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.”