Benefactor
Whether "the Publique Faith of the Nation" ever made good his money to Harrison we do not know, but he probably cared little whether his loan of cash, horse, and arms was repaid or not. He was in the lifelong habit of giving, and he gave in many directions. Leeds in his time was a growing place; it had many poor folk in it, and it was not much provided with hospitals for the sick and infirm amongst them. In 1643 one Jenkinson founded a hospital at Mill Hill: Harrison supplemented this, ten years later, with a home for indigent poor. But this was one of his last public benefactions; he had begun them or made his first notable addition to them in 1624, when he built a new home for the Grammar School first founded by William Sheafield. At that date the school was being taught in a building called New Chapel in Lady Lane: Harrison built a new home for it on a piece of his own property, on a site somewhere between the top of Briggate and Vicar Lane. That he was regarded within a short time after his death as a munificent patron of the Grammar School is proved by the fact that Ralph Thoresby speaks of him, in connection with it, as "the Grand Benefactor ... never to be mentioned without Honour, the ever famous John Harrison". A house at the school was named after him.
Read more about this topic: John Harrison (Leeds)
Famous quotes containing the word benefactor:
“The Buddhist, who thanks no man, who says “Do not flatter your benefactors,” but who, in his conviction that every good deed can by no possibility escape its reward, will not deceive the benefactor by pretending that he has done more than he should, is a Transcendentalist.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and hide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information, I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me the human insect.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The sweetest and most inoffensive path of life leads through the avenues of science and learning; and whoever can either remove any obstructions in this way, or open up any new prospect, ought so far to be esteemed a benefactor to mankind.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)