Certain circumstances raised the cost to him above the average, and he was away more than a year and a half, whereas the journey would be done within the year ordinarily. On the other hand, as his brother died near Aleppo, the return-journey represents the expenditure of one man instead of two. How a thrifty man who was used to roughing it would be forced to spend the equivalent of one thousand pounds or more on a journey that would nowadays cost him about sixty-five pounds is partly explained by the exactions of the Turks. When Sandys was at Jerusalem the monks of S. Salvatore had just been compelled to pay eight hundred dollars [£900] for an imaginary offence. When Lithgow arrived late one night after the gates had been shut, the friars let down food to him over the wall; the Turks, being informed of this, insisted they must have been importing weapons, and inflicted another fine, one hundred piasters [£125]. It is not surprising, then, that with expenses like these, and ordinary expenses to match, the monks expected sums from the pilgrims that seem at first sight outrageous. To Lithgow they made a definite charge of a piaster [£1 10s.] a day for board and lodging alone; but their general custom was to throw themselves on the traveller's generosity and grumble at the result. Neither did the Franks suffer from indirect exactions only. The price for entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre went on increasing, from nothing at all in the fourteenth century to four zecchini [£10] in 1606. Some mention fees of four times that amount, but this higher sum included the toll at the city gate, the two being collected simultaneously and so mistaken for one charge: the Turks farmed the revenue from the Holy Sepulchre for eight thousand sultanons [over £19,000], says Sandys. Extras were almost endless, yet very few of them left any change out of a gold coin; the fee for the certificate of visitation, without which the poorest pilgrim would not think of departing, was three zecchini [seven guineas], while the knighthood, nominally thirty zecchini, does not seem to have been granted for less than ten. The monastery servants were liable to excommunication if they accepted a tip, but they gladly risked damnation for a zecchino, and, indeed, insisted on doing so.