The foundation was a stupendous charitable effort, the money it cost being certainly underestimated by the common reckoning at twelve times the then value, or £30,000 of our money. It included, for instance, “500 feather beds, and 500 pads of straw to put under the feather beds, and as many blankets and 1000 pair of sheets” from one contractor alone. In all, double that number was provided. But many “there were that brought feather beds, coverlets, sheets, blankets, shirts and smocks, and disbursed great sums of money, which never came to any public account.” The “virtuous prince” himself was most generous. He issued a warrant under his own hand “that all the linen belonging to the churches in London should be brought and delivered to the Governors for the use of the poor, reserving sufficient for the Communion Table, with towels and surplices for the ministers and churches.” The linen, we are told, did good service, “and especiale in St. Thomas Hospital.”[[29]]
In November 1552[[30]] no less than 380 children were taken into the house. At first the “idle men and women” were also brought into Christ’s Hospital “and put in what is now (i.e. in 1582) the schoolmaster’s house, where they were kept from doing any further harm, although not employed to any occupations, for the place served not.” When Bridewell was obtained, the workhouse folk were removed there; but this was not before midsummer 1554.[[31]]
The preparation of Christ’s Hospital was entirely done by voluntary contributions. For St. Thomas’ the City granted £100, and “turned over” to it “£50 a year of that which had been purchased from the King.” But no endowment income was forthcoming for Christ’s Hospital. Nor is it possible to ascertain how much capital was given for Christ’s Hospital alone as the contemporary “State and charge of the new erected Hospitals—A.D. 1553”[[32]] gives the cost of St. Thomas’ indistinguishably mixed with that of Christ’s Hospital. The total was £2479 : 15 : 10, towards which £2476 was received in subscriptions and donations.
Though Christ’s Hospital was in full working order from November 1552, the legal foundation, which appears to have been delayed by the conclusion of the arrangements about Bridewell, was not complete till June 1553. An “Indenture of Covenants,” dated June 12, 7 Edward VI. (1553), was made in English between the King and the mayor, commonalty, and citizens of London, which was carried out by Letters Patent in Latin on the 26th June. The patent contained grants of the manor of Bridewell, the lands belonging to the Savoy Hospital, and the bedding in the same; but not the hospital itself. It created the City Corporation a special corporation with a separate common seal by the name of “the Governors of the possessions, revenues and goods of the Hospitals of Edward the Sixth, King of England, of Christ, Bridewell and St. Thomas the Apostle,” and gave them a licence in mortmain to hold lands for the purposes of the three hospitals up to 4000 marks (£3333 : 16 : 8) a year.
The charter in the most distinct terms emphasises the poor law character of the foundation, and states also with equal distinctness that the idea did not originate with the King. “Whereas we pitying the miserable estate of the poor, fatherless, decrepit, aged, sick, infirm and impotent persons, languishing under various kinds of diseases, and also of our special grace thoroughly considering the honest and pious endeavours of our most humble and obedient subjects the Mayor and Commonalty and citizens of our city of London, who by all ways and methods diligently study for the good provision of the aforesaid poor and of every sort of them”—such is the preamble to the grant. The charter deals with every class of destitute poor: sick, aged, orphans; the poor by misfortune; and rogues and vagabonds; the wilfully poor. The preamble states as its object “that neither children yet being in their infancy shall lack good education and instruction, nor when they shall attain riper years shall be without honest callings and occupations, nor that the sick or diseased when they be recovered and restored to healthe may remain idle and lazy vagabonds, but that they in like manner may be placed and compelled to labour.” In like manner the conclusion of the charter is a grant to the corporation of power to search towns and playhouses, and arrest ruffians, vagabonds, and beggars.
The story of the boy king inserting the licence in mortmain with his own hands is absurd. The licence, occupying a good quarto page of close print, is in the usual legal common form. The story arose, no doubt, from an exaggerated version of Strype’s[[33]] tale that “space was left in the patent for His Grace to put in what sum it pleased him” up to the yearly value of which the City might hold lands in mortmain for the hospitals, not Christ’s Hospital alone, but all together. “He looking on the void place called for pen and ink, and with his own hand wrote this sum, 4000 marks by the year.” Unfortunately for the story, in the patent the sum is written in the same hand as the rest of the document, and the sum had been previously settled, since it appears in the agreement executed a fortnight before, and could not have been altered without a breach of contract. In the agreement it is written in a different hand to the rest of the document; but there is no reason to think that it was Edward’s own hand, which it does not the least resemble. So much for the legend of St. Edward the VI. It is as apocryphal as the picture, said to be by Holbein, which hangs in the Great Hall of Christ’s Hospital and shows Edward on his throne surrounded by the Council, giving the charter to the Lord Mayor on his knees, while 15 boys and 15 girls of the Hospital kneel in the foreground, the smallest boy and girl facing the throne and holding up their hands in rapt admiration. It is a matter of history that the poor boy-king died within a week of the date of the charter—July 6, 1553,—and was invisible for many days before he died; a passing glimpse of him being exhibited to assure the people that he was still alive.
The foundation of Edward VI. nearly succumbed under his successor Mary. When “she came out of Norfolk and was to be received into London, the Governors set up a stage without Aldgate and placed themselves and the children on the stage, and prepared a child of the Free School to make an oracion to hir. But when she came near unto them she cast her eye another way and neither stayed nor gave any countenance to them.” “She did not like ‘the blewe boyes,’” said Howes; “but if they had been so many Grey Friars she would have given them better countenance.” According to him, “the Friars made great friends and great means to be restored to that house because it stood whole, and was not spoiled, as other houses were, but they never durst open their mouths to suppress that house as long as Friar John was within the land.” He tells a famous tale, “how Friars Peto and Perrin did their good wills to have subverted all.” But Friar John, a Spaniard, was brought by the rest of the Commissioners to have his opinion, who, “being there at dinner-time and seeing the poor children set at the tables in the hall and seeing them served with meat, he was so wrapt in admiration that suddenly he burst into tears, and said in Latin to the company that he had rather be a scullion in their kitchen than steward to their king.” “Alfonsus,” the King’s Confessor, also supported them, while Dr. Story was made a friend by having been given the lease of the house where he dwelt, which was “parcel” of the Friars, for he thought that if the Friars were restored that then they would bring his house in question; while the Bishop of Chichester being tenant of the chief lodging of the Prior was also friendly for the same reason. The children were therefore kept undisturbed, though Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, when Chancellor, “clapped Mr. Grafton fast in the Fleet for two days because he suffered the children to learn the English Premier when they should have learned the Latin Absies (A, B, Cs).”
There is plenty of evidence as to the class of children taken into Christ’s Hospital. The most striking is a passage from Howes’ book. “A number of the children,” he says, “being taken from the dunghill, when they came to sweet and clean keeping and to a pure diet died outright.... And a number of them would watch daily when the porters were absent that they might steal out and fall to their old occupation.” This is corroborated by the Court Book of the Hospital, which unfortunately only begins in December 1556, with such entries as this: May 10, 1557, “Graunted that a woman child left on Mr. Gunter’s stall in Cornhill, and by him kept since Candlemas, should be admitted.” November 8, “a woman childe left in a pewe at St. Peter’s, Cornhill, admitted.” March 14, 1557, a child “found in Thames Streete near the Bridge admitted.” In the “Children’s Register,” beginning 1563, we come across many names pointing to the foundling origin of the children. Richard Nomoreknowen, five years old. He died in the sick-ward in 1570. Augustine Old Change, six years old. “To service, March 30, 1567.” “Dorothy Buttriedore” (she had evidently been deposited behind the buttery door), “three years old. To service, 1570. Delivered to Mr. His for his own, but received back. Delivered to Margaret Garraway for her own, 1571; again to F. Tousbury, April 19, 1572.” “Jane Fridaiestreete, aged six, sent to service 1568.” Perhaps the two quaintest names were “Grace-That-God-sent-us,” “delivered out on the 19th, and died April 21, 1563,” and “Jane-that-God-sent-us,” sent to service 1568.
Stow says of Christ’s Hospital: “A full Courte shal be when xiij of the Governours of this said Hospitall be assembled at the least, whereof two shal be Aldermen, the one of them to be the President, with ten Commoners besides the Thresorer; and what these xiij Persons or vij of them at the leaste, the President being one of the Number, shal decree, ordaine or agree upon, the same shal stand in Force, and shal not be altered nor disallowed except by a like Courte to be called in that behalfe.
“Item. That no Governour be taken into this Hospitall in the Place of any that shal happen to die within the Year except it be at a full Courte, to be holden as afore, for weighty Causes; and the Name of him so admitted, to be presented to the Maior and Courte of Aldermen, before he be called to receive his Charge.