Matilda gave the ground, and endowed the hospital with the magnificent sum of £3 per annum! Her foundation provided for forty lepers, one chaplain, one clerk, and one servant. Henry II. confirmed all privileges and gifts which had accrued to the hospital, and added to them himself. Parton says, "His liberality ranks him as a second founder." During succeeding reigns the hospital grew in wealth and importance. In Henry III.'s reign Pope Alexander issued a confirmatory Bull, but the charity had become a refuge for decayed hangers-on at Court who were not lepers. This abuse was prohibited by the King's decree. In Edward III.'s reign the first downward step was taken, for he made the hospital a cell to Burton St. Lazar. The brethren apparently rebelled, refusing to admit the visitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and destroying many valuable documents and records belonging to the hospital. Two centuries later King Henry VIII. desired the lands and possessions of St. Giles's, and with him to desire was to acquire.
The hospital was thus shorn of the greater part of its wealth, retaining only the church (not the manor) at Feltham (one of its earliest gifts), the hospital estates at Edmonton, in the City of London, and in the various parishes in the suburbs; and in St. Giles's parish the actual ground it stood on, the Pittance Croft, and a few minor places. But even this remnant came into the possession of the rapacious King two years later, at the dissolution of the monasteries, when Burton St. Lazar itself fell into the tyrant's hands. Henry held these for six years, then granted both to John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, Lord High Admiral. From the time of the dissolution the hospital became a manor.
In the earliest charters the head of the hospital is styled Chaplain, but not Master. The first Master mentioned is in 1212, and after this the title was regularly used. The government was vested in the Master or Warden and other officers, together with a certain number of sound brethren and sisters—and in certain cases lepers themselves—who formed a chapter. "They assembled in chapter, had a common seal, held courts as lords of the manor."[1] There were also guardians or custodians, who did not reside in the precincts of the hospital, and these seem to have been chosen from the most eminent citizens; they formed no part of the original scheme.
[1] "Some Account of the Hospital and Parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields," 1822, by John Parton.
SEAL OF ST. GILES'S HOSPITAL.
The sisters appear to have been nurses, for there is no mention made of any leprous sister. The chapel of the hospital appears from King Henry II.'s charter to have been built on the site of some older parochial church. The Bull of Pope Alexander mentions that the hospital wall enclosed eight acres. Within this triangular space, which is at present roughly bounded by the High Street, Charing Cross Road, and Shaftesbury Avenue, was one central building or mansion for the lepers, several subordinate buildings, the chapel, and the gate-house. Whether the number of lepers was reduced when the hospital possessions were curtailed we are not told. After the hospital buildings fell into the hands of Lord Dudley they underwent many changes. The principal building he converted into a mansion for his own use; this was the manor-house. It stood between the present Denmark Street and Lloyd's Court, and its site is occupied by a manufactory. After two years Lord Dudley obtained from the King license to transfer all his newly-gained estates to Sir Wymonde Carew, but there seems reason to suppose that Lord Dudley remained in possession of the manor-house until his attainder in the reign of Queen Mary, because the manor then reverted to the Crown, and was regranted. Clinch gets out of this difficulty by supposing Lord Dudley to have parted with his estates and retained the manor, but in the deed of license for exchange all his "mansion place and capital house, late the house of the dissolved hospital of St. Giles in the Fields," is especially mentioned. It is possible that Sir Wymonde leased it again to the Dudley family.
Among the many subsequent holders of the manor we find the name of Sir Walter Cope, who bought the Manor of Kensington in 1612, and through whose only child, Isabel, it passed by marriage to Sir Henry Rich, created Earl of Holland. The Manor of St. Giles was in the possession of the Crown again in Charles II.'s reign, when Alice Leigh, created by him Duchess of Dudley, lived in the manor-house. This Duchess made many gifts to the church, among which was a rectory-house.
The Church of St. Giles at present standing is certainly the third, if not the fourth, which has been upon the same site. As mentioned above, there is reason to believe from Henry II.'s charter that a sacred building of some sort stood here before the leper chapel. The chapel had a chapter-house attached, and seems to have been a well-cared-for building. There were several chantry chapels and a high altar dedicated to St. Giles. St. Giles's in the earlier charters is spoken of as a village, not a parish, but there is little doubt that after the establishment of the hospital its chapel was used as a parish church by the villagers. There was probably a wall screening off the lepers. The first church of which any illustration is preserved has a curious tower, capped by a round dome. The view of this church, dated 1560, is taken after the dissolution of the hospital, when it had become entirely parochial. In 1617 the quaint old tower was taken down, and replaced by another, but only six years after the whole church was rebuilt. A view of this in 1718 gives a very long battlemented body in two stories, with a square tower surmounted by an open belfry and vane. It possessed remarkably fine stained-glass windows and a handsome screen presented by the Duchess of Dudley.
This second church did not last very long, for in Queen Anne's reign the parishioners petitioned that it should be rebuilt as one of the fifty new churches, being then in a state of decay. The present church, which is very solid, and has dignity of outline, was the work of Flitcroft, and was opened April 14, 1734. The steeple is 160 feet high, with a rustic pedestal, a Doric story, an octagonal tower, and spire. The basement is of rusticated Portland stone, of which the church is built, and quoins of the same material decorate the windows and angles within. It follows the lines of the period, with hardly any chancel, wide galleries on three sides standing on piers, from which columns rise to the elliptical ceiling. The part of the roof over the galleries is bayed at right angles to the curve of the central part. Monuments hang on the walls and columns, and occupy every available space. By far the most striking of these is the full-length figure of a woman in repose which is set on a broad window-seat. This is the monument of Lady Frances Kniveton, daughter of Alice Leigh, Duchess of Dudley. The daughter's tomb remains a memorial of her mother's benefactions to the parish. The monument of Andrew Marvell, a plain black marble slab, is on the north wall. Marvell was buried in the church "under the pews in the south side," but the present monument was not erected until 1764, eighty-six years after his death, owing to the opposition of the incumbent of the church. The inscription on it slightly varies from that intended for the original monument. Besides a handsome brass cross on the chancel floor to the Rector, Canon Nisbett, a tomb in form of a Roman altar, designed by Inigo Jones, and commemorating George Chapman, the translator of Homer, and a touching monument in the lobby to "John Belayse," put up by his two daughters, there is nothing further worth seeing.