In the Early Middle Ages parents who did not want to raise their children gave them to monasteries along with a small fee, an act known as oblation. In times of social stress monasteries often received large numbers of children. By the high Middle Ages oblation was less common and something that was more often arranged privately between the monastery and the parents of the child. Sometimes medieval hospitals took care of abandoned children at the community's expense, but some refused to do so on the grounds that being willing to accept abandoned children would increase abandonment rates. Medieval laws in Europe governing child abandonment, as for example the Visigothic Code, often prescribed that the person who had taken up the child was entitled to the child's service as a slave. Conscripting or enslaving children into armies and labor pools often occurred as a consequence of war or pestilence when many children were left parentless. Abandoned children then became the ward of the state, military organization, or religious group. When this practice happened en masse, it had the advantage of ensuring the strength and continuity of cultural and religious practices in medieval society.