CHARTER, ST. LAWRENCE DE PONTEBOY. 27 



serve, performe and keep such order and direccion as shall in that 

 behalfe be made, taken, or sett downe by the same Lord Tresorer 

 of England, and Chauncellor of the Exchequer, for the tyme 

 beinge, that then, and frome thenceforthe, thes our letters patents 

 for and concerninge onely suche parte of the premises for the 

 which the same order and direccion shall not be observed, 

 performed or kepte, shalbe utterly void and of none effecte, 

 anythinge before in thes presents conteyned to the contrary not- 

 withstandinge. 



In witnes wherof, &c., Witnesse our selfe at Westminster, the 

 ninthe daye of Marche. [a.d. 1582.] 



Per breve de privato sigillo, &c. 



The foregoing Charter, or Letters Patent, has been already 

 referred to by Professor Babington in an interesting notice of the 

 Lazar House of St. Laurence de Ponteboy, in Cornwall, printed 

 in the Journal of the Cambrian Archajological Association, vol. ix., 

 third series, p. 177. At the time of that publication, the writer 

 had not found the original charter of incorporation, nor seen the 

 enrolment of it in the Patent Polls, of which the foregoing is a 

 verbatim co-py. We are indebted to* Mr. Burtt for his friendly as- 

 sistance in making search at the Record Office for the document, 

 which we have thus been enabled to bring before our readers. 

 The present affords a favorable opportunity of offering some ob- 

 servations on this ancient charity, and adverting to some^ other 

 documents connected with its history and its subsequent dissolu- 

 tion in 1810. 



Dr. Oliver, Monast. Dioc. Exon., p. 15, in a general notice of 

 Chapels and Hospitals that existed in Bodmin, observes — " S. 

 Laurence, of this house even Tanner knew little more than Le. 

 land, who calls it ' a pore hospital or lazar-house beyond the bridge, 

 about a mile,' dedicated to S. Laurence.* Bishop Stafford, on 



*Leland, Itin., vol. ii, f. 77. Compare also vol. iii, f. 2. "From Bod- 

 myii to S. Laurence, wher a poor Hospital or Lazar House is, about a Mile. 

 Here I passid over a Stone Bridge, and under it rennith a praty Broke that 

 cummith out of the Hylles from South Este," &e. A marginal note supplies 

 the following evidence of a benefactor to the Hospital : — " One of the Pever- 

 ells gave a little Annuite onto this House." The Peverels were the founders 

 of the Grrey Friars' Monastery, Bodmiu. 



