St. Cross Hospital founded by Bishop Henry of Blois in 1136, and placed by him subsequently under the protection of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, from which circumstance the Brethren wear the characteristic croix pattée or eight-pointed cross of the Order.
Cardinal Beaufort built ‘Beaufort’s Tower’ and most of the present domestic buildings, and founded the Order of Noble Poverty.
The hospitality to travellers for which the Knights Hospitallers were noted is still practised in the form of the ‘Wayfarer’s Dole’ of bread and ale, dispensed at the hospital gates to those applying for it, very much as in mediaeval days.
queen, and—strange companionship—William Rufus also.
With Cnut’s death came faction and strife. Cnut’s two sons, Harold and his half-brother Harthacnut, Æfgyfu Emma and Earl Godwine, had all intrigued desperately for power. The various accounts differ, but Harthacnut, who, as son of Emma and Cnut, had a strong following in the country, was abroad at the time, and in his absence Harold secured the throne. Emma had played her cards well, perhaps too well, for she had managed to secure possession of Cnut’s treasure and to assert her influence as ‘lady paramount’ over Wessex, for we read
... it was resolved that Æfgyfu, Harthacnut’s mother, should dwell at Winchester with the king, her son’s hûscarls, and hold all Wessex under his authority.
But this was not to last. Harold asserted himself and raided his ‘mother,’—she was his stepmother, of course,—while
... Ælfgyfu Emma, the lady, sat then there within, and Harold ... sent thither, and caused to be taken from her all the best treasures which she could not hold which King Cnut had possessed; and yet she sat there therein the while she might.