The staff like the warden defied authority, as is shown by visitation reports. The brethren and sisters of St. Nicholas’, York, were cross-questioned by the jury. The general evidence was that they were living as they pleased, carrying on business, omitting services, and wandering. The sisters mostly confessed to knowing nothing, but one deposed that the brethren were disobedient; whilst the chaplain reported that “all are disobedient and do not observe humility.”[139]
Community life was doubtless trying to the temper, and there were occasionally disturbances serious enough p219 to reach the king’s ears. Throughout the reign of Edward II, the name of Nicholas de Staple occurs periodically on Close Rolls. Brother Nicholas first appears as an official of the Maison Dieu, Ospringe, who had become intolerable to his fellows. The king, in response to an appeal, orders him to transfer himself promptly to St. John’s, Oxford, to remain until further notice: “the king wishing to avoid damages and dangers and dilapidations of the goods of the hospital that, it is feared, will arise if Nicholas remain there any longer, on account of the dissensions between him and the other brethren.” The disturber of the peace retires from parchment publicity for thirteen years, when an order is sent to retain him for life as a chaplain-brother. Finally, after a visit of twenty years to Oxford (whither he was “lately sent to stay for some time”), the life-sentence is remitted, and he is allowed to return to Ospringe. Two years before Nicholas vanishes, Oxford becomes a reformatory for another Ospringe brother, Thomas Urre, whom the king caused to be amoved on account of bad conduct, and because he excited all manner of disputes. Small wonder that a subsequent visitation of St. John’s should reveal misrule, dissolute living, disobedient and quarrelsome brothers, sisters and ministers.
A few years later, the household at Newton in Holderness is in a like condition, witness the following entry:—
“Commission . . . to make inquisition and certify the king whether, as he is informed, William Lulleman, chaplain, (who pretends to be deaf and for that cause has at the king’s request been admitted to his hospital of Newton to have his sustenance there,) is sometimes lunatic and mad, and daily stirs up dissension between the brothers and sisters of the hospital, and p220 so threatens them and the poor residing there, and bears himself so importunately that he cannot have his conversation among the master and brethren, nor can the brethren and sisters live in peace while he is conversant among them.”[140]
The offender was then removed, but imagine with what feelings the warden of Newton received the king’s messenger four years later, and unfastening the roll read as follows:—
“To the master and brethren, etc. Request to admit William Lulleman of Bernleye, chaplain, who is detained by severe sickness, and to give him maintenance for life.”[140]
Edward III, wishing to guard against the reception of unworthy men, forbade the master of Ospringe to admit any brother without special orders; and he removed one for notorious excesses and disobediences.[141] St. Thomas’, Birmingham, was found in a miserable plight, because “vile reprobates assumed the habit that they might continue their abominable lives sub velamine Religiositatis, and then forsake it, and cause themselves to be called hermits.”[142] No clerk could be ordained without a “title,” but hospitals were apt to offer this to unproved persons, which was fatal to the tone of the household. St. John’s, Ely, was usually governed by clergy under rule, but in 1454 the Bishop of Dunkeld was collated to the mastership, because no regulars could be found capable of effecting its recovery from ruin and wretchedness.
The decline of hospitals was largely owing to the fact that many wardens were non-residents and pluralists. It was actually possible to represent one as having died; p221 several appointments are revoked because the master is discovered to be “alive and well,” so that it was by “false suggestion that the office was reported as void.” Meanwhile such men were being supported from the hospital funds; an absentee governor of God’s House, Southampton, took his share of the best of its goods, living at its expense in a private mansion in the country. The king nominated to Crown foundations men constantly employed on service elsewhere, and a mastership was a mere stepping-stone to preferment.
Not only did clergy hold a benefice and hospital together, but sometimes one man held no less than three hospitals. About 1350, the “lack of clergy by reason of the pestilence” was a serious matter. On this plea the Bishop of Winchester appointed his nephew, a youth in his eighteenth year, as warden at Portsmouth; before long the latter held also the mastership of St. Cross, an archdeaconry, and two canonries. Such practices, begun of necessity, were continued in the century of lax Church life which followed. “One of the boys of the king’s chapel” was given the wardenship of Ilford hospital in 1405. The mischief that happened through the plurality and non-residence of parochial and hospital clergy was at length insisted on in Parliament, when in response to the petition of the Commons, reformation was ordered (1425). St. Nicholas’, Pontefract, had been “ruled by secular masters, some of whom hardly ever went there”; but in 1438 the management was undertaken by the prior of Nostell.
Dispensations from Rome were answerable for many bad appointments, as is shown by entries in the papal registers of 1427. The master of Newton Garth, for p222 example, was Thomas Bourgchier—“who is in his sixteenth year only, is of a race of great nobles, and holds the said hospital, without cure, wont to be assigned to secular clerks”; moreover it was granted that after his twentieth year he might hold two houses, resigning or exchanging them at will. This youthful official seems to have been following in the footsteps of his ambitious namesake and contemporary, who secured constant promotion and finally “wore the mitre full fifty-one years,” and died Primate and Cardinal. Well might the founders of Ewelme almshouse provide that, if possible, the master should be “a degreed man passed thirty winters of age.”