The reader of Sir Norman Moore’s book is continually coming across unexpected facts. For instance, that St James’ Palace is on the site of what, in the reign of Henry III., was known as the Hospital of St James.
On 15th June 1253, St Bartholomew’s Hospital obtained from Henry III. two important charters,
one confirming them in their possessions, the other in their rights and privileges. The gift was made, among other reasons, for the soul “of King Henry my grandfather.”
The author succeeds in conveying to his readers the personal interest which he evidently feels in the writers of the deeds of which he makes such good use. Thus (i., p. 477) he quotes Maelbrigte, who made a copy of the later Gospels at Armagh in the time of Rahere, as writing “at the foot of a very small page of vellum in a minute and exquisite hand, ‘If it was my wish I could write the whole treatise like this,’ thus handing down to succeeding ages a scribe’s pride in his art.” Again in a charter copied into the hospital cartulary the last witness is “Master Simon, who wrote this charter.”
The author (i., p. 485) has occasion to refer to a grant by Stephen of Gosewelle of certain lands. And this reminds him how he heard Dickens read the trial in Pickwick. He says, in “almost every part I can recall his emphasis and the tone of his voice.—‘Mrs Bardell shrunk from the world and courted the retirement and tranquillity of Goswell Street.’ . . . Very few know that this thoroughfare was the street of a hamlet, extra barram de Aldredesgate.”
In a charter probably belonging to the earlier half of the reign of Henry III., a witness, Sabrichet, “has a name which survives in Sabrichetestead or Sabstead, the native pronunciation of Sawbridgeworth.” In the out-patient room a patient said that he came from Sawbridgeworth. The physician, [142]
who had been instructed by Henry Bradshaw, remarked that the patient did not know how to pronounce the name of his own home. On this the patient exclaimed, “Oh, I know it is Sabstead, but I thought the gentleman would not understand.”
Names have a fascination for me, and I cannot resist quoting the name of Henry Pikebone, who, I hope, pronounced it Pickbone, and might well have been one of Falstaff’s men. We meet (p. 510) with a reference to John of Yvingho, which is said to have suggested Ivanhoe to Walter Scott. I regret to say that John was a fishmonger. Elsewhere we meet another pleasing name, Cecilia Pidekin, but unfortunately she is not known in any other way than as the recipient, by a will of 1281, of a chemise and a little brass pail. There are innumerable points of interest in the matter of names. Thus the author points out that Shoe Lane has nothing to do with shoes nor indeed with lanes; it is a corruption of the solanda or prebend through which it passes.
The author often helps us to realise the appearance of the inhabitants of St Bartholomew’s. Thus (p. 551) the Bishop of London in his ordinance of 1316 settled that “those of the brethren who were priests were to wear round cloaks of frieze or other cloth, the lay brethren shorter cloaks; the sisters tunics and over-tunics of grey cloth, these not to be longer than to their ankles.” This last regulation is curious. We should have expected the limitation to have been applied to shortness rather than to length.
Walter of Basingbourne [144] was Master of the Hospital during the greatest epidemic of plague which “the Western world had experienced since the time of Justinian.” It is generally known as the Black Death, and was the same disease as that which terrified London in 1665, and the epidemic which has destroyed nearly nine millions of people in India since 1894.