For many reasons the leper-household was most difficult to control: it is small wonder that abuses crept in. Men forcibly banished were naturally loth to submit to rigorous discipline. They were persons who would never have dreamed of the religious life save by pressure of circumstances; moreover, the nature of their infirmity caused them to suffer from bodily lassitude, irritability and a mental depression bordering upon insanity; in the life of St. Francis is a description of his ministry to a leper so froward, impious, abusive and ungrateful that every one thought him possessed by an evil spirit. London lepers were evidently not less refractory. From early days the city selected two men as keepers and overseers at St. Giles’, the Loke and Hackney; these officials, who were accustomed to visit the lazar-houses daily and to chastise offenders, were granted exemption from inquests, summonses, etc., on account of this “their meritorious labour, their unpleasant and onerous occupation.” (1389.) The London edict of 1346 confirms the undoubted fact that lepers are specially tempted to a loose life. Banished from the restraining influences of home and public opinion, they p149 were found in haunts of vice. The master of the lazar-house had no means of enforcing control. If the leper escaped and fell into evil habits none could prevent it: indeed, this did but ensure the liberty he craved, for the ultimate punishment of inmates was expulsion.
(ii) THE HOUSEHOLD OF THE INFIRMARY AND ALMSHOUSE
(a) The Master or Warden, who was also known as prior, custos, keeper or rector, was usually a priest, but occasionally a layman. One of the early masters of St. Mark’s, Bristol, was a knight, Henry de Gaunt, whose mailed effigy remains in the chapel. Crown hospitals were often served by chaplains and clerks, but the appointment of “king’s servants,” yeomen or knights, is noticeable during the fourteenth century.
It is rarely recorded that the custodian of the sick was a physician, but the absence of the title medicus in no way proves that he and his helpers were ignorant of medicine. In early days, indeed, it was only the clergy, religious or secular, who were trained in the faculty, and the master and his assistants must have acquired a certain intimacy with disease; they would have a knowledge of the herbals, of the system of letting blood, and other simple remedies. An important medical work, Breviarium Bartholomæi, was written late in the fourteenth century by John Mirfield of St. Bartholomew’s, Smithfield. He acknowledges that it is a compilation for the benefit of those who could not afford to buy the treatises whence it was derived; but he adds that part had been personally communicated to him and was supported by the experience of others. The fine manuscript copy in Pembroke p150 College, Oxford, includes a list of medical ingredients, herbs, etc.[94]
In some instances the warden is described as a physician. When the chaplain of St. John’s, Bridport, was incapacitated, Master John de Brideport, physician, was deputed to act for him (1265). The Duke of Lancaster presented his foreign doctor, Pascal de Bononja, to the Preston hospital (1355). “Louis the physician,” who held St. Nicholas’, Pontefract (1399–1401), may be identified with Louis Recouchez, king’s physician, who was then appointed to the hospital at Westminster. It is possible that visiting doctors and barber-surgeons attended hospitals. In an inventory of Elsyng Spital a debt of xxxvijs. ijd. was due to Robert the leech, and of xs. to Geoffrey the barber. One of the inquiries at the Dissolution of religious houses was:—“Whether the maister of the house doo use his brethren charitably when they be syke and diseased; and whether, in tyme of their sykenes, he doo procure unto them physicions.”
The duties—and temptations—of a warden are suggested by the “Articles of Inquisition touching the Savoy” (1535). Not only was inquiry made whether the master visited the poor at least twice a week, and the sick twice daily, but also:—
“Whether he be mercifull, beningne and louyng to the poore; and not skoymys [squeamish] or lothesome to uisite theym or to be among theym.
“Whether he or his ministers by his sufferance do take in suche as they reken moste clene of the poore, and repell theym that they reken most sore or deseased, for auoydyng of their owne lothesomenes or contagion.” p151
[♦] PLATE XVII. GOD’S HOUSE, EWELME
The qualifications and duties of the head of an almshouse are defined in the minute regulations of fifteenth-century founders. The master of Ewelme must be an able and well-disposed person in body and soul, one who could counsel and exhort the poor men to their comfort and salvation. He had to conduct frequent services, and was warned to omit none—not even “for plesaunce of lorde or lady”—save “if he be let by sekenesse or prechyng of the worde of God, or by visitacion of Fadyre and modir.” The master of God’s House, Exeter, might not be absent more than once or twice a year, his recess never exceeding three weeks and three days. At Wells, a chaplain of commendable life, manners and learning was sought—one “circumspect and expert in spiritual and temporal things, and free from all infamous vice.” The ale-house and hunting were forbidden to the warden of Heytesbury, as well as “inhonest playes, as of the Dees, cartes or of the hande-ball.” He must never be absent at night, nor for long by day, although it was lawful for recreation to walk a mile or two at certain times. He had, indeed, little leisure, for he conducted certain services both in the chapel and parish church, and kept school, besides ruling the almshouse.