The company seems to have been a useful agency for carrying out all kinds of duties connected with gathering the statistics of mortality, nor do they seem to have been overpaid for their trouble. In the early years of the seventeenth century £ 3. 6 s. 8 d. was all that they received. In 1607 the sum was increased to £8, inasmuch as they were ordered to furnish a bill to the Queen and the Lord Chancellor as well as to the King. Some clerks endeavoured to make illicit gains by supplying the public with "false and untrue bills," or distributing some bills for each week before they had been sent to the Lord Mayor; and any brother who "by any cunning device gave away, dispersed, uttered, or declared, or by sinister device cast forth at any window, hole, or crevice of a wall any bills or notes" before the due returns had been sent to the Lord Mayor, was ordered to pay a fine of 10 s. and other divers penalties. The methods of making out these returns are very curious, and did not conduce to infallible accuracy. In each parish there were persons called searchers, ancient women who were informed by the sexton of a death, and whose duty it was to visit the deceased and state the cause of death. They had no medical knowledge, and therefore their diagnosis could only have been very conjectural. This they reported to the parish clerk. The clerk made out his bill for the week, took it to the Hall of the company, and deposited it in a box on the staircase. All the returns were then tabulated, arranged, and printed, and when copies had been sent to the authorities, others were placed in the hands of the clerks for sale.