needy, might be devoted to church and highway repair.[234]

Bequests made to the highways or bridges were considered as donated
_in pios usus_. "I thinke," wrote a prebendary of Durham Cathedral in
1599, "it also a deade of charitie and a comendable worke before God
to repaire the high-wayes, that the people may travaille saifely
without daunger. I therefore will to the mending of the highwayes
[etc.]...."[235]

Noblemen and wealthy men were expected to help maintain the local poor
in particular. Elizabethan ballads celebrate the liberality
to the destitute of an Earl of Huntingdon,[236] of an Earl of
Southampton,[237] or of an Earl of Bedford.[238] At the funeral of
George, Earl of Shrewsbury, in 1591, eight thousand got the dole
served to them, and it was thought that at least twice that number
were in waiting, but could not approach because of the tumult.[239]
The churchwardens and overseers of the poor accounts, especially in
London and the larger cities, abound with receipt items of gifts from
great personages or wealthy merchants.[240]

Owing to the difficulty of investing money because present-day
intermediaries were absent between capital seeking employment and
would-be borrowers; and because the medieval stigma attaching to money
loaned at interest had by no means wholly disappeared,[241] there grew
up in Elizabethan parishes a system of laying out money, raised by the
parish or donated by benefactors, in various trades, such as
wool-spinning, linen-weaving, the buying of wood or coal to sell again
at a profit,[242] etc. Sometimes well-to-do parishioners with good
credit would themselves borrow parish money, returning ten per cent.
for its use.[243] Usually, however, parish money was loaned gratis,