NOTES ON A MINUTE BOOK. 157 



leave to nominate tlieir members of Parliament and to undertake 

 to pay them. On this understanding it was, I suppose, that the 

 Earl of Suffolk proposed Sir Dudley Carleton as an M.P. for 

 Dorchester. But on Feb. 26, 1639 (40), after a second considera- 

 tion of this, the Mayor declared that most of the Company desired 

 to choose townsmen. And on March 13 this was carried out by 

 the Mayor, Burgesses, and Freemen choosing *" the Hon'^*^- Denzill 

 Hollis Esq," and Master Dennis Bond^ one of the capital burgesses, 

 to "be burgesses in the fParliament to be holden on April 13." 

 "We must now take up an interesting branch of this section — 

 namely, the care of poor and distressed persons, on the spot or at a 

 distance. For the help of the Dorchester poor there were the 

 hospital and the fuel house, j The former, as far as I can gather, 

 was for the employment there of v/omen and children, and for 

 teaching reading to some of the latter. At one time the making of 

 "bone lace " (whatever may be the exact meaning of this) was the 

 chief work ; but on Sept. 11, 16-40, there was an order to stop 

 this and to teach spinning or " burling " instead. Then on Feb. 

 6, 1649 (50), there is a resolution to consider "the setting the 

 poore on work in spinning of worsted, and knitting of stockings 

 and also of setting up a trade of making sackcloth." It gives a 

 vivid idea of the spreading of trades over the land then, as 

 contrasted with the centralisation of them now, that the sackcloth 

 _ weaver of Great Toller was to be consulted. It is not expressly 

 said, but seems pretty surely to be the case, that this last resolution 

 applies to the hospital. I do not see in C. 12, or elsewhere that 

 I can recall, that the hospital was such in the strict £ense of a guest 

 house, affording the poor an actual dwelling like a work house. 

 But it is clear that the hospital whether of itself, or viewed as one 

 establishment with the Brewhouse, possessed funds. AVhcther 

 these partly consisted of profits on the stockings, &c., made in the 

 hospital, or not, I am not sure. An instance of the use of the 



* Buried in St. Peter's Church. 



t This must be the Long Parliament. 



X See Hutchias' Hist, of Dorset, 3rd Ed., ii,, 397. 



