All save richly-endowed houses were dependent upon [p186] casual charity. In St. Mary’s, Yarmouth, it is recorded “live a multitude of poor brethren and sisters, for whose sustenance a daily quest has to be made.” One of the London statutes, enrolled in _Liber Albus_, directs that lepers shall have a common attorney to go every Sunday into the parish-churches to gather alms for their sustenance. Lest charitable offerings should diminish when lepers were removed from sight, a clause was added to the proclamation of 1348:—“it is the king’s intention that all who wish to give alms to lepers shall do so freely, and the sheriff shall incite the men of his bailiwick to give alms to those so expelled from the communion of men.” It would appear from a London will of 1369, that special chests were afterwards provided; for bequests are then made to the alms-boxes (_pixidibus_) for lepers around London. Alms-boxes were carried about by collectors, and also hung at the gate or within the hospital. The proctor of the staff went on his mission with a portable money-box; upon one occasion, a false proctor was convicted of pretending to collect for St. Mary of Bethlehem, for which fraud he was pilloried, the iron-bound box with which he had paraded the streets being tied round his neck. Boxes of this kind, sometimes having a chain attached, remain in almshouses at Canterbury, Leicester and Stamford. It was directed by the statutes of Higham Ferrers that a common box with a hole in the top should be set in the midst of the dormitory so that well-disposed people might put in their charity; at certain times also two of the poor men were to “go abroad to gather up the devotions of the brotherhood,” the contents being afterwards divided. (b) _Small Subscriptions._—Some fraternities formed [p187] associations for the maintenance of charities. That of St. John Baptist, Winchester, helped to support St. John’s hospital with the shillings contributed by its 107 members. The modern hospital of St. Leonard, Bedford, is kept up on this principle.