28 
JOURNAL OP THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
Dominicans, must have been very exceptional if it did not both 
need a leper-house and have its needs supplied. Nevertheless it is 
not until the sixteenth century that the existence of such an estab- 
lishment in Plymouth finds record; and the general absence of 
reference to it in the Corporate accounts seems to point to its 
having had an independent status. Some payments, however, are 
noted ; and one of these being 5s. for a hundred of reed, we may 
be tolerably certain that the house was a thatched building. 
It has been stated that the Maudlyn of Plymouth was dedicated 
to the Trinity and St. Mary Magdalene, and that it was the occa- 
sion of a dispute with the Prior of Plympton in 1370, at which 
date it was said to be of unknown antiquity. This, however, is an 
error, which arose from confounding Plympton and Plymouth, the 
lazar-house of Plympton being that really in question. The only 
important record concerning our Maudlyn House is the entry in 
the Chantry Rolls (1547) that there was then in Plymouth an 
almshouse called "Goddeshowse for the releife of impotent and 
lazare people with owte any certayne nomber appoynted." At the 
date of this report there were fourteen inmates; but sometimes 
there were twenty, more or less, " as the occasyon of tyme dothe 
offerr." Beside their "mansyon howse," they had the rents of 
lands given by different benefactors, amounting to £14 7s. 
The Maudlyn is mentioned in 1569 as the subject of an intended 
gift by William Weeks, and it is shown in the Cecil and British 
Museum maps of the Plymouth Leat as existing about thirty years 
later. When it disappeared we cannot say, but it must have been 
somewhere within the next half-century, since at the siege the site 
was occupied by a fort. It is quite possible that the siege was the 
cause of its destruction; for we have the record of a sale in 1648 
to John Martyn of land "neere the late howse called the mawdlyn 
howse . . . neere Plymouth," which appears to indicate a very 
recent removal. The road leading thither was long afterwards 
called Maudlyn Lane. 
The property of the Maudlyn was no doubt vested, as was 
customary with these establishments, in the residents, who com- 
monly formed a corporate body. It may, therefore, have been 
alienated by the last survivors ; but it does appear strange that I 
have never been able to find any trace of its existence, though it 
must have been, if land, of considerable extent (according to the 
current average rental, at least 100 acres) ; while if it consisted of 
