The communal nature of eighteenth-century society was expressed in the reciprocal relationship between the responsibilities of the wealthy for their poorer neighbours and the deference owed by the poorer sort to the better sort. Rich people sometimes left very substantial bequests for religious charitable purposes.
Lady Elizabeth Hastings bequeathed an estate at Wheldrake to provide income for exhibitions to maintain five poor students from northern grammar schools at The Queen's College, Oxford, and land valued at £249 a year to support twelve charity schools. She also left communion plate for nine churches and money for other pious and charitable causes. Edward Colston, who died in 1721, left over £25,000 for schools, almshouses, repairing and beautifying churches, sermons, and augmenting poor benefices, as well as doles for individual poor people. His monument notes 'This great and pious Benefactor was known to have done many other excellent charities, and what he did in Secret is believ'd to be not inferior to what he did in Publick.'
The middling sort were also much involved in charitable giving. Some people set aside a proportion of their income for charitable giving. Mary Beale, the portrait painter, and her husband Charles, although they were not particularly well-off, always deducted 10 per cent from payments received for paintings and allotted this amount to cthe pious and charitable account for distribution to the poor'. was reported from Wales to the SPCK, in 1707 that ca Young Lady has begun a Poor Box last year wherein a small part of the Winnings at Cards was putt which at the end of that year amounted to £1 16s. 6d. wherewith some poor Naked Children were Clothed.
William Bulkeley at Llanfechell in Anglesey devoted much energy to charitable giving. No week passed without small gifts to the poor and individual unfortunates. He spent much time and trouble preparing for Christmas charities. As early as July, eighty women were employed at Bryndda spinning, carding and winding wool to be woven into lengths of cloth and blankets. In December 'wethers and ewes' were found and killed for the 'Dole of Flesh', corn put ready, or, if no wind blew to winnow the corn, money provided instead. Lastly the candidates for the charity were selected and, if any were too old or ill to attend at Bryndda, the gifts were taken to them.
Nor was charity merely a rural phenomenon. The network of small parishes in even large towns ensured the close personal knowledge essential for such a personal system of poor relief to work. Charity was central to parish life; modest benefactions abounded. The link with a person's faith is frequently explicitly stated. In his will dated 22 February 1703, William Tracey of Norwich bequeathed the rents and profit of one and a half acres of land for an annual sermon at which 'there shall be distributed among the poor of the said parish so much bread as shall cost is. 6d. and at the same time the clerk shall have 6d. for his trouble'. At St Lawrence, Norwich 'Mrs Eliz: Wickes bequeathed a rent charge of £10 a year for cloathing poor women' in 1738. In 1741 eight women were clothed from material bought to make up 'gowns, shifts, aprons, kerchiefs, hoods, mobbs, petticoats, shoes and stockings'.
Social Beneficence and Religious Vision: People of God and Their Community
