56 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
Andrews and Robert Barker, which three closes were charged with 
the payment of £2 6s. 8d. yearly to the poor, it was agreed that 
this yearly payment should lapse to the Corporation in exchange 
for the Hospital site ; and that if at any time the Court of 
Chancery, or such competent authority, should insist upon the 
payment of this rent-charge, the wardens of the Hospital should 
pay the Corporation £200. These three closes were in the posses- 
sion of the Corporation, so charged, as early at least as 1612. Two 
of these, adjoining the Mill Pool, were in the occupation of Wm. 
Parker ; one in that of Sir Warwick Hele. 
Other properties belonging to the poor in that year, and subse- 
quently in part transferred to the Hospital as portion of its endow- 
ment, were a tenement in High Street, and a piece of land on 
Crosse Downe (clearly the Moore Splatt, of which more hereafter), 
in the occupation of Richard Hitchins, at a rent of 38s.; a tene- 
ment in Market Street, and a garden in High Street, rented by 
Wm. Pinsent, at 1 5s. (also transferred), and late White's tenement 
in Old Town, rented by John Waddon, at 6s. 8d. Three rent- 
charges of 6s. each were then paid on the Berry property; and 
the total rental receipt was £6 4s. 4d. 
There is, then, ample evidence that early in the seventeenth 
century there were in the hands of the Corporation of Plymouth 
various properties and rent-charges belonging to the poor of the 
town, which they sought to make available in various ways. 
Moreover, the extant poor accounts, which commence in the year 
1611, show that the poor funds were being continually increased 
by small legacies, which if they had only been treated as capital 
instead of revenue would have accumulated to a handsome sum. 
It was almost a habit of the good people of Plymouth to remember 
the poor in their last wills and testaments, by small bequests, even 
if the amount was only 5s., though the average would be nearer £5. 
As many as half a dozen of these legacies occur in single years ; but 
save when specified to be spent in certain special ways they must 
have operated to the relief of the ratepayer, and not to that of the 
poor, as in the case with several endowments in Plymouth now. 
One of the chief directions in which our Elizabethan ancestors 
sought to be really charitable was that of " setting the poore on 
worke " — finding employment for them if they could not find it 
for themselves ; and it was out of an effort of this kind that the 
