[29] In the xi and xii centuries a large number of hospitals of the order of S. Augustine were founded for the relief of poor and impotent persons, the type being that of the Whittington hospital in London. Sometimes their object was to succour the wayfarer, sometimes they were virtually almshouses where leprous and indigent “brethren” formed the larger part of the community with a few “healthful brethren” and the master to look after them. Such was the origin, in the xi c., of the Knights of Malta, or Order of the Hospital of S. John of Jerusalem. At Canterbury Lanfranc erected a hospital of S. Gregory; at Oxford the hospital of S. Bartholomew, founded in the reign of Hen. I., was bestowed by Edw. III. on Oriel College; and Magdalen, Oxford, was erected on the site of another S. John’s hospital, which numbered brethren and sisters among its members. Amalfi merchants trading to the Holy Land endowed the first “master and brethren” of the Order of S. John of Jerusalem; a well-to-do burgess endowed the Cambridge hospice, and the nobles, the bishops, and the sovereign himself are to be numbered among the founders and benefactors of these first almshouses and hospitals. Cf. ii. p. 117 n.
[30] See chap. ii. Peterhouse and S. John’s.
[31] See chap. ii. S. John’s and Jesus Colleges.
[32] Fordham and Mirmaud-at-Welle. The Gilbertines of Chiksand in Bedfordshire had a house and garden in King’s Childers’ Lane by King’s Hall, which they leased to the university for the schools quadrangle in 1433. The Gilbertines were a double Order of nuns and canons; the former followed the Cistercian rule but were never affiliated to that Order. The canons followed the rule of S. Augustine, but the sympathies, like the dress, of the Gilbertines were Cistercian: “militat sub instituto Cisterciensi.” Only in this indirect way did Citeaux enter Cambridge: but see i. p. 25 and ii. p. 143.
[33] The Carmelite Bale says: ex omni factione sua primus tandem fuit qui theologicus doctor sit effectus. Pits says the same in the De illust. Angl. Script. For Carmelite property in Cambridge see also vi. pp. 325-6.
[34] This was the treatise known in Cambridge as ‘the black book,’ in which Prior Cantilupe tells of Cantaber and his son Grantanus, and their foundation of Cambridge on the site of Caergrant.
[35] The prison or tolbooth had been the house of Benjamin the Jew, which became university property in the reign of Elizabeth, but after a famous trial in the next reign reverted to the citizens. Like the Jewish houses elsewhere it was amongst the most solid structures in the town.
[36] Dugdale says “before 1275.” Their priory was enlarged and perhaps refounded by Alice, wife of de Vere second Earl of Oxford.
[37] Chap. ii., Sidney Sussex and Emmanuel Colleges.
[38] v. p. 275.