THE OLDER CHARITIES OF PLYMOUTH. 
45 
turned into a middle-class school, and the real owners deprived of 
their legitimate rights. Not a word can be said against the 
present educational management of the school; but, so far as I 
know, there is not a single boy there of the class for whom it was 
originally intended. 
Take the deed of 1658, by which Sir John Maynard and Elize 
Stert settled the estates. The revenues were to be applied (among 
other matters) " towards the maintenance of poor children to be 
placed and educated in and preferred from the hospital in Ply- 
mouth, commonly called the Poor's Portion ; " and none were to be 
admitted "but orphans who have no father, or whose fathers 
cannot maintain them ; " while guarantee was to be given on behalf 
of outside places that children from them, if they became unfit for 
the hospital, should be maintained by the parishes to which they 
belonged. When the hospital passed to the Guardians under the 
Workhouse Act, the trustees dealt with the Hele Charity indepen- 
dently of the Guardians, and nominated the lads without reference 
to the workhouse until 1805, when the Guardians successfully 
maintained the rights of the children in the workhouse, and the 
trustees chose the two-thirds of the recipients who were under the 
deed of 1658 to belong to Plymouth, from a list presented to them 
annually by the master of the workhouse. Lanyon's Charity, 
which at first admitted girls, had precisely the same history. 
In 1821 a formal agreement was entered into between the 
Guardians and the trustees to settle certain disputes which had 
arisen. In this the same principle was affirmed, but with certain 
limitations, which have really led to the present condition of 
affairs. The boys were placed under the care of the Guardians, 
and the schoolmaster nominated and paid by them in consideration 
of his educating the other male children in the hospital. "But 
the boys maintained and educated on this Charity " were " always 
to be kept as distinct as possible (both in and out of school) from 
the paupers in the house" — elsewhere called "the general poor." 
While the old hospital was occupied as the workhouse Hele and 
Lanyon's School was conducted therein, originally as an integral 
part of the establishment, then as an adjunct, in separate apart- 
ments in the workhouse, which the Guardians were bound to 
provide. It has now its own house in the Tavistock Road ; and 
the only connection between it and the workhouse under the latest 
scheme is, that the Governor of the Guardians has certain right s 
