“I present the child mentioned in the certificate on the other side, and believe the same to be a true certificate.
“Witness my hand . . . the day . . . of 17.” Which the said governor signeth, and the child is admitted.
The said rules and qualifications are as follows:
1. That no child be taken in but such as are the children of freemen of London.
2. That none be taken in under seven years old.
3. That none be taken in but orphans, wanting either father or mother, or both.
4. That no foundlings, or that are maintained at the parish charge, be taken in.
5. That none who are lame, crooked, or deformed, or that have the evil, rupture, or any infectious disease, be taken in.
6. That none be admitted but such as are without any probable means of being provided for otherways; nor without a due certificate from the minister, churchwardens, and three or four of the principal inhabitants of the parish whence any children come, certifying the poverty and inability of the parent to maintain such children, and the true age of the said child, and engaging to discharge the hospital of them before or after the age of fifteen years if a boy, or fourteen years if a girl, which shall be left to the governor’s pleasure to do; so that it shall be wholly in the power of the hospital to dispose of such child, or return them to the parent or parish, as to the hospital shall seem good.
7. That no child be admitted that hath a brother or sister in the hospital already.