MAUNDY GIFTS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 142, 18 May 1932, Page 2

MAUNDY GIFTS.

AN OLD CUSTOM..

By attending the distribution of the Maundy Pennies at Westminster Abbey on Holy Thursday, the King and Queen revived a Royal custom which has been in abeyance for over 200 years. According to English practice, as many men and as many women as there are years in the King’s age—67, this year—each received 67 pence in Maundy money and an allowance of fifty shillings in lieu of food and clothing. The giving of alms to the poor on Maundy Thursday, called in England, “making the Maund,” lias been general in Christendom since not long after the end of the fourth century for Pope, kings, bishops and nobles. In earlier and hardier times the ceremony was not considered complete unless the King washed the feet of the recipients in commemoration of the washing of the Apostles’ feet by the Saviour. Thus it was the custom of the ruler to wash the feet of as many poor men as he was years old, and to bestow on them gifts of meat, money and clothes—the advantages, naturally, lying with monarchs of tender years. James 11. was the last British monarch who personally performed the ablution, William 111. delegating that office, and also the giving of alms, to his High Almoner. The custom of washing the feet was definitely “dropped” in 1754. The ceremony, which formerly took place in the Chapel Royal, has been held for many years in the Abbey, where tho red and white purses containing the pennies aro carried in baskets by Yeomen of tho Guard. Incidentally, the pennies are of the old type with unmilled edges and come straight from the Mint for the distribution.