58 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
In subsequent years we find that the work consisted chiefly of 
picking oakum, spining worsted stockings, and weaving. 
Such was the way in which the Mayor and Commonalty led up 
to the establishment, in 1630, of the Hospital of the Poor's 
Portion; the foundation deed of which, executed by Sir John 
Gayer, Abraham Colmer, and Edmund Fowell, in performance of 
the trust reposed in them by the then Corporation, is dated May 
4th of that year. The Hospital stood, as most Plymothians will 
recollect, in Catherine Lane, immediately to the south of the 
Orphans' Aid, and bore over the entrance gateway the pious 
motto, "By God's helpe throvghe Christ." The regulations 
concerning the provision for religious teaching and exercises were 
very particular and strict. The management of the Hospital was 
vested in the Mayor and Magistrates (or Aldermen) and Common 
Council. 
As in the case of the Orphans' Aid the necessities of the 
Corporation during the early part of the seventeenth century led 
them to borrow from the funds of the Poor's Portion, and the 
debt was dealt with in much the same fashion. 
Thus in 1658 an annuity of £30 out of the shambles for ever 
was settled on the Hospital, in consideration of £600. But the 
dealings with the Poor's funds were never so extensive as those 
with the Orphans' ; and the only money owing to this Hospital 
by the Corporation in 1685 was £129 17s. 3d., besides £100, the 
bequest of John Lanyon; and certain arrears of the rent charge 
of £30. The rent charge is still paid, though the old shambles 
have long disappeared, only it goes to Hele's Charity, and not to 
the Poor's Portion, the £600 purchase-money being a part of the 
funds arising from the Hele gift. 
The Hospital ceased to be a private Charity in 1708, when the 
already-cited act of Parliament was passed creating the existing 
Corporation of Guardians, and transferring to them the Poor's 
Portion, with all the charitable trusts and gifts "given, devised, 
or disposed in general terms for the use of the poor of the town, 
or of either of the parishes of St. Andrew and Charles." This act 
also provided that the names of all benefactors to the Workhouse 
shall be inscribed in " capital golden letters " for ever in the chief 
room ; and that a moiety of the accumulated funds from fines, and 
of all future fines of the Hele estate, should be paid over to the 
Guardians. 
