378 ADVICE ABOUT THE CHARTERHOUSE. 



proper place of relief, not intermingled or coupled 

 with the basest sort of poor ; which project, though 

 specious, yet in my judgment, will not answer the 

 designment in the event, in these our times. For 

 certainly few men in any vocation, which have been 

 somebody, and bear a mind somewhat according to 

 the conscience and remembrance of that they have 

 been, will ever descend to that condition, as to 

 profess to live upon alms, and to become a cor 

 poration of declared beggars ; but rather will choose 

 to live obscurely, and as it were to hide themselves 

 with some private friends : so that the end of such 

 an institution will be, that it will make the place a 

 receptacle of the worst, idlest, and most dissolute 

 persons of every profession, and to become a cell of 

 loiterers, and cast serving-men, and drunkards, with 

 scandal rather than fruit to the commonwealth. 

 And of this kind I can find but one example with us, 

 which is the alms-knights of Windsor; which parti 

 cular would give a man small encouragement to 

 follow that precedent. 



Therefore the best effect of hospitals is, to make 

 the kingdom, if it were possible, capable of that law, 

 that there be no beggar in Israel : for it is that kind 

 of people that is a burden, an eye-sore, a scandal, 

 and a seed of peril and tumult in the state. But 

 chiefly it were to be wished, that such a benefi 

 cence towards the relief of the poor were so bestowed, 

 as not only the mere and naked poor should be 

 sustained, but also, that the honest person which 

 hath hard means to live, upon whom the poor are 



