THE OLDER CHARITIES OF PLYMOUTH. 
27 
and free education for all who sought it. While Puritanism pre- 
vailed in Plymouth such good works went steadily on. Old 
Charities were conserved and new ones created. Hardly a will in 
these days seems to have been considered complete without some 
recognition of the needs of poorer brethren and sisters ; and many 
were the Plymouth folk, thriving far away, who remembered the 
necessities of the humbler dwellers in their native town. 
But with the Restoration a new era dawned. Philanthropy was 
soon at a discount. True, a few earnest men and pious women 
continued for a while the traditions of a better time ; but, so far 
as the community at large was concerned, there set in a period of 
corruption and sycophancy, which towards the close of the last 
century transformed the Corporation that had dared to hold its 
own against a king into a knot of time-servers, ever at the bidding, 
for the sake of loaves and fishes, of the Ministry in power. The 
Charities were neglected, mismanaged, plundered; some disap- 
peared altogether, others were diverted to alien purposes. Mischief 
was then done that can never be retrieved. The reputation of 
Plymouth and of Plymouth's public men would lose little and 
gain much if the eighteenth century could be blotted wholly out 
of its annals. 1 
With these preliminary observations I proceed with our enquiry. 
THE MAUDLYN. 
It is much to be regretted that we have practically no materials 
for the history of the Maudlyn, or Leper House, at North Hill, 
which occupied in part the site of the present Blind Asylum. If 
not the oldest of the Plymouth Charities, which is probable, it must 
have been of great antiquity ; and yet its notices are very few and 
very indefinite. I should not be at all surprised some time to learn 
that it dated from the fourteenth century, or even from the thir- 
teenth. Frequented seaports in the Middle Ages were peculiarly 
liable to be assailed by leprosy ; and a town which attracted by its 
necessities at such an early date Franciscans, Carmelites, and 
1 Under the operation of the Municipal Reform Act the management of the 
municipal charities of the Corporation was transferred to a body of trustees 
specially created, with whom it remains ; and the Corporation are now held 
responsible to them for a capital sum of £525, and an annual payment of 
£25 7s., made up as follows : White's Gift, £11 15s. ; Hewer's, £4 ; Baron's, 
£2 ; Collins's, £2 10s. ; Hill's, £2 12s. ; Ackerman's, £2 10s. 
