Elected, each of them receives 20
pounds per annum for eight years out of the revenues of the house.
And such boys who are found more fit for trades are bound out, and a
considerable sum of money given with them.
When any of the forty boys are disposed of, or any of the old men
die, others are placed in their rooms by the governors in their
turns.
The master is to be an unmarried man, aged about forty; one that
hath no preferment in Church or State which may draw him from his
residence and care of the hospital.
The preacher must be a Master of Arts, of seven years' standing in
one of the universities of England, and one who has preached four
years.
The governors meet in December, to take the year's accounts, view
the state of the hospital, and to determine other affairs; and again
in June or July, to dispose of the scholars to the university or
trades, make elections, &c. And a committee of five at the least is
appointed at the assembly in December yearly, to visit the school
between Easter and Midsummer, &c.
The buildings of the Charter House take up a great deal of ground,
and are commodious enough, but have no great share of beauty. This
house has pretty much the air of a college or monastery, of which
the principal rooms are the chapel and the hall; and the old men who
are members of the society have their several cells, as the monks
have in Portugal.
The chapel is built of brick and boulder, and is about sixty-three
feet in length, thirty-eight in breadth, and twenty-four in height.
Here Sir William Manny, founder of the Carthusian monastery, was
buried; and here was interred Mr. Sutton, the founder of the
hospital, whose monument is at the north-east angle of the chapel,
being of black and white marble, adorned with four columns, with
pedestals and entablature of the Corinthian order, between which
lies his effigy at length in a fur gown, his face upwards and the
palms of his hands joined over his breast; and on the tomb is the
following inscription:-
"Sacred to the glory of God, in grateful memory of Thomas Sutton,
Esq. Here lieth buried the body of Thomas Sutton, late of Castle
Camps, in the County of Cambridge, Esq., at whose only cost and
charges this Hospital was founded and endowed with large
possessions, for the relief of poor men and children. He was a
gentleman born at Knayth, in the County of Lincoln, of worthy and
honest parentage. He lived to the age of seventy-nine years, and
deceased the 12th day of December, 1611."
The Charter House gardens are exceeding pleasant, and of a very
great extent, considering they stand so far within this great town.
