[570] _Char. Com. Report_, 32, Pt. 1, p. 43. Ironside's Charity.
_Reading Records_, Vol. III., p. 170. Richard Johnson.
Other charities of the kind existed in Reading. See Barbor's and Winche's _Charities Rep._, 32. Pt. 1, p. 43. [571] _Rep._ VI., p. 397 seq.
Among the lost charities of Oxford are the following:--
Jane Fulsey, 1603. £40 to be lent to four poor tradesmen for three years.
Robert Wilson, 1640. £20 to be lent in two, three or four equal portions for seven years. _Ib._ p. 404.
There are sixteen other lost charities of the kind either without date or of later date than 1640, and three or four other lending charities which are still wholly or partially in existence.
In Barnstaple, Bristol, Newbury, Lichfield, Wolverhampton and Colchester[572] there were similar bequests, and apparently in most towns charitable funds of this kind were in existence during the reigns of the earlier Stuarts. It was one of the ways in which the philanthropists of the time endeavoured to give employment, only in this case it was not to the vagrant, but to the householder or skilled workman. Usually these sums were given by private people and administered by the town. But at Hitchin we find something of the kind suggested as a method of poor relief. The justices in their report recount the sufferings of the poor during the plague, and say that "three poore tradesmen who were shutt up And haue lost their custome and spent their meanes haue petitioned for stock to put them into Trade againe[573]." The matter was not yet decided, but from the justices' language it is clear that they regarded it as quite within their power to grant relief in this manner. John Lock, tailor of London, bequeathed gifts of £5 to £10 to the apprentices of Bridewell with a similar object, and, having regard to the circumstances of the time, few charities would probably have had a better effect if they had been honestly administered.
[572] See _Reports of the Charity Commissioners_.
Among these sums at Bristol were the following:--
Alderman Thorne's Gift £500 in 1532 to "succour young men that were minded to cloth making."
John Heydon, 1579. £100 for two young men trading over seas at interest of £3. 6_s._ 8_d._
Alderman Whitson, 1627. £500, £250 to five young men for seven years at interest of ten shillings, £250 to twenty tradesmen for seven years, &c. _Report_ VIII., p. 597 seq.