The Hospital known as St. Giles-in-the-Fields was founded by Maud, Queen of Henry the First, about the year 1117. It was a large foundation, designed for forty lepers, the Master, Chaplains, Matrons, and servants.
The original endowment was only £3 a year, which, even in the twelfth century, would not go far towards the support of forty lepers. It appears, however, as if the custom of lepers going about begging with a bowl and a clapper was considered the right thing, because it is said that the Proctor of the House went begging for the lepers. Probably those who could crawl were allowed at the outset to beg for themselves.
But other benefactions fell in. The lepers obtained rents and lands at Isleworth, St. Clement Danes, and round their own house; they also obtained the manor of Feltham in Middlesex; Henry the Second gave them lands at Heston; people left them houses in London; the House became wealthy.
There were many dissensions and disputes as to the rule and management of this House. They were finally terminated by Edward the Third, who placed it under the authority of the House of Burton Lazars, the central Leper Hospital of England.
The area covered by the ground of the Hospital consisted of eight acres, which was afterwards largely increased. The Hospital buildings were situated near to the present church on the west of it; they were surrounded by a triangular wall running along Crown Street (formerly Hog Lane), High Street, and Monmouth Street. At the lower end of what is now the Tottenham Court Road on the west side of it was the Pound: when the gallows was removed from the Elms at Smithfield, it was set up at the north end of the Hospital enclosure opposite to the Pound. On the same spot Sir John Oldcastle had been slowly roasted to death some years earlier.
Criminals in later times, on their way to Tyburn, stopped at St. Giles, there to take their last draught of ale at a tavern named The Bowl.
The lazar houses were probably all governed by similar laws and regulations. Those of Sherburn, near Durham, will stand, therefore, for many others. The house was dedicated to Christ, the Blessed Virgin, Lazarus, and his sisters Martha and Mary. The lepers were under the rule of a steward; there were three priests and four clerks, of whom one was a deacon. During Lent and Advent all the brethren had to receive corporal discipline three times a week in the chapel, and the sisters in like manner in presence of their prioress. Why lepers should be flogged more than ordinary people is not apparent. Perhaps there was some feeling that a loathsome and incurable disease argued the wrath of the Almighty on account of some great crime. The daily allowance of food to the lepers was as follows:—A loaf and a gallon of ale to each; one mess of flesh between two for three days in the week; or of fish, cheese, or butter, on the remaining four; on high festivals a double mess; on St. Cuthbert’s Day, fresh salmon; on Michaelmas Day, four messed on one goose. The dress of lepers generally consisted of a grey gown with a hood, and each one carried a basin and a wooden clapper.
[CHAPTER XVI]
ST. HELEN’S
The foundation of this House of Benedictine Nuns was in or about the year 1212, when Alardus de Burnham, who died in 1216, was Dean of St. Paul’s. The right, or permission, to found the House is contained in a deed still preserved.