THE OLDER CHARITIES OF PLYMOUTH. 
57 
Hospital of Poor's Portion developed. So early at any rate as 
1597, we find the Corporation moving in this direction. 
There is extant a copy of a petition by one William Woulfe, 
serge weaver, to the king, dated 1606, in which he complains that 
the Mayor and Aldermen of Plymouth had induced him nine 
years previously to come to that town from Exeter, for the purpose 
of instructing twenty poor children in the art of spinning worsted. 
His statement was that he was promised £50 for the first year, and 
£100 for the next, "which some of a hundred pounds they then 
also promised to lend unto him for seven yeares then after the 
effecting the premises, and likewise promised him they would from 
tyme to tyme duringe the said terme at their costes and charges 
after the first yeare mayntayne the said 20 poore children with 
meat drinke and apparell ; and likewise that he should have out 
of every shipp that belonged to the same which came from the 
Newfoundland 100 of fishe, and a house rent free." The rejoinder 
of the Mayor and Aldermen was that Woulfe was a wasteful and 
untruthful person, and his charges " most false." Mr. Foynes had 
agreed to lend him £30 and no more [Foynes or Fownes was 
Mayor when the agreement was made], and the town to provide 
the children with apparel, and to give him Is. a week for the 
diet of every child " whom he should sett at work and instruct in 
his science." Woulfe had wasted his £30 and was no longer able 
to put the children to work for want of credit. 
In 1611 we find entries of children being placed with William 
Weeks to be trained in a similar way. And then we are carried a 
step further, by a curious memorandum in one of the old Corporate 
Apprenticeship Books, apparently in the handwriting of Matthew 
Boyes, the town clerk, which records what appears to have been 
the first attempt to establish a workhouse, in the old castle. 
In the name of god, the 28th of September an 0 1610. A note of 
provision delivred into y e Castle for the pore to thende they maye be there 
placed and sett on work w c h is but abeginninge for a fewe and for a tryall 
thereof the w c h I praie god continewe and augment to his glorye & theire 
comfort Imprimis 2 bedsteads 
2 new Large Canvas sheets 
2 paire of newe blankits 
2 Canvas boulsters 
2 whyte rougs 
5 turnes 2 paire of wollen cards 
5 spilles and 5 wharvars (?) strings. 
