CHAPTER XVI THE DISSOLUTION OF RELIGIOUS HOUSES AND ITS EFFECT UPON HOSPITALS

“The hospital . . . is like to go to utter decay. . . . For my own part I think often, that those men which seek spoil of hospitals . . . did never read the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew; for if they did, and believed the same, how durst they give such adventure?”

(Archbishop Grindal, letter to Burleigh, 1575.)

WHEN the Primate wrote thus to the Lord Treasurer, he ad­ded:—“that if any hos­pi­tals be abused (as I think some are) it were a more Christian suit to seek reform­a­tion than destruc­tion.” Al­though the de­cline of some hos­pi­tals led to the dis­solu­tion of many, it by no means fol­lows that such a course was just­i­fiable.

Speaking generally, charities which had outlived their usefulness had already been suppressed before the general Dissolution and their property transferred to other purposes. The leper-houses of Windsor and Huntingdon, for example, were evidently deserted and ruinous when they were annexed to Colleges at Cambridge (1462); and the hospitals of Romney, Aynho and Brackley had been appropriated to Magdalen College, Oxford (1481–5) because they were no longer carrying out the founder’s intentions. St. John’s, Reading, and St. Bartholomew’s, Bristol, had already been converted into schools, the latter as recently as 1532.

[♦] PLATE XXIV. AMBULATORY OF ST. LEONARD’S, YORK

In most of the existing hospitals good work was being p227 done; the Valor Ecclesiasticus and Chantry Surveys show that money was expended upon useful charities. Layton’s report of St. Mary’s, Leicester, that it was “well kept and honest men therein” was true of many almshouses throughout the land. Where evils are complained of, they were not so much breaches of morality on the part of the household, as neglect and wastefulness in administration. A carefully-regulated commission to inquire into matters of finance could well have rectified abuses in ill-managed institutions. Had justice and magnanimity held sway instead of rapacity and selfishness, the old houses of mercy would have been refreshed and their utility doubled just when a far wider charity was needful on account of the annihilation of benevolent monasteries. This was done in some foreign countries. Through the protection of Gustavus Vasa, Swedish lazar-houses survived the Reformation. In Denmark, Dominican and Franciscan friaries were transformed into hospitals, and the leper-houses subsequently became places of isolation for contagious diseases. In France, where there was no ecclesiastical upheaval, decayed hospitals were reformed (1545) and put under the control of the bourgeois class (1561).

The various Acts of Henry VIII’s reign show that the oppression of the poor was not at first intended. The Statute for the suppression of vagrancy (1530–1) approved the charitable work of hospitals. One clause in that of 1535–6 required that those who entered into possession of the lands of religious houses should provide hospitality and service for the poor as of old. In the draft for the bill of 1539 the Commons proposed that the greater monasteries not dissolved should build bede-houses in which p228 to maintain for life ten poor men over sixty years of age.

Here, indeed, was a golden opportunity to increase the benevolent institutions of the country. Much that was becoming useless might have been transformed into a great and permanent benefit. Charitable relief might have been placed under public control upon a sound religious and financial basis. But reformation too often proved to be mere destruction, as “Mors” shrewdly remarks:—

“Your pretence of putting downe abbeys, was, to amend that was amisse in them. . . . It is amended euen as the deuell amended his dames legge (as it is in the prouerbe) whan he shuld haue set it ryght, he bracke it quyte in peces.”[147]

It is evident that the monastic system had been gradually losing its hold on the nation. The idea of partial disendowment had also been working in men’s minds, no one foreseeing that the plunder of rich foundations would ultimately lead to the robbery of poor people. In 1410 the Commons petitioned in the Parliament of Westminster that the surplus wealth of ecclesiastics might be transferred to other uses, and that destitute persons might benefit by the provision of new hospitals. Henry IV replied that he would deliberate upon the matter, and although no revised appropriation of funds then took place, he did afterwards suppress certain alien priories, a policy which was followed by Henry V. In 1414 the above proposal was renewed in the Parliament of Leicester, but the astute Chichele undertook that the clergy should supply money for the wars:—“a thrust was made at all p229 Abbies,” says Fuller, “which this Archbishop, as a skilful Fencer, fairly put by.” In the following century Wolsey, not anticipating the wholesale destruction which was to follow, sought to dissolve certain small priories in order to assist educational institutions (1523). A contemporary writer observes that by this precedent “he did make loose in others the conscience towardes those houses.”

The people desired the reformation of hospitals and an extension of the system. Sir John Oldcastle’s bill in 1414 proposed the foundation of new institutions each to be endowed with one hundred marks yearly. The Commons suggested that money now wasted by churchmen might maintain a standing army and also suffice to provide:—

“an hundred houses of alms, to the relief of poor people . . . with oversight of two true seculars unto every house. And also with provision that every township should keep all poor people of their own dwellers, which could not labour for their living, with condition that if more fell in a town than the town could maintain, then the said almshouses to relieve such townships.”[148]

A similar plan was proposed by Brinklow about the year 1542. He probably uttered what was in the minds of many when he suggested measures for the re-distribution of ecclesiastical wealth. One chapter of his Complaint contains “A Godly aduisement howe to bestowe the goodes and landes of the Bisshops &c. after the Gospell, with an admonytion to the Rulers, that they loke better upon the hospitals.” A part might, he thought, be given in alms to the blind, sick and lame, to free schools, or to needy maidens for marriage portions, etc. p230 Poorhouses and parish doctors should be provided, and he adds:—

“Item, part of these forsayde goodes may be employed to this use, that in euery hundreth, good towne or citie, certein houses be mainteined, to lodge and kepe pore men in, such as be not able to labour, syck, sore, blind, and lame, and euery one of them to haue wherwith to liue, and to haue poore whole women to minister unto them. . . . Let Physycians and Chyrurgians be founde in euery suche town or cyte, where such houses be, to loke uppon the Poore in that Town, and in all other Joyninge unto it and they to lyue uppon their stipend onely, without taking any penny of their pore, uppon payne of lousing both his eares and his stipend also.”

Henry VIII proposed to the Commons very much what their predecessors had suggested to Henry IV and Henry V, omitting, nevertheless, the clause relating to a hundred new almshouses. If they would grant him the religious houses, these should not be converted to private uses, and the army would be strengthened and taxes reduced. No provision, however, was made for these projects, but the king was put in possession of the monasteries, and then of the chantries, hospitals and free chapels. The Parliament, in granting the hospitals to the king and his heirs for ever, expressed its confidence in the royal benevolence towards them and desire for their improvement:—

“The Kinges Highnes of his most godlie and blessed disposicion entendeth to have the premisses used and exercised to more godlie and uertuouse purposes and to reduce and bringe them into a more decent and convenient order, for the commoditie and welthe of this his realme and for the suertie of the subjects.”

When the king went to prorogue Parliament, he seems to p231 have alluded in his “Oration,” as set forth by Foxe, to the above expression of their hopes and wishes:—

“Surely if I, contrary to your expectation, should suffer the ministers of the church to decay; . . . or poor and miserable people to be unrelieved; you might say that I, being put in so special a trust, as I am in this case, were no trusty friend to you, nor charitable man to mine even-christened, [fellow Christians], neither a lover of the public wealth, nor yet one that feared God, to whom account must be rendered of all our doings. Doubt not, I pray you, but your expectation shall be served more godly and goodly than you will wish or desire, as hereafter you shall plainly perceive.”

But although Henry VIII thus professed to remember the higher court of justice, his conduct gave no evidence of it. Brinklow ventured upon a reminder in A Supplication of the Poore Commons,[149] published shortly after the king’s speech:—

“We beseke you (most deare Soueraine) euen for the hope you haue in the redemption of Christ, that you call to remembraunce that dreadfull daye, whan your Highnesse shall stande before the judgement seat of God in no more reputation then one of those miserable creatures which do nowe daylye dy in the stretes for lack of theyr dwe porsion.”

He continues to point out in forcible language that the portion due by God’s ordinance to poor impotent folk, the lame, blind, lazar and sore members of Christ—who once had been lodged in hospitals and almshouses—is now given by the king and his nobles to “reward those gnatonical elbowhangers, your chaplaines.” In spite of the vehement abuse of parasitical clergy in which the above writer indulges, it was in the main lay-people rather than churchmen who divided the spoils. Fuller—who quaintly p232 writes that “this king made three meals, or (if you will) one meal of three courses, on Abbey-lands, besides what Cardinal Wolsey (the king’s taster herein) had eaten beforehand”—goes on to say “yet surely more tendernesse was used to hospitalls,” and finds “very few of them finally suppressed.” But hospital endowments did certainly form a substantial dish at Henry’s feast, to which many royal favourites were bidden. Some fell with the smaller priories (1536), a few with the greater houses (1539), and others were extinguished under the Act for dissolving chantries, free chapels, hospitals, and guilds (1545); a further Act of confiscation marked the first year of Edward VI’s reign (1547). In some places charities were indiscriminately swept away. A manuscript history of Gorleston records, for example, that “Henry VIII ordered that all the premises of . . . the Hospitals of St. James, St. John, St. Bartholomew, St. Luke, and the church and hospital of St. Nicholas . . . should be sold.” No consistent plan was followed, but—whether under ecclesiastical or lay control—charities were destroyed or spared at will. Speaking generally, institutions in private hands were suppressed, those in the possession of corporate bodies, retained.

[♦] PLATE XXV. ST. LEONARD’S, YORK

Few houses of Crown patronage escaped. The Commissioners, announcing to Cromwell (1537) the dissolution of certain northern monasteries, add:—“We have also altered the howse of Sancte Leonerdes in Yourke, after suche ordre and fassion as we trust shall appeir to your lordship to be to the kinges honour and contentacion.”[150] In truth the alteration meant annihilation for St. Leonard’s; and St. Nicholas’ hospital in the same city also p233 disappeared. In London, the Savoy, fresh from the hand of the builder, was dissolved. The sisters of St. James’, Westminster, surrendered (receiving life-pensions), whereupon “the king builded there a goodly Mannor, annexing thereunto a Parke.”[151] The Maison Dieu, Dover, a rich foundation with good buildings near the quay, was declared suitable for a victualling yard (1544) which it eventually became.

Hospitals attached to a cathedral or see were usually, but not always, spared. In the bishopric of Durham, for example, the houses of Sherburn and Greatham survived, but neither Kepier nor the bishop’s hospital at Northallerton. God’s House, Portsmouth, was surrendered and became an armoury; in the Library of the Society of Antiquaries is a document of 1547 concerning “Munycions within the Churche at Goddeshouse.”[152] St. John’s, Ely, was spared, yet only for a while. The episcopal hospitals at Bath and Norwich remained in use, but under the municipality.

If directly dependent upon a monastic house, the fate of a hospital was practically sealed. Take, for instance, the case of St. James’, near the gate of Lewes Priory. From the monastery now demolished thirteen men and one woman had had all their living; wherefore Peter Thompson and the bedefolk begged relief (1538).[153] Hospitals of lay-foundation which had been subsequently placed under monastic supervision, but with distinct endowments, fell as forming part of the sequestrated property. In some cases the Crown kept up charities for a time. The p234 return of pensions in 1552 shows that sums were paid out of the tenements of Nostell Priory to inmates of St. Nicholas’, Pontefract. The poor dwelling in the so-called “Kings Majesty’s almshouses” at Glastonbury (formerly abbey-pensioners) were also granted weekly allowances. This was generous, for although Henry VIII and Edward VI were fond of giving their names to charitable institutions, they too often gave little else.

The two Statutes authorizing the dissolution of Chantries, etc. (1545–1547) extinguished or reduced in means, some houses of charity. When an almshouse was spared, the Crown sometimes demanded an acknowledgment; at Beverley the rents in 1545 include a new item of £4 paid by the town to the king and queen for the Trinity Maison Dieu. “Hospitals” were not rightfully within the scope of the second Act. Thus Foster’s almshouse in Bristol being, as the certificate states:—

“for the helpynge relief and comforte of a certeyn nomber of poore people there to contynue and haue their liuinge from tyme to tyme for euer, is without the compasse of the statute and the King’s Majestie not entitled thereunto by force of the same.”

In the preface to the Yorkshire Chantry Surveys, it is stated that most, if not all, of the hospitals which were returned on the certificates there printed were left undissolved, save that in a few cases funds were transferred to educational purposes. Testimony is borne in 1552 to the usefulness of one of the Pontefract almshouses, where fourteen bedemen were supported:—

[♦] PLATE XXVI. ABINGDON ALMSHOUSES

“Thes persons be called cremettes and le pore and agyd people, and placyd in a howse, callyd Seynt Nycoles Hospytell, p235 and when any of them dyeth another ys placyd in the dedes roome, and ys very convenyent to be contynuyd, as well for the helpe of the pore and agyd people of the towne as for others.”

In many places, however, endowments were seized by virtue of this Act. A sixteenth-century MS. states:—

“Item, there ar within the towne and parishe of Taunton xliiijor almshowses full of poore people whereunto there was certen Lande belonginge which by the Suppression of Chaunteries was taken awaie soe that now thinhabitaunts doe beare the whole burden them selues.”[154]

The dissolution of fraternities also affected the maintenance of the poor. Of almshouses associated with gilds at Colchester, Stratford and Abingdon, none survived save the latter, which was incorporated by Edward VI. St. John’s hospital in Winchester outlived the fraternity annexed to it. St. Thomas’, York, which had been united to Corpus Christi Gild, weathered the storm, its officials afterwards diplomatically inviting the mayor and aldermen “to be brether with us in the same hospital.”

Those houses were fairly secure which were already the property of municipal authorities, who indeed received fresh patronage at this time (e.g. at Canterbury, Norwich, Bath)—a policy which obtained the support of the great middle-class. At this crisis the public-spirited action of more than one corporation saved charities from extinction. In the Survey for Wiltshire (1548), quoted by Mr. Leach in English Schools at the Reformation, the following entry is made:—“There is an Hospitall within Marleborowe . . . wiche the sayd mayre and commons humbly desyre the Kingis Highnes and his mooste Honourable councell p236 to conuerte into a Free scole for the inducement of youth.” But before the townsmen obtained their school, it was necessary to sell the stock of plate intended to pass from mayor to mayor, “as hath byn credibly reported,” says a book formerly belonging to the Chamber. To cite another example, the corporation of Bristol received St. Mark’s as a “gift,” that is, the sum of £1000 was paid into the treasury of the Court of Augmentations, besides an annual rent of £20. The city obtained part of the property in return on easy terms, for, as Fuller would observe, there were “many good bargains, or rather cheap pennyworths, bought of abbey lands.” It is said that more than half the purchase-money was raised by the sale of church plate.

In London, the citizens, under the leadership of the Lord Mayor, made an urgent petition to Henry VIII (1538) for the re-foundation of certain hospitals:—

“for the ayde and comforte of the poore sykke, blynde, aged and impotent persones, beyng not able to helpe theymselffs, nor hauyning any place certeyn whereyn they may be lodged, cherysshed and refresshed tyll they be cured and holpen of theyre dyseases and syknesse. For the helpe of the said poore people, we enforme your grace that there be nere and wtyn the cytye of London three hospytalls or spytells, comenly called Saynt Mary Spytell, Saynt Bartylmews Spytell, and Saynt Thomas Spytell, . . . fownded of good devoon by auncyent fathers, and endowed wt great possessions and rents.”

The petitioners promise that if the king will grant the governance of these hospitals to them with their possessions, they shall be reformed and their usefulness increased:—

“A greatter nombre of poore nedy sykke and indygent persones shalbe refresshed maynteyned comforted fownde heled p237 and cured of theyre infyrmytyes frankly and frely, by phisicions, surgeons, and appotycaryes, . . . so that all impotent persones not able to labor shall be releued . . . and all sturdy beggars not willing to labor shalbe punisshed, so that wt Godd’s grace fewe or no persones shalbe seene abrode to begge or aske almesse.”

It appears that no response was made to this appeal until 1544. St. Mary’s had been dissolved, never to be restored, St. Thomas’ was deserted, and St. Bartholomew’s, “vacant and altogether destitute of a master and all fellows or brethren.” After six years’ delay, the king heeded the petition. He was exceedingly anxious to emphasize his compassionate character and eager desire for the improvement of hospitals. If the petitioners had invited him to win the name of conservator, defender and protector of the poor, he writes as though he were indeed all these:—

“We being of the same [hospital] so seised, and, divine mercy inspiring us, desiring nothing more than that the true works of piety and charity should not be abolished there but rather fully restored and renewed according to the primitive pattern . . . and the abuses, in long lapse of time lamentably occurring, being reformed, we have endeavoured . . . that henceforth there be comfort to the prisoners, shelter to the poor, visitation to the sick, food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, and sepulture to the dead administered there . . . we determine to create, erect, found and establish a certain hospital.”

By virtue of these letters-patent the name of the ancient institution was to be “The House of the Poor in West Smithfield of the foundation of King Henry VIII.” The noble “founder” is commemorated by the gateway and by a portrait in the Common Room; whilst a window in p238 the hall depicts Sir R. Gresham receiving the “foundation-charter.”

If the “creation” of St. Bartholomew’s—after above four hundred years of usefulness—was due to Henry VIII, its preservation was due almost entirely to the good citizens of London. Its former possessions being now vested in the Crown, the king agreed by an Act of Common Council to endow it to the extent of 500 marks a year (about £333). The citizens—“thinkying it for their partes rather to litle then enough”—gladly met the offer with a similar sum annually; they also raised nearly £1000 for initial expenses and opened the repaired and refitted hospital for one hundred patients. They agreed henceforth to buy and provide all manner of apothecary’s ware, and all that was necessary for making salves and all other things touching physic or surgery, for the healing of inmates. From this time onwards the citizens interested themselves in this great institution which they supported nobly. It did not become a municipal hospital, but was under the guidance of the Lord Mayor and Governors.

By the same covenant the king “gave” St. Mary’s of Bethlehem to the city. Stow says:—“It was an Hospitall for distracted people. . . . the Mayor and Communalty purchased the patronage thereof with all the landes and tenementes thereunto belonging, in the yeare 1546, the same yeare King Henry the eight gave this Hospitall unto the Cittie.” In other words, the citizens bought back that which had already been in the guardianship of the city for about two hundred years.

In “The Ordre of St. Bartholomewes”[155] drawn up in p239 1552, a report is given, so that all might know how things were administered and support the work. During the preceding five years, eight hundred persons had been discharged healed, and ninety-two had died. The charity had been carried on in spite of great difficulties, and now there was a design to increase it:—

“The Citie of their endlesse good wil toward this most necessarie succour of their pore brethren in Christ, . . . wyshe al men to be most assuredly perswaded, that if by any meanes possible thei might, they desire to enlarge the benefyght to a thousand.”

A wish is expressed that all almoners and houses of alms might be stirred up to do likewise “at this tyme namely, when the mysery of the poore moste busily semeth to awake.” This same year the manor of Southwark was purchased and St. Thomas’ repaired, so that whereas it lately accommodated forty sick, it was reopened with 260 beds for the aged, sick and sore. This “Hospitall of great receite for the poore, was suppressed but againe newly founded and indowed by the benevolence and charitie of the citizens,” says Stow. King Edward’s letters-patent (1551) describe the miserable condition of the sick poor lying and begging in the streets, “to their no small grief and pain and to the great infection and molesting of his subjects. The king desiring the health of the citizens in general no less than the cure of the sick, therefore grants permission to the mayor and corporation to undertake the work.”

The work of the re-founded houses of St. Bartholomew, St. Thomas, and Bethlehem was supplemented in 1553 by Christ’s Hospital for fatherless children, and Bridewell for the correction of idle vagabonds. These institutions p240 were provided partly from Edward VI’s private purse and partly from the dissolved Savoy Hospital and Grey Friars. Their initiation was due to the influence of Ridley, Bishop of London, who took counsel with the Lord Mayor as to the condition of the poor, and reported it to the young king. With the charitable provision after 1547 we are not, however, concerned, and only the ultimate effect of the general Dissolution remains to be shown.

For, happily, this volume is no history of obsolete institutions. The heritage of the past is to a certain extent ours to-day, and we can rejoice in the uninterrupted beneficence of St. Bartholomew’s which receives in the twentieth century as in the twelfth, “languishing men grieved with various sores.” Words spoken by the Prince Consort in reference to another foundation at once ancient and modern, are equally true of St. Bartholomew’s and of the sister-hospital of St. Thomas:—

“It holds to this day the same honourable position in the estimation of the country which it did in the time of its first formation, exemplifying the possibility, in this happy country, of combining the general progress of mankind with a due reverence for the institutions, and even forms, which have been bequeathed to us by the piety and wisdom of our forefathers.”[156]

More has come down to us than perhaps we realize. Canterbury retains three venerable houses of alms. St. Mary’s, Chichester; St. Nicholas’, Salisbury; and St. Giles’, Norwich, are still peaceful retreats in old age. In the city of Winchester—St. Cross is not merely a monument of unchangeable usefulness, but increased funds p241 enable it to give pensions in various parts of England to the value of £1200; the site of St. Mary Magdalene’s is occupied by an isolation hospital, a portion of the original endowment maintaining a small almshouse; while St. John’s has been greatly enlarged.

[♦ ] 31. GATEWAY OF ST. JOHN’S, CANTERBURY

Even where no ancient stones bear witness, modern bricks or coins may be eloquent, for a part of the original p242 endowment may be applied to a renewed institution. For instance, the funds of the demolished leper-hospital at Chichester are applied to a modern infirmary. Sums arising from the “Lazarhouse Charity” (Launceston) or “Magdalene Lands” (in Devonshire) are now and again expended upon food and fuel for the poor. And although York shows in the fragment of St. Leonard’s but a memorial of fallen greatness, what appears to be a remnant of its rich revenues is still paid to thirty-one poor people, for the curious name “Cremitt Money” is surely derived from the inmates of that hospital, commonly known as “cremettes” (a corruption of eremites). The connection is clear enough in the case of the “Almsmen of St. Bartholomew” at Oxford, and “St. Nicholas’ Almsmen” at Carlisle, who represent former occupants of leper-houses. Again, the relation may be intimate even when a modern charity perpetuates the ancient only by force of association and memory. St. Leonard’s, Bedford, was revived in 1889, the original charity for the sick, paralysed, and lepers having lapsed at the Dissolution. No endowments survived, but it is supported locally. The present foundation is an association of religious and philanthropic persons who supply nourishing diet to invalids in their homes and assist them when convalescent. Thus, although the sole trace of old buildings is one pillar-shaft serving as a sun-dial, the charity itself is a living memorial of the ancient hospital.[157]

Finally, St. Leonard’s, Sudbury, and Sherburn House, Durham, illustrate to what advantage the old order may yield place to new. The income of St. Leonard’s, originally designed for three lepers, supplemented by p243 voluntary contributions, is applied to the maintenance of fourteen beds for sick patients, the hospital being fully equipped with modern medical and surgical appliances whilst maintaining the former religious traditions. Sherburn, once a home for sixty-five outcasts, was transformed into an almshouse when the scourge was removed. In that “haunt of ancient peace” many are now sheltered in time of age or chronic sickness; they worship daily in the old church; they are visited and cheered by a master who has devoted his life to them, and whose work is a labour of love. The revenues and practical benefits of the hospital continue to increase; a modern dispensary is fitted up there, by means of which hundreds of out-patients from the neighbouring city are relieved.

“It is this renewing of itself which brings to English institutions greatness, stability, and permanence. Thus the great traditions of the past can be happily, wisely, and usefully combined with the highest aspirations of the present and future.”

[♦] p244