There the maiden remained three years, growing daily worse. After describing her horrible symptoms and wasted frame, the chronicler narrates her marvellous cure at Finchale. Thrice did the devoted mother take her thither until the clemency of St. Godric was outpoured and “he settled and removed the noxious humours.” When at length the girl threw back the close hood, her mother beheld her perfectly sound. The scene of this pitiful arrival and glad departure was that beautiful spot at the bend of the river Weir, now marked by picturesque ruins. The complete recovery was attested by all, including the sheriff and the kind priest, Normanrus. We reluctantly lose sight of the delivered damsel, wondering whether the cruel step-father received her less roughly when she got home. It is simply recorded that never did the disease return, and that she lived long to extol the power given by God to His servant Godric.
(4) A Taunton Monk.—Seldom do we know the after-life of such patients, but a touching picture shows us one cleansed of his leprosy, serving his former fellow-inmates. This was John King, a monk of Taunton Priory. Prior p098 Stephen tells how he was smitten with terrible and manifest leprosy, on which account he was transferred to a certain house of poor people, where he stayed for more than a year among the brethren. The prior’s letter, after declaring how the fame of St. Thomas was growing throughout the world, refers to divers miracles, by one of which John was completely cured. Returning from Canterbury, he was authorized to gather alms for his former companions:—
“We . . . earnestly implore your loving good will for the love of God and St. Thomas, that you listen to the dutiful prayer of our brother John, wonderfully restored to health by God, if you have power to grant it. For he earnestly begs you to help by your labour and your alms the poverty of those sick men whose company he enjoyed so long.”[63]
Two similar instances of service are recorded. Nicholas, a cripple child cured at St. Bartholomew’s, was sent for a while to serve in the kitchen,—“for the yifte of his helth, he yave the seruyce of his body.” In the same way a blind man who had been miraculously cured by the merit of St. Wulstan (1221), afterwards took upon himself the habit of a professed brother in the hospital of that saint in Worcester. He had been a pugilist and had lost his sight in a duel, but having become a peaceable brother of mercy, he lived there honourably for a long while.[64]
(ii) CROWN PENSIONERS
Leaving the chronicles, and turning to state records, we find that the sick, impotent and leprous were recipients of royal favour. An early grant of maintenance was p099 made in 1235 to Helen, a blind woman of Faversham whom Henry III caused to be received as a sister at Ospringe hospital. Similar grants were made from time to time to faithful retainers, veteran soldiers or converted Jews (who were the king’s wards).
Old Servants, Soldiers, etc.—The most interesting pensioners were veterans who had served in Scotland and France. The year of the battle of Bannockburn (1314), a man was sent to Brackley whose hand had been inhumanly cut off by Scotch rebels.[65] There are several instances of persons maimed in the wars who were sent for maintenance to various hospitals. One of the many grants of Richard II was made—“out of regard for Good Friday”—to an aged servant, that he should be one of the king’s thirteen poor bedemen of St. Giles’, Wilton. Another of Richard II’s retainers, a yeoman, was generously offered maintenance at Puckeshall by Henry IV.[66]
Jewish Converts.—The House of Converts was akin to a modern industrial home for destitute Jewish Christians, inmates being kept busily employed in school and workshop. During the century following the foundation of these “hospitals,” many converts are named, Eve, for instance, was received at Oxford, and Christiana in London. Usually admitted after baptism, they were enrolled under their new names. Philip had been baptized upon St. Philip and St. James’ Day, and Robert Grosseteste was possibly godson of the bishop. Converts were brought from all parts. We find John and William of Lincoln, Isabel of Bristol and her boy, p100 Isabel of Cambridge, Emma of Ipswich, etc.[67] A century later pensioners must have been immigrants, since all Jews resident in England had been expelled in 1290. A Flemish Jew, baptized at Antwerp in the presence of Edward III, was granted permission to dwell in the London institution with a life-pension of 2d. a day:—
“Inasmuch as our beloved Edward of Brussels has recently abandoned the superstitious errors of Judaism . . . and because we rejoice in Christ over his conversion, and lest he should recede from the path of truth upon which he has entered, because of poverty . . . we have granted to him a suitable home in our House of Converts.”
Theobald de Turkie, “a convert to the Catholic Faith,” was afterwards received, together with pensioners from Spain, Portugal, France, and Italy. A chamber was granted to Agnes, an orphan Jewess of tender age and destitute of friends, the child of a convert-godson of Edward II. A later inmate, of whose circumstances we would fain know more, was Elizabeth, daughter of Rabbi Moyses, called “bishop of the Jews” (1399). Converts frequently had royal sponsors. Henry V stood godfather to Henry Stratford, who lived in the Domus Conversorum from 1416–1441. There was a certain risk in being called after the sovereign, nor was it unknown for the king’s converts to change their names. As late as 1532 Katharine of Aragon and Princess Mary stood sponsor to two Jewesses.