The Cumnor Christmas feast

After evening service on Christmas Day the tithe-paying parishioners of Cumnor went to the vicarage to be given bread, cheese and ale. It was not the vicar’s charity but the parishioners’ right, and even the quantities were fixed: four bushels of malt brewed into ale and small beer, two bushels of wheat baked into bread and half a hundredweight of cheese. Whatever was left was given to the poor after morning prayers the next day.