Definition of "gelt"

She […] like a ghastly Gelt whose wits are reaved, / Ran forth in hast with hideous outcry […]

1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie

spay'd Gelts

1707, J[ohn] Mortimer, The Whole Art of Husbandry; or, The Way of Managing and Improving of Land. […], 2nd edition, London: […] J[ohn] H[umphreys] for H[enry] Mortlock […], and J[onathan] Robinson […], published 1708

That nothynge had / There of theyr awne / Neyther gelt nor pawne.

c. 1529, John Skelton, The Tunning of Elynour Rummyng, section 610

It amounts to not above 12000 Fr. Rhenish, yearly, in bare gelt.

1591 (1685), Henry Wotton, in Reliquiae Wottonianae, 616

The is no Gelt to be got.

c. 1698, B. E., A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew

I saw him at the house of my parents; I in my earliest youth, he approaching to fourscore. He was on his way to collect the Dominie's gelt; for the Dutch always took care the stipend to the minister should be competent, that so he never might be straitened 'to desire a gift.'

1816, Egbert Benson, in a memoir read before the New York Historical Society , quoted in History of the School of the Collegiate Reformed Dutch Church (1883), page 22

"And yet," said Captain Dalgetty, "my second and greatest difficulty remains behind; for, although I hold it a mean and sordid thing for a soldado to have nothing in his mouth but pay and gelt, like the base cullions, the German lanz-knechts, whom I mentioned before; […] yet, ex contrario, a soldier's pay being the counterpart of his engagement of service, it becomes a wise and considerate cavalier to consider what remuneration he is to receive for his service, […]

1852, Walter Scott, A Legend of Montrose And, The Black Dwarf

Have bought some farm land in Rio Grande Valley which should bring in a sizeable bundle of gelts come cotton picking time.

1948, William Burroughs, letter, 5 Jun 1948

The miser, a-seeking lost gelt, / The doughboy, awaiting the battle, / May possibly know how I felt / While the long years dragged by as the dealer / As slow as the slowest of dubs, / Stuck out the last helping of tickets / 'Till I lifted—the Bullet of Clubs!

1969, Robert L. Vann, The Competitor, volumes 2-3, page 135

All these the king granted unto them […] free from all gelts [guilds] and payments, in a most full and ample manner.

1655, Thomas Fuller, The History of Waltham Abbey