THE OLDER CHARITIES OF PLYMOUTH. 
41 
Upon this footing the school was maintained for several years, 
until an arrangement was effected with the Crown in respect of 
the vicarage, an interest in which had been acquired by the 
Corporation, partly by purchase from a Mr. Maslar. The 
advowson had belonged to the Priory of Plympton, and had 
been charged with a pension of £8, which came to the Crown on 
the dissolution of the Priory. This pension had fallen into arrear 
to the amount of £112 ; that is to say, it had not been paid from 
the accession of Elizabeth, for the arrangement entered into was 
declared by letters patent February 20th, in the fifteenth year of 
her reign (1572). 
These letters set forth that the revenues of the vicarage, so 
burdened with the pension and the heavy arrears, were unable to 
maintain a vicar, since no one could be found to undertake the 
duties for the remaining portion of the value. Wherefore, on the 
undertaking of the Mayor and Commonalty, that they and their 
successors for ever should find a fit person to serve the cure, and 
should support a free grammar school in the town, paying unto the 
chief master a stipend of £20 per annum, the Queen granted and 
assigned to the said Mayor and Commonalty and their successors 
the arrears of the said pension, the pension itself, and the advow- 
son of the vicarage. Beyond this we have the fact, that at the 
time when authority was given by letters patent and by Act of 
Parliament 17th Charles I. (not Charles II., as the Commissioners 
state in their report), for the division of the parish of St. Andrew 
and the erection of Charles Church, the advoAvson was again con- 
firmed to the Mayor and Commonalty on the same condition, 
among others, of the maintenance of a free grammar school, and 
the allowance to the schoolmaster of the stipend of £20 per 
annum. 
This salary of £20 a year was for the time a liberal one. It 
attracted hither William Kempe, an M.A. of Cambridge, a poet, 
and author of a work on education. It was the same amount that 
the Mayor was then allowed for his yearly fee, and it was certainly 
over a third of the whole revenues of the vicarage. Thus in 
1592-3, when the vicarage was farmed by Kempe, he paid £40; 
while George Baron gave £10 for the rent of the vicarage house. 
Moreover, we have definite evidence of what was considered in 
those days the due division of the income of the living, in the fact 
that in 1600 Upham, the vicar, had £34 to Kempe's £20. And 
