ABSTRACT
The largest amount of institutional charity in England throughout the Middle Ages was administered by the religious houses. But there have been only limited attempts to quantify and qualify the amounts of income redistributed from the monastic endowments to the poorest members of society in the form of charity. This is partly due to a restriction of the source material as very few monastic houses have good series of surviving internal accounts. However, there are various sources that do allow for analyses of monastic charitable provision at a national and localised scale from the twelfth century onwards. In terms of quantitative analysis the administrative records of Westminster Abbey and Norwich Cathedral Priory provide sufficient data to allow reasonable measurements of monastic poor relief at these two Benedictine houses from the late thirteenth century to the Dissolution. Although these monasteries were somewhat atypical in terms of wealth and prestige, the surviving records do provide an opportunity to assess the administration of institutional poor relief that is not available elsewhere during the Middle Ages in England. 1
