The Meek Charity
Robert Meek was a
yeoman farmer owning parcels of land in Tasburgh, Tharston and Stratton. He made his Will on 17th February
1598 when he was already "sick in body but of good and perfect remembrance" but
rather than signing it with his name, he made his mark on each page, which
suggests he may have come from humble circumstances. Certainly he was mindful of
the needs of those less fortunate than himself, because after asking that he be
buried inside Tasburgh church, he directed that any poor person who came to his
funeral should receive five (pre-decimal) pence, and in the legacy to his
nephew Thomas Meek he charged his lands with the annual payment of £2 of "good
English money" in perpetuity to the churchwardens of Tasburgh for the use of
the poor. By modern standards, such sums seem modest but at the time they were
reasonably substantial; in those days for example, five (old) pence was roughly
a day's wages for an agricultural labourer, so £2 would have represented three
month's wages.
Francis Blomfield in his History of Norfolk written at the end of the 18th century records that there was a brass plate in the chancel of Tasburgh church which read "Under this stone lieth the Body of Robert Meek, who in his Life-time and after his death for ever, gave liberally to the Poor of this Parish; he was buried the 26th of August 1598" so clearly he was well regarded because a burial within the church, and especially in the chancel, was only granted to persons of merit. The brass plate is no longer visible because the level of the chancel floor was raised and paved in the 1930s.
An 1834 report into charities in Norfolk records that the churchwardens were then receiving 35 shillings from William Gwyn, who owned Tasburgh Hall and Elms Farm on Fairstead Lane, and 5 shillings from the Reverend Philip Stannard, who lived at Tasburgh House but also owned Old Hall Farm and land to the east of the main road, ie still the original £2 in total. Although the extent of the land owned by those individuals is known, it isn't possible to say which parts were originally owned by Robert Meek, and therefore who should now be responsible for making payment to the churchwardens. Quite when payments ceased to be collected isn't clear, but the Meek Charity wasn't one of those specifically incorporated as part of Tasburgh United Charities in 1928, which might suggest that by then the sums due were no longer being collected.
If the churchwardens or the Parish Council had forgotten, the Charity Commission certainly hadn't, because following the Charities Act of 1960 they wrote in 1965 to enquire why the Meek Charity hadn't been registered in accordance with the requirements of the Act. There followed prolonged correspondence between the Rector and the Commission indicating that the church records showed no involvement since at least 1879 by when responsibility was said to have passed from the churchwardens to the Parish Council and that the charity may have become part of the Poor's or Town Land Charity. This seems unlikely as the accounting records of Tasburgh United Charities, which included the Poor's Lands Charity, show no receipts in 1928/9 other than rents for pieces of land actually owned by them. The charity has now been removed from the Charity Commission's register.