THE CHAPEL OF THE HOSPITAL FOR LEPERS IN KENT STREET, SOUTHWARK, CALLED LE LOCK,
From the Grangerised Edition of Brayley’s London and Middlesex, in the Guildhall Library.
Other superstitions the people had, and, as at the present day, obscure persons earned their livelihood by pretending to discover where stolen property was to be found, and by telling fortunes and the like. A curious superstition is mentioned by Chaucer. He tells us that, by the help of a bone of a wether’s right shoulder, from which the flesh had been boiled (not roasted) away, some could tell what was being done in far countries, “tokens of pees and of werre, the staat of the relme, sleynge of men, and spousebreche.”
The actual attitude of the people towards the claims and pretensions of the Church are illustrated by the wills of which I have already made so liberal a use. (R. Sharpe, Calendar of Wills.) Thus, as we have seen, it was an article of faith down to the middle of the sixteenth century that the soul could be released from purgatory, or could be relieved from many years of purgatory, by good works done for the Church, by masses said after death, by the prayers of the Religious, or by securing a share in their merits. Thus, a citizen left money for the maintenance and decoration of the parish church, for obits, for trentals, i.e. services of thirty masses, for a daily mass in perpetuity; for so many masses, perhaps a thousand within three days of death; for the endowment of a chantry, and perhaps the erection of a Chantry Chapel; for the purchase of books on Church Service, vestments, altar cloths, Paschal candles, and singing candles. Again, as the maintenance of bridges was in itself a religious duty, bequests for that purpose were common. In order to secure a share in the merits of the Religious, bequests were constantly made to all the orders of the mendicant Friars—the Franciscans or Grey Friars; the Dominicans or Black Friars; the Carmelites or White Friars; the Augustinian or Austin Friars; and, though they were not always included, the Crutched Friars, or Friars of the Holy Cross. With the same object, bequests were made to the hermits, anchorites, and ankresses.
Bequests were also made—one believes out of sheer charity, apart from any considerations as to the safety of the soul—to hospitals, such as St. Bartholomew’s, St. Mary Spital, St. Mary Bethlehem, St. Thomas’s, and the three “Colleges” of lepers, “Le Loke” of Southwark, St. Giles’ in the Fields, and the House with the “misil cotes” at Hackney.
Bequests were made to the Prisons, Newgate, Ludgate, Fleet, the two Marshalseas, the Clink in Southwark, the White Lyon in Southwark, the City Compters, the Borough Compter, and the Gate House of Westminster. Bequests were also made to pilgrims, that the testator might enjoy the benefits conferred upon pilgrimage.
Bequests were made to the poor of the testator’s Company or parish: of clothes to friends or to kinsfolk: clothes made of fur, silk, satin, and fine cloth, girdles, chains, daggers, rings, weapons, armour, drinking cups, silver plate, pewter.
The wife, at her husband’s death, was entitled to one-third of the personal property; she was, however, generally provided for by a dower which exceeded the amount she could claim. I have already described the vow of perpetual widowhood, which was not an uncommon thing for a widow to make, according to the form provided by the Church. Sometimes she took the vows and entered a convent.