We occasionally, though rarely, meet with ancient charity-boxes of a date
anterior to the Reformation: the churches of Wickmere, Loddon, and
Causton, in Norfolk, still retain such[226-*]. At the Reformation,
however, they were first required to be set up in churches. The ancient
poor-box in Trinity Church, Coventry, is an excellent specimen of the
Elizabethan era, and the shaft which supports it is of stone, covered with
arabesque scroll-work and other detail peculiar to that age; but most of
the old charity-boxes are of the seventeenth century.
[Illustration: Ancient Charity-box, Trinity Church, Coventry.]
Towards the close of the sixteenth century the practice of preaching by an
hour-glass, set in an iron frame affixed to the pulpit or projecting from
the wall near it, began to prevail; and in the succeeding century this
practice became quite common. In the churchwardens' accounts for St.
Mary's Church, Lambeth, occurs the following: "A. 1579, Payde to Yorke for
the frame on which the hower standeth,--..1..4;" and in the churchwardens'
accounts of St. Helen's Church, Abingdon, is an item, "Anno MDXCI. payde
for an houre glass for the pilpit, 4_d._" In the parochial accounts for
St. Mary's, Shrewsbury, A. D. 1597, is a charge "for removing the desk and
other necessaries about the pulpit, and for makeinge a thing for the hower
glasse, 9_d.
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