Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. CHARITIES AND ENDOWMENTS. " Ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good."—Mark xiv. 7. The late Sir John. Bowring, in a paper read at the meeting of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature, and Art, July, 1872, when speaking of the Cathedral Yard, at Exeter, says:—" In the same Cathedral Yard lived Thomas Crispin, one of those public benefactors, founders of schools and alms-houses, who did for Exeter what Gresham accomplished in London, and Colston in Bristol. Crispin was born in Kings- bridge, where he endowed a school, still prosperous, and ornamented with his portrait. Of the charities left for the encouragement of the woollen trade, several will, ere long, have to be devoted to other purposes. They represent the conditions and requirements of bygone times, and their appropriation must be accommodated to new-born wants." In the portrait alluded to by Sir J. Bowring, Crispin is represented "with a large hat, grey hair, and a crutch stick." Crispin's Free Grammar School is situated in the higher part of Fore Street. Over an arched entrance in the front of the building, is the following inscription, cut in stone— This Grammar School was Built and Endowed 1670 Thomas Crispin of the City of Exon, Fuller, who was born in This Town, the 6 of Jan: 1607-8 "Lord what I have, 'twas thou that gavest me, And of thine own I this return to thee." There is a good dwelling-house attached to the school, for the residence of the master, and accommodation of pupils. In 1688-9, Thomas Crispin (who died the following year) "by his will bequeathed this grammar school and house, with the appurtenances thereunto belonging, to trustees: and he charged an estate of his in fee, called Washb... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.