In the largest towns orphanages also were established about this time. Christ's Hospital in London, as we have seen, was originally established for the little children of the London streets. During this period there were from seven to nine hundred children maintained at the cost of this institution, some in London and some at nurse in the country[525]. At Bristol there were two establishments of the same kind. Queen Elizabeth's Hospital was founded by a citizen named John Carr after the model of Christ's Hospital in London. The boys were subject to the same regulations and still wear the same blue and yellow dress[526]. The Red Maid's School was endowed by the will of John Whitson in 1621. It was to consist of a matron and forty girls. The children were to learn to read and sew and do such other work as the matron and the Mayor's wife should approve. They were to be apprenticed for eight years, to wear clothes of red cloth, and attend on the wives of the Mayor and aldermen on state occasions[527]. In Plymouth, Exeter, and Norwich also there were similar institutions, but they seem to have only existed in the large towns. Both in the country and towns orphaned and deserted children were generally "boarded out" until they were old enough to be apprenticed, and payments were made for them from the rates amounting to about a shilling a week. [525] Reports of the four Royal Hospitals, 1632, 1641. King's _Pamphlets_, 669 f. 4. [526] Probate of John Carr's will was granted in 1586. An Act of Parliament confirming the foundation was passed 39 Eliz. The school was established on the site of Gaunt's Hospital, and the citizens of Bristol provided some of the necessary money. _Char. Com. Rep._ VI. p. 463 seq. [527] _Char. Com. Rep._ VI. p. 490. Children were thus very well provided for, and their training was considered a matter of national concern. Parents, whether they were very poor or not, were compelled to send their children to work or school and either to apprentice them or to find situations for them. We are apt to consider popular education an exclusively modern movement, but in this, as in many other matters, the aims of the seventeenth century anticipate those of the nineteenth. They had ideas which were very different from those of to-day as to the kind of training which was necessary, but they attached an equal importance to the necessity of training. The Town Council of Norwich and the justices of Hertfordshire and Norfolk took energetic action in the matter. [Sidenote: γ. The able-bodied poor.] [Sidenote: 5. Relief given to prisoners.] We will now see how the administration of the time affected the able-bodied poor. The help given to the unemployed is by far the most important part of this relief, but some aid was also given to prisoners.