THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB. 139
estimated sum of £5 4s. yearly, to be distributed each year in bread,
chargeable on 6 acres 1 rood of land in Witherings Mead, Plaistow. Nicholas
Avenon was a merchant tailor of London: his Charity, founded during
his life-time in 1580, provided that the rents and profits of the pasture-
land donated were to be "gyven or dystrybuted weekeley for ever uppon
"everye Sabboth daye in theforenone of the same daye at or in the nether
"parte of the parryshe Churche of Westham aforesaid to and amongeste
"foure and twentie of the poore and needy folke or psons of the same
"parryshe such as in their [his trustees'] judgmente shall seeme to stand
"moste in nede thereof two shillinges in loaves of breade for their releife
"succour and comforte that is to say to everye of the said foure and
"twentie psons one penye loafe of breade And the residue of the pfitt
"thereof yf anye shall aryse and growe oute of the said prmysses over
''and above the said some of two shillings a weke the same to be employed
"for and towards the charges of a Sermon once everye yere to be made
"within the same parryshe Churche."
In the course of time, by the increase in value of land so near London,
the income of the Trust (which even in 1709 amounted to only £7..4) became
considerably increased. In 1834 an investigation by the Charity Com-
missioners showed that the income was then £21, of which £5 4s. was still
expended in loaves for the poor, the Vicar of West Ham retaining the
balance for himself in respect of his Ash Wednesday sermon!
To-day there are 144 leasehold houses built on the aforetime pasture
land, the ground-rents of which amount to £321 15s. per annum. Not
until after repeated legal proceedings was a scheme finally drawn up by
Order of the Court of Chancery in 1912 for the future equitable adminis-
tration of this Charity and the apportionment of its funds, the bulk of
which is now allotted for church purposes in the Borough of West Ham.
On the north wall of the North Chapel is a monument to Captain
Robert Rooke, 1630, in armour, with his two wives and seven children,
the effigies being mutilated. The Rooke family owned in the 16th and
17th centuries a mansion "Rooke Hall," which stood on the same site
as the later "Ham House," in what is to-day West Ham Park. This
monument is partly masked by the organ.
Against the east wall of the North Chapel is an imposing marble
monument to Sir Thomas Foot, Bart., 1688, Lord Mayor of London in
1659, and wife Elizabeth, 1667, with their life-sized effigies. An inscrip-
tion records that they successfully married off all their four daughters to
titled husbands!
In the South Chapel is a handsome monument to another Lord Mayor
of London (1684), Sir James Smyth, Kt., whose family resided at the
mansion known as "Upton House," afterwards as "Ham House," the
home of Dr. Fothergill and Samuel Gurney.
A marble tablet on the south wall commemorates Sir John Henry
Pelly, Bart., F.R.S. (1777-1852), Governor of the Bank of England,
Governor of the Hudson Bay Company, and Deputy Master of the Cor-
poration of Trinity House, whose body, however, is buried, not here, but
at Plaistow.
In the Chancel, too, is an imposing 18th century monument to members
of the Buckeridge family.