passed round among the old brethren, pensioners of the house. In the fourteenth century there was a custom for one of the fishermen engaged upon the river Thames to present a salmon to the Abbot of Westminster once a year. The fisherman who bore the tribute had that day a right to sit at the prior’s table, and might demand bread and ale of the cellarer; the cellarer on his part might take from the fish’s tail as much as he could with “four fingers and his thumb erect.”