Robert Rogers devised in 1601 the sum of L.400 to the Leathersellers'
Company, 'to be employed in lands, the best pennyworth they could
get;' and that the house should have 40s. of it a year for ever. The
remainder was to be bestowed upon poor scholars, students of
divinity--two of Oxford, and two of Cambridge, for four years; and
after them to two others of each university; and after them, to
others; and so on for ever. He also, by the same will, devised L.200
to be lent to four young men, merchant adventurers, at L.6, 13s. 4d.,
for the L.200, interest. The whole of the interest was to be spent in
bread--to be distributed among poor prisoners--and coal for poor
persons, with the exception of some small fees and gratuities to the
parish clerk and beadle, for their trouble in carrying out his
intentions.

Lewisham, once a town in Kent, but now nothing more than a suburb of
London, enjoys the benefactions of the Rev. Abraham Colfe, who, in
1656, bequeathed property for the maintenance of numerous charities.
Some of them are singularly characteristic. Having provided for the
erection of three strong alms-houses, he directed that certain
alms-bodies should be periodically chosen, who were to be 'godly poor
inhabitants of Lewisham, and being single persons, and threescore
years old, past their hard bodily labour, and able to say the Lord's
Prayer, the Belief, and the Ten Commandments,' &c. &c. All these
alms-bodies were to have '3d. each allowed them every day for their
comfortable sustenance--that is, 21d. a week--to be paid them every
month during their _single_ life, and as long as they should behave
themselves honestly and godly, and duly frequent the parish church.'
They were to be summarily removed if guilty of profane or wicked
conduct. The alms-bodies were not to exceed five in number at any one