Note 620 — Chapter XII
Reading edition
Although the fact that the poor were employed in Devon and Wilts is not recorded in any of the justices' reports which have been preserved, we hear from other sources that work was found for the poor in some places in those counties. Thus the following memorandum refers to an attempt to establish a workhouse in Plymouth; it is to be found among the municipal records in that town. "In the name of god the 28th of September ano 1610 A note of provisions delivred into ye Castle for the pore to thende they maye be there placed & sett on work, wch is but abeginninge for a fewe & a tryall thereof the wch I praie god continewe and augment to his glorye & their comfort.
Imprimis 2 bedsteads
5 twines 2 paire of wollen cards" &c.
Two years later £20 was bequeathed by W. Lawrence "to the stocke to sett ye poor to worke," and early in the reign of Charles I. a "workehowse for the setting of the poore on worke" has been lately built and the overseers paid the corporation £9. 12s. for the rent of the three tenements which formerly had existed on the site. R. N. Worth, Plymouth Municipal Records, pp. 156 and 257, and Hist. of Plymouth, p. 273.
In Marlborough also there was certainly a workhouse, for a petition was presented to the Privy Council in the name of the Mayor and burgesses concerning John Thorner, an Attorney-at-Law, who "was rated among others to pay 52/- towards the erecting of a workhouse and raising of a stock for the employment of the poore that are able and willing to worke to be paid at three general payments whereof one is already passed at our Lady day last." Thorner had refused to pay his rate, "saying that it was against the law," and had encouraged others not to pay, so "that manie of the inhabitants there made refusall also to pay their proportion." The Privy Council referred the matters to the judges, and in the mean time the rate was to be paid. Privy Council Register, 13th May, 1631.