Conviviality and charity in medieval and early modern England - response to Judith M. Bennett, Past and Present, no. 134, February 1992

Medieval help-ales were not the solution, even in part, to the mystery of the survival of the poor, because those whose lives were at risk were not involved. In times of general impoverishment, when survival was an issue for entire layers of peasant society, help-ales tended to disappear. They multiplied in good seasons and years, and benefited men--and a few women--whether honest or not, who had friends with some spare cash, and who were in a position to reciprocate. We do not know how poor--or how rich--these beneficiaries were or what sort of monetary needs they resolved by their whip-rounds. The Wakefield court rolls suggest that organizers and participants operated at various economic levels in distinct circles. Help-ales raised funds which could vary from the quite substantial to the very modest, according to the size of the party and the economic ability of the circle. The poor, and not just the disreputable poor, were excluded by the high prices charged for the ale. The `profit' obtained amounted to a number of gifts or loans which followed the rules of multiple-reciprocity exchanges within the group rather than the rules relating to almsgiving, as is clear from contemporary sources on the theory and the practice of both gift and help exchanges, and of charity and almsgiving. Only by a series of semantic shifts, from `help' to `aid' to `poor relief' to `charity' to `almsgiving', could we treat these concepts as if they were one and the same thing. Medieval people could and did distinguish, as we do, between different motives and actions, however blurred the boundaries between them might have been.

We do not really know whether help-ales, which could be quite small, `celebrated the cohesiveness of communities'. This conclusion, while predictable, may be based on undue generalizations and ambiguous meanings attributed to terms; moreover, it does not appear to be supported by the medieval sources, which rather suggest that help-ales served as a mutual-help practice within separate groups at unequal levels.

(1) Judith M. Bennett, `Conviviality and Charity in Medieval and Early Modern England', Past and Present, no. 134 (Feb. 1992).

(2) Ibid., 38, 39.

(3) Christopher Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989), 257.

(4) The large manor of Wakefield belonged successively to the Warennes, the crown the Lancasters and again the crown. It was divided into twelve graveships and contained several sub-manors, extending from the area around Wakefield in the east to the upper Calderdale, bordering on Lancashire in the west. It held tourns in four towns: Wakefield, Kirkburton, Brighouse and Halifax.

(5) Bennett, `Conviviality and Charity', 28, 40, n. 53. Bennett seems to stretch the evidence on the participation of women in parish ales. A woman employed for the preparation of the event is neither a contributor nor a beneficiary. To prevent misinterpretations, it should be made clear that the `women's gatherings' at St Mary at Hill were not gatherings of women but gatherings of money for the benefit of the parish. These gatherings were unrelated to ales.