All persons over fourteen had to receive communion at Easter, and at least on two other occasions during the year.[122] In fact readiness to receive according to the Anglican rites became the test of a loyal subject.[123]

The strict requirement to report all non-communicants to the official resulted in the keeping of books in which were written the names of the parish communicants.[124]

Next in importance to church attendance and the observance of the sacraments came the duty of all parishioners to contribute to the parish expenses.  We have viewed church courts at work, compelling wardens to levy church rates; we have now to see how the judges forced recalcitrant ratepayers to pay the sums assessed upon them to the wardens or other collectors.

Among the earliest vestry minutes of the parish of St. Christopher-le-Stocks, London, is one which, after ordering that an assessment be made for the clerk’s wages and for pews, decreed that any rebellious persons should be summoned before themselves, the vestry, to be reformed.  But if the rebel would not appear, or, on appearance, remain stubborn to reason, then the churchwardens should sue him before the ordinary at the parish costs “vntill suche tyme as he be reduced vnto a good order, and hath paid bothe the costys of the sute and the chargs that he owith vnto the church...."[125] Fifty years later we find this vestry ordaining the same procedure to be followed against parish debtors, and referring to its former order.[126]

It seems, in fact, to have been the well-understood thing that just as parish rates to defray the costs of those matters of parish administration, falling within the province of the ecclesiastical courts, were to be assessed by the authority, and under the direction, of those courts, so, too, the recovery of these rates was to be had before the same tribunals.  It is not denied that recourse may occasionally have been made in these matters to the courts of common law, but it is believed that the proper remedy was at ecclesiastical law.[127] Furthermore, we believe that the means at the disposal of the ecclesiastical courts for putting their judgments into effect were quite sufficient and in practice effective.

What these means were will be taken up and discussed a little further on.  Returning to the matter of suing parish debtors in courts Christian, it is interesting to find that in the language of the period a suit “at law” did not always mean at common law.  An order of the vestry of Stepney, London, in February, 1605-6, after determining the manner in which L50 should be raised to pay off parish debts due to the bell founder, adds that persons refusing to pay their shares, or neglecting to do so, should not find themselves aggrieved “if the same be recouered against them by Lawe.”  And the meaning of this term is fully explained by these subsequent words in the same order, that the churchwardens shall “at the chardg of the p[ar]ish appointe and entertayne one doctor and a proctor to sue and recouer the same by lawe of any p[er]son [etc.]."[128] Now doctors and proctors practiced before ecclesiastical tribunals only.[129]