Tracts in Prose and Verse

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: Copy of Mr. Lowndes's Letter to the Vicar of COTTINGHAM, Hull. Clifton, 7thFeb. 1820. Sir, i:7. Being at Church this morning, where I saw the Benefactors to the parish written in gold letters upon the panels of the gallery, it has struck me it would be very proper that the Charities, left for ever to the Township or Parish of Cottingham, should be set forth in a similar manner, as the best check to parish abuse? Therefore the two hundred pounds, left by Mr. Milnes (my mother's uncle) to the poor of Cottingham for ever, the interest of it to be given away every Christmas in bread, should be written in similar letters of gold. If it be not done so, and the parish will not pay the cost of it, I will thank you to be so good as to have it painted as above stated at my expense, and my tenant at Cottingham (for the late Mr. Lowndes's property there by his death is come to me) shall repay you. The ten pounds a year (though, if the money eighty years ago were laid out in land it ought to be more than that) should be written not only in such figures, that all the parish may see what the charity is, but, if there be no gallery, the inscription should be placedin the most conspicuous part of the church. Mr. Milnes was an Alderman of Hull at the time of his death; when that happened I do not recollect, but of course the parish documents must contain an extract relative to Mr. Milnes's bequest, that will shew it. I duly received your Letter respecting the above Charity, and which gave me considerable satisfaction, as it stated that 10 a year was regularly given away every Christmas. I should like though to know, whether this has been the case from the time it was left, and if there has not been in the Christmasses since then, some years on which no bread was given away (a hiatus m...