The only consolation, we may feel, was that a portion of the money that war yielded was used to obliviate the penury of wretched almsmen.
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Several instances of married almsmen are recorded, but this was prohibited in 1717–18. The almshouses were administered by a group of thirteen trustees appointed by Wright; the original trustees included several members of the Wright family, representatives of other prominent Nantwich families including the Maistersons, Wilbrahams and Churches, and the minister of St Mary's Church. Whenever eight of the thirteen trustees had died, the surviving trustees were to elect another eight men to replace them. As with the almsmen, men related to Wright or bearing that surname were to be preferred.
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Blacklay, pp. 33–35Hall, p. 21 By 1774, the almsmen received 40 shillings and a pair of shoes annually, and a grey gown faced with blue and cap every two years. In 1856, the almshouses' endowment was considerably increased by a bequest of £738 13s 7d from Elizabeth and Mary Bennion, sisters of the wife of St Mary's minister.
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In Scotland there were public almsmen supported by the king and expected in return to pray for his welfare and that of the state. These men wore long blue gowns with a pewter badge on the right arm, and were nicknamed Blue Gowns. Their number corresponded to the king's years, an extra one being added each royal birthday. They were privileged to ask alms throughout Scotland.
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To this end he had elected to make studies of groups of people 'doing something or other', studies that had something 'nice and sociable about them'.Hulsker (1980) p. 58Naifeh and Smith (2011) p. 313 He wrote of this painting: In the same letter he also mentioned that he was working on a painting of a church pew that he had seen in a small church in the Geest where the almsmen went.
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The action in the book is set around the time the school was built. Ewelme School is said to be the oldest school building in the UK still in use as a local authority school.Ewelme C of E Primary School The almshouses are officially called "The Two Chaplains and Thirteen Poor Men of Ewelme in the County of Oxford". The thirteen almsmen have now been reduced to eight, but the building is still run as a charity by the Ewelme Trust.
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Dollier de Casson and Brehan de Gallinée explored the region of the Great Lakes (1669), of which they made a map. In 1676 the mission of the Mountain was opened on the site of the present seminary, where M. Belmont built a fort (1685). The brandy traffic necessitated the removal of this fixed mission and in 1720 it was transferred to Lac-des-Deux-Montagnes. The Sulpicians served as missionaries, judges, explorers, schoolteachers, social workers, supervisors of convents, almsmen, canal builders, urban planners, colonization agents, and entrepreneurs.
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Numerous rules governed the behaviour of the charity recipients, and fines, suspension or even expulsion for infractions are all recorded. Twice-daily prayers and (for the able bodied), regular attendance at church services were required, while the rules prohibited marriage, "swearing, Drunkenness, and all such scandalous Vices" and keeping "any Woman as an Harlot". An annual inspection took place on 24 November, the anniversary of Wright's baptism, followed by a feast. By 1883, 197 men had been almsmen, of whom fifteen were named Wright.
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The Bedesmen were almsmen who received support from the local community. In Old Aberdeen, the main pillars of the community were the church, the Church of St Machar also now known as St Machar’s Cathedral, and the Town Council. Latterly, the Principal of the University and the Minister of St Machar’s Cathedral have until recently acted as a committee to ensure the Bedesmen were looked after. In an article in the local press in 1968, Cuthbert Graham claims the Bedesmen only lived in the house for a few decades.
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Hulsker (1980) p. 62 Van Gogh went on to say that almsmen in that district were known as 'orphan men', and said he had taken on a bald, deaf, old orphan man with white sideboards as a model, providing a little scratch (left) of his bald head in his letter. This was Zuyderland (above left), who went on to feature in dozens of subsequent studies over the following winter months. He is the figure in a top hat to the right in the letter sketch for State Lottery (above left), and appears in profile, recognisable by his trademark whiskers, in the watercolor itself.
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Additionally, increases in the original endowment by bequests from Peter Sprout and from Elizabeth and Mary Bennion, respectively, resulted in an extra £2 per head plus a share of £21 10s annually. According to a scheme dated 23 June 1870, the single trustee of the Wilbraham Almshouse Charity was John Tollemache, who selected the almsmen; the Tollemache family continued to maintain the almshouses until 1978. In 1975, the almshouses were self-supporting, with a total annual income from maintenance contributions of just over £700, in addition to £18.30 from the Tollemache estate at Peckforton and £20 from the charity established by the Bennions.
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12 Four of the six almsmen were to be chosen from Nantwich, and two from the parish of Acton. Each almsman originally received four marks (£2 13s 4d) annually (according to William Webb, five marks, or £3 6s 8d), as well as a gown every two years. The same year, he also founded a pair of almshouses in the village of Acton.Lamberton & Gray, pp. 11–12Simpson, plate 113 The original Nantwich almshouse was: It might have been more similar to the existing appearance of the Acton almshouses than to the much-altered building surviving on Welsh Row. Webb described each almshouse in 1622 as "an handsome lodging" with "a little garden".
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In 1543, following the Dissolution, with part of it having already been demolished, Bell had purchased the site and an adjoining cottage from the Crown.Letters & Papers Henry VIII, xviii (2), p.107. In 1559, by then an old man, perhaps as a final charitable gesture to ease his path to Heaven, Bell built a "Hospital" or almshouse to the east of the cottage, comprising a low terrace of five individual rooms each with its own front door. ("Hospital" in this ancient sense refers to the function of sheltering guests, from the Latin hospes, a stranger, foreigner, hence a guest.) The original cottage itself formed a 6th almshouse, the body of the chapel being used by the almsmen for prayers.
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Like the earlier almshouses, they accommodated six men; four were from Nantwich and two from the neighbouring village of Acton.Kelly's Directory (1892) In the 1880s, the inhabitants were old married men; their widows were allowed to remain provided that they "conduct themselves properly." Historian James Hall describes the almshouses at that time as "comfortable dwellings of two stories, with their gardens in front" which were "an ornament to the west end of the town". In 1892, the total annual endowment of the original charity was £12. The almsmen each received 10 shillings quarterly, a pair of shoes annually and £1 4s 6d every two years for other clothing from the Tollemache family.
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Bancroft's School in Woodford Green The school was founded in 1737, following the 1728 death of Francis Bancroft,The Drapers' Company – Francis Bancroft's Trust. Retrieved May 2008 who bequeathed a sizeable sum of money to the Drapers' Company, which continues to act as trustee for the school. Bancroft's began in the Mile End Road in London's East End as a small charitable day school for boys, with an attached almshouse. The foundation was originally known as Bancroft's Hospital and until the late 19th century also acted as home for almsmen who had been freemen of the Company of Drapers. In 1884 the almshouse was abolished and the school moved to a new site at Woodford Green and the original buildings were demolished; the site is now occupied by Queen Mary, University of London.
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Later trustees included local architect, Thomas Bower.Hall, pp. 363–65 In 1666–68, a stone gateway and an inscribed tablet with a coat of arms were added by the trustees at a total cost of just over £4, paid for by keeping some of the houses vacant. Detail of terrace showing stone panel In 1800, a female caretaker was appointed who lived in one of the houses and looked after the almsmen. As the charity's endowment was fixed at £32, the pension did not increase from the original 20 shillings quarterly, except in being supplemented with a weekly sixpenny loaf from 1795. By the early 19th century, it proved entirely inadequate; some pensioners left the almshouses for the workhouse, while others "died in great poverty and neglect". A gift from William Sprout in 1829 increased the pension to £10 annually, improving the standard of living from the original foundation. Maintenance suffered during the Second World War and, by the early 1960s, the Wright's Almshouses had become dilapidated.
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In 1474 Waynflete, being the principal executor of Sir John Fastolf, who died in 1459 leaving a much-contested will, procured the conversion of his bequest for a collegiate church of seven priests and seven almsmen at Caistor, Norfolk, into one for seven fellows and seven poor scholars at Magdalen. In the same year the college took possession of the alien priory of Sele, in what is now Upper Beeding, Sussex, the proceedings for the suppression of which had been going on since 1469. The new, now the old, buildings at Magdalen were begun the same year, the foundation-stone being laid in the middle of the high altar on 5 May 1474. Licences from 1477 to authorized additions to the endowment. On 23 August 1480, the college being completed, the great west window being contracted to be made after the fashion of that at All Souls' College, a new president, Richard Mayew, fellow of New College, was installed on 23 August 1480, and statutes were promulgated.
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Here he seems to have been so much impressed with Waynflete that by the autumn Waynflete had ceased to be headmaster of Winchester. In October he was dining in the hall there as a guest, and at Christmas 1442 he received a royal livery, five yards of violet cloth, as provost of Eton. Under the influence of Archbishop Chichele (who had himself founded two colleges in imitation of Wykeham); Thomas Bekynton, the king's secretary and privy seal; and other Wykehamists, Henry VI, on 11 October 1440, founded, in imitation of Winchester College, a college in the parish church of Eton by Windsor (not far from his own birthplace) called the King's College of the Blessed Mary of Eton by Windsor, as a sort of first-fruits of his taking the government on himself. The college was to consist of a provost, 10 priests, 6 choristers, 25 poor and needy scholars, 25 almsmen and a magister informator (later "headmaster") to teach (Latin) grammar to the foundation scholars and to all others coming from any part of England, at no cost. On 5 March 1440/41, the king endowed the college with some £500 a year taken from the alien priories: almost exactly the amount of the original endowment of Winchester.
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