126 ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH IN ENGLAND 



Charcler is plainly made to a mass priest who had a chantry 

 in All Saints' Church, Oxford. Some payments are made to 

 the authorities of the town, the bailiffs and chamberlain, and 

 some to private individuals. It was an exceedingly common, 

 one might say an almost universal practice in the middle 

 ages, to charge an estate with a pension, which future pur- 

 chasers had to pay on acquiring the property, and such a 

 custom, when the charge meant a solid interest to the pos- 

 sessor, must have singularly interlocked various individuals in 

 common purposes. Wykeham purchased the manor of Heyford 

 Warren, when he founded his College, and with it the liability 

 charged by its former owners on the estate, of paying five 

 quarters of wheat on All Saints' day to the abbey of Bicester. 

 As the payment continued long after the College had ceased 

 to cultivate the estate, and as the accounts of this estate have 

 been singularly well preserved, these payments of corn, pur- 

 chased by the bailiff of Heyford, or, as is likely, reckoned in 

 money at the market value of corn in that day, have supplied 

 me with a nearly unbroken series of wheat prices till the 

 College commuted the varying charge for an average payment 

 of q6s. %d. It was not infrequently the case that charitable 

 foundations were almost entirely supported by rent charges. 

 Such was the original foundation of the King's Hall in the 

 University of Cambridge. 



The collector it will be seen was charged with the gross sum 

 payable for all the tenements, and even with the arrears of his 

 predecessors in office. These are explained on the back of the 

 roll. Two sums of 18^. and 6os. appear to have been paid 

 after the account, and after the sums allowed in the audit of 

 the collector's moneys for charges due, but unpaid when the 

 account was engrossed. The others are old liabilities in- 

 curred by previous collectors, and regularly entered as arrears 

 from the first year of Henry the Sixth. One of the most 

 constant peculiarities of medieval accounts is the annual 

 re-entry of what we should consider hopelessly bad debts. 

 Perhaps the practice is due to the fact that, at this time, no 



