and made the following gifts to the church:  ’Item, I bequeth to the high aulter of Coxhall Chirche in recompence of tithes and all oder thyngs forgoten, Summa iiij li.  Item, I bequethe to the Tabernacle of the Trenyte at the high awlter and an other of Seint Margarete in seint Katryne Ile, there as the great Lady stands, for carvyng and gildyng of them summa c. marcs sterlinge.  Item, to the reparacons of the Chirch and bells and for my lying in the Chirche summa c. nobles.’  He founded a chantry there also and left money to be given weekly to six poor men to attend Mass in his chantry thrice a week.

Of piety and of family pride these legacies to religious houses and to churches speak clearly.  Another series of legacies, which takes a form characteristic of medieval charity, bears witness perhaps to Thomas Paycocke’s habits.  He must often have ridden abroad, to see the folk who worked for him or to visit his friends in the villages round Coggeshall; or farther afield to Clare, first to see the home of his ancestors, then to court Margaret Horrold, his bride, and then, with Margaret beside him, to visit his well-loved father-in-law.  Certainly, whether he walked to church in Coggeshall, or whether he rode along the country lanes, he often sighed over the state of the road as he went; often he must have struggled through torrents of mud in winter or stumbled among holes in summer; for in the Middle Ages the care of the roads was a matter for private or ecclesiastical charity, and all except the great highways were likely to be but indifferently kept.  Langland, in his Piers Plowman, mentions the amending of ‘wikked wayes’ (by which he means not bad habits but bad roads) as one of those works of charity which rich merchants must do for the salvation of their souls.  Thomas Paycocke’s choice of roads no doubt reflects many a wearisome journey, from which he returned home splashed and testy, to the ministrations of ’John Reyner my man’ or ‘Henry Briggs my servant’, and of Margaret, looking anxiously from her oriel window for his return.  In his own town he leaves no less than forty pounds, of which twenty pounds was to go to amend a section of West Street (where his house stood), and the other twenty was ’to be layde on the fowle wayes bitwene Coxhall and Blackwater where as moost nede ys’; he had doubtless experienced the evils of this road on his way to the abbey.  Farther afield, he leaves twenty pounds for the ‘fowle way’ between Clare and Ovington, and another twenty for the road between Ovington and Beauchamp St Pauls.

As his life drew to its close he doubtless rode less often afield.  The days would pass peacefully for him; his business flourished and he was everywhere loved and respected.  He took pride in his lovely house, adding bit by bit to its beauties.  In the cool of the evening he must often have stood outside the garden room and seen the monks from the big abbey fishing in their stewpond across the field, or lifted