ws:

"Rec. of money gathered for the holy lofe ix s. iiij d."

At St. Mary's Church there is a constant allusion to this practice from
the year 1566-7 to 1617-18, after which date the payment for the
"holilofe" seems to have been merged in the charge for seats. In 1567-8
the following resolution was passed:

"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 t