“It is agreed that the clerk shall hereafter gather the Holy Loaf money, or else to have nothing of that money, and to gather all, or else to inform the parish of them that will not pay.”

There seems to have been some difficulty in collecting this money; so it was agreed in 1579-80 that “John Marshall shall every month in the year during the time that he shall be clerk, gather the holy loaf and thereof yield an account to the churchwardens.”

* * * * *

Subsequently we constantly meet with such records as the following: 

“It’m for the holy loffe xiii s. vi d.”

Ultimately, however, this mode of collecting money for the providing of the sacred elements and defraying other expenses of the church was, as we have said, abandoned in favour of pew-rents.  The clerk had long ceased to obtain any benefit from the custom of collecting this curious form of subscription to the parochial expenses.

An interesting document exists in the parish of Stanford-in-the-Vale, Berkshire, relating to the holy loaf.  It was evidently written during the reign of Queen Mary, and runs as follows:—­

“Here following is the order of the giving of the loaves to make holy bread with videlicit of when it beginneth and endeth, what the whole value is, in what portions it is divided, and to whom the portions be due, and though it be written in the fifth part of the division of the book before in the beginning with these words (how money shall be paid towards the charges of the communion) ye shall understand that in the time of the Schism when this Realm was divided from the Catholic Church, the which was in the year of our Lord God in 1547, in the second year of King Edward the Sixth, all godly ceremonies and good uses were taken out of the church within this Realm, and then the money that was bestowed on the holy bread was turned to the use of finding bread and wine for the communion, and then the old order being brought unto his [its] pristine state before this book was written causeth me to write with this term[27].”

[Footnote 27:  The spelling of the words I have ventured to modernise.]

The order of the giving of the loaves is then set forth, beginning at a piece of ground called Ganders and continuing throughout the parish, together with names of the parishioners.  The collecting of this sum must have been an arduous part of the clerk’s duty.  “And thus I make an end of this matter,” as the worthy clergyman at Stanford-in-the-Vale wrote at the conclusion of his carefully drawn up document[28].

[Footnote 28:  A relic of this custom existed in a small town in Dorset fifty years ago.  At Easter the clerk used to leave at the house of each pew-holder a packet of Easter cakes—­thin wafery biscuits, not unlike Jewish Pass-over cakes.  The packet varied according to the size of the family and the depth of the master’s purse.  When the fussy little clerk called for his Easter offering, at one house he found 5 s. waiting for him, as a kind of payment for five cakes.  The shilling’s were quickly transferred to the clerk’s pocket, who remarked, “Five shilling’s is handsome for the clerk, sir; but the vicar only takes gold.”