| Share page |
|
98 |
HISTORY OF EAST GRINSTEAD. |
||
|
feasting, excessive drinking, swearing and frequenting taverns. The doors were to be open in the winter from seven a.m. to seven p.m., and in the summer an hour earlier and an hour later. The hour of closing in the summer is now nine p.m. All fines were to be put in a "box or hutch" fixed in the chapel, and were to go towards the College repairs. The first record of the opening of this box is on June 12th, 1718, when it was found to contain only 5s. 9d. During the next 12 years, however, the fines amounted to £26. The fines box has long ceased to exist.
The College had not long been established before it became involved in a disastrous series of law - suits lasting over 60 years. The founder's son, Earl Richard, sold many of the family estates and the purchasers were not told, or said they were not told, of the rent charges on the land and which formed the sole income of the College. They declined to pay, so the inmates appointed Thomas Maynard and William Vargis to commence action. On February 8th, 1631, the Court of Chancery ordered Lord William Howard, the surviving executor under Earl Roberts' will, to make good the yearly sum of £330. The order seems to have had but little effect, for it is on record that on July 5th, 1632, the poor brethren were "left destitute of all relief and maintenance and are ready to perish for want of bread." The Court thereupon ordered Lord William to pay up £200 at once or go to prison. He paid the money. Then came the Civil Wars and the impossibility of enforcing the decrees of any Court of Law. Once more money failed to come in. The College inmates were reduced to the lowest possible state of destitution and five of them actually died of starvation. Their condition at this time is thus described in an affidavit, dated November 3rd, 1648, by Emery Allen, one of the inmates, who affirmed that:—
William Vergis, late Warden of the College, lived in great want and misery because the pay was detained from the College and was forced to pawn or sell his gown for bread, and had not wherewith to subsist, but did merely starve for want of subsistence, having nothing |
|||