subject.[123]

The strict requirement to report all non-communicants to the official
resulted in the keeping of books in which were written the names of
the parish communicants.[124]

Next in importance to church attendance and the observance of the
sacraments came the duty of all parishioners to contribute to the
parish expenses. We have viewed church courts at work, compelling
wardens to levy church rates; we have now to see how the judges forced
recalcitrant ratepayers to pay the sums assessed upon them to the
wardens or other collectors.

Among the earliest vestry minutes of the parish of St.
Christopher-le-Stocks, London, is one which, after ordering that an
assessment be made for the clerk's wages and for pews, decreed that
any rebellious persons should be summoned before themselves, the
vestry, to be reformed. But if the rebel would not appear, or, on
appearance, remain stubborn to reason, then the churchwardens should
sue him before the ordinary at the parish costs "vntill suche tyme as
he be reduced vnto a good order, and hath paid bothe the costys of the
sute and the chargs that he owith vnto the church...."[125] Fifty
years later we find this vestry ordaining the same procedure to be
followed against parish debtors, and referring to its former
order.[126]

It seems, in fact, to have been the well-understood thing that just as
parish rates to defray the costs of those matters of parish
administration, falling within the province of the ecclesiastical
courts, were to be assessed by the authority, and under the direction,