In 1568 Sir Thomas Rowe gave the City a new burial-ground by Bethlehem Hospital; he also endowed a sermon every Whit Monday; gave £100 to be lent to eight poor men; and founded an endowment for the support of ten poor men, giving them four pounds a year.
William Lambe was a benefactor to the City in the sixteenth century. He was a cloth worker by trade. In the year 1543, on the suppression of the Religious Houses, he obtained possession by purchase of the smallest of them all, the Chapel or Hermitage standing at the corner of the wall at the end of Monkwell Street. It was called St. James’s in the Wall, and was endowed by Henry the Third. Lambe repaired or rebuilt the Chapel, and placed in the former garden or in the ancient buildings certain almshouses for bedesmen. In 1577 he died, leaving this foundation and other sums of money to the Clothworkers. The Great Fire spared a part of Lambe’s Chapel and Almshouses.
Lambe also drew together several springs of water near the present Foundling Hospital to a head, called after him Lamb’s Conduit, though the name is now spelt without the “e.” He then conveyed the water by leaden pipes to Snow Hill, where he rebuilt a ruinous conduit and laid in the water.
“He also founded a Free Grammar School at Sutton Valens, the Place of his Nativity, in Kent, with a master at £20, and an Usher at £10 per Ann. and an Alms-house for six poor people, endowed with £10 yearly. He gave £10 per Ann. to the Free School at Maidstone in Kent, for the Education of needy Men’s Children; three hundred pounds to the poor Clothiers in Suffolk, Bridgnorth and Ludlow in Shropshire. He left to the Clothworkers’ Company his Dwelling-House, a little to the South-West of Cripplegate, with Lands and Tenements to the value of £30 per Ann. for paying a Minister to read Divine Service on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, every week, in the Chapel adjoining to his House, called St. James, in the Wall by Cripplegate; and for Clothing twelve Men with a Frize Gown, one Lockram Shirt, and a good strong pair of Winter Shoes; and twelve Women with a Frize Gown, a Lockram Smock, and a good pair of Winter Shoes, all ready made for wearing; to be given to such as are poor and honest, on the first of October. He also gave £15 towards the Bells and Chimes of St. Giles’s Without Cripplegate; £6:13:4 yearly to the Company of Stationers, for the relief of twelve poor People of the Parish of St. Faith, under Paul’s, at the rate of 12d. in Money, and 12d. in Bread, to each of them, on every Friday through the year; £6 per Ann. and £100 to purchase Land, for the Relief of Children in Christ’s Hospital; £4 to St. Thomas’s Hospital in Southwark; besides some other Charities to the Prisons, and for portioning poor Maids.” (Maitland, vol. i. p. 264.)
It will be seen that the building of almshouses was the favourite method of charitable endowment. Schools were occasionally endowed but not so commonly as almshouses. The sight of an old man broken down, unable to earn his bread, is one which appeals to the most hard-hearted. The necessity of educating the young was less understood, for the simple reason that the children of the working class were regarded as simply growing machines for labour, just as their fathers were regarded as machines in active working order whose opinions or wishes were never so much as asked, while any effort on their part to express an opinion was put down at once. This view of the working classes, which lasted till the middle of the nineteenth century, explains a great deal of what we now consider apathy on the part of those who should have known better; it explains among other things the opposition to reform, and the jealousy and dread of the working class; and it explains why so few schools were endowed in comparison with the number of almshouses.
CHAPTER IX
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
The divers kinds of punishment and the laws are set forth by Harrison (Holinshed, vol. i.):—
“The greatest and most greevous punishment used in England, for such as offend against the state, is drawing from the prison to the place of execution upon an hurdle or sled, where they are hanged till they be halfe dead, and then taken downe and quartered alive, after that their members and bowels are cut from their bodies and throwne into a fire provided neere hand and within their one sight even for the same purpose. Sometimes if the trespasse be not the more hainous, they are suffered to hang till they be quite dead. And whensoever any of the nobilitie are convicted of high treason by their peeres, that is to saie, equals (for an inquest of yeomen passeth not upon them, but onlie of the lords of the parliament) this maner of their death is converted into the losse of their heads onlie, notwithstanding that the sentence doo run after the former order. In triall of cases concerning treason, fellonie, or anie other greevous crime not confessed, the partie accused doth yeeld, if he be a nobleman, to be tried by an inquest (as I have said) and his peeres; if a gentleman, by gentlemen; and an inferiour by God and by the countrie, to wit the yeomanrie (so combat or battle is not greatlie in use) and being condemned of fellonie, manslaughter, etc., he is eftsoons hanged by the necke till he be dead, and then cut downe and buried. But if he is convicted of wilful murder, doone either upon pretended malice, or in anie notable robberie, he is either hanged alive in chains neere the place where the fact was committed (or else upon compassion taken first strangled with a rope) and so continueth till his bonds consume to nothing. We have use neither of the wheele nor of the barre, as in other countries, but when wilful manslaughter is perpetrated, beside hanging, the offender hath his right hand commonlie striken off before or neere unto the place where the act was doone, after which he is led forth to the place of execution, and there put to death according to the law.” (See [Appendix X.])
Felony was involved in various kinds of crime: such as breach of prison; disfiguring the person; robbery in disguise; rape; conspiracy against the prince; embezzlement of the master’s money; carrying horses into Scotland; stealing hawks’ eggs; unnatural offences; witchcraft, conjuring, sorcery, and digging up of crosses; prophesying upon arms, cognizances, names and badges; casting of slanderous bills; poisoning; desertion; clipping of coin; taking goods from dead men; highway robbery; stealing of deer; forging documents, etc., these were all, with some others, felony.