In an old parish book of Sulhamstead are entries of the following collections: 1670. Collected towards the redemption of English captives in Turkey; and, again, in 1680, a similar collection took place. It puzzled me much why such a small Berkshire parish should subscribe so liberally for the release of slaves; but this was explained on discovering that Turkish pirates infested the seas, and even landed with impunity on the Western coasts, and carried off prisoners, both men and women, to become slaves. The main road to the West ran through Berkshire; travellers along it doubtless brought tales of such wild deeds, which lost nothing in the telling, and excited the sympathy of the country-folk. In 1699 money was again collected; this time to redeem 300 captives detained by the King of Morocco. In 1678 funds were collected towards the rebuilding of St. Paul’s Cathedral, destroyed twelve years previously in the Great Fire of London. Many papists all over England added their contributions to this collection. 1699. Collection was made for the French refugees and Vaudois settled in Switzerland, who had fled at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. To inhabitants of Sulhamstead village this may have had a keener interest in that Samuel Morland, afterwards made a baronet, the son of a former rector, Rev. Thomas Morland, was sent out by Government in 1655 to inquire into the condition of the Waldenses, and he wrote thereon a book descriptive of the country and its inhabitants. Martin Morland, another son of the rector, had returned to his old home--at the Restoration; he resigned his living in 1665--for here two of his sons were born. 1687. Brief for loss by fire in Aylesford. 1689. Loss by fire at Bishops Lavington, Wilts. 1690. Ditto, East Smithfield. Town of Stafford. Town of Bungay, Suffolk. 1690. In the parish of St. George’s, in the borough of Southwark. In the Town of St. Ives, Huntingdonshire. Five collections for fires in different counties made in one small parish within a year! In 1703, brief for refugees in the Principality of Orange. After 1703 the givers’ names are no longer entered. The parish doctor was regularly engaged by the churchwardens. In 1774 the agreement for Sulhamstead was made and signed by the doctor, and witnessed that he ‘should do the business of surgery and apothecary, broken bones excepted, for the yearly sum of five guineas’! No wonder that these hard-worked physicians lacked skill, and relied more upon practice than education for what talent they did possess.