from the neighbors or from the wardens of near-by parishes, for, as
will presently be seen, provident churchwardens derived some income
from the hiring of the parish pewter as well as money from the loan of
parish costumes and stage properties. When the opening day arrived
people streamed in from far and wide. If any important personage or
delegation from another village were expected, the parish went forth
in a body with bag-pipes to greet them, and (with permission from the
ecclesiastical authorities) the church bells were merrily rung out. At
the long tables, when the ale was set abroach, "well is he," writes a
contemporary, "that can get the soonest to it, and spend the most at
it, for he that sitteth the closest to it, and spendes the most at it,
hee is counted the godliest man of all the rest ... because it is
spent uppon his Church forsooth."[249] The receipts from these ales
were sometimes very large. So important were they at Chagford, Devon,
that the churchwardens were sometimes called alewardens.[250] At Mere,
Wilts, out of a total wardens' receipts of £21 5s. 7-1/2d. for the two
years 1559-61, the two church-ales netted £17 3s. 1-1/2d.,[251] thus
leaving only £5 2s. 6d. as receipts from other sources for these two
years. At a later period, on the other hand, this relation of receipts
was entirely reversed. For instance, in 1582-3 the wardens secured
only £4 10s. 4d. from their ale, while proceeds from other sources
amounted to £17 9s. 7d.[252]

In the thirty-one years from 1556-7 to 1587-8 in this parish the
recorded wardens' expenditures had more than doubled. In the
first-named year they had been but £8 I2s. 5d.;[253] in the latter
year they had swelled to £18 14s 3-1/2d.[254] This characteristic is
true of all Elizabethan church budgets, and the writer has seen a
number of them.[255] The Wootton churchwardens enter under the year
1600 the following: "Rec. by our Kingale, all things discharged, xij