itor be assigned; so that
patronage and visitation are necessary consequents one upon
another. For this visitatorial power was not introduced by any
canons or constitutions ecclesiastical (as was said by a learned
gentleman whom I have in my eye, in his argument of this case); it
is an appointment of law. It ariseth from the property which the
founder had in the lands assigned to support the charity; and as he
is the author of the charity, the law gives him and his heirs a
visitatorial power, that is, an authority to inspect the actions
and regulate the behavior of the members that partake of the
charity. For it is fit the members that are endowed, and that have
the charity bestowed upon them, should not be left to themselves,
but pursue the intent and design of him that bestowed it upon them.
_Now, indeed, where the poor, or those that receive the charity,
are not incorporated, but there are certain trustees who dispose of
the charity, there is no visitor, because the interest of the
revenue is not vested in the poor that have the benefit of the
charity, but they are subject to the orders and directions of the
trustees._ But where they who are to enjoy the benefit of the
charity are incorporated, there to prevent all perverting of the
charity, or to compose differences that may happen among them,
there is by law a visitatorial power; and it being a creature of
the founder's own, it is reason that he and his heirs should have
that power, unless by the founder it is vested in some other. Now
there is no manner of difference between a college and a hospital,
except only in degree. A hospital is for those that are poor, and
mean, and low, and sickly; a college is for another sort of
indigent persons; but it hath another intent, to study in and breed
up persons in the world that have no otherwise to live; but still
it is as much within the reasons as hospitals. And if in a hospital
the master and poor are incorporated, it is a college having a
common seal to act by, although it hath not the name of a college
(which always supposeth a corporation), because it is of an
inferior degree; and in the one case and in the other there must be
a visitor, either the founder and his heirs or one appointed by
him; and both are eleemosynary."

Lord Holt concludes hi