Page:VCH London 1.djvu/496

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A HISTORY OF LONDON the time of Henry III, Whittington's Hospital and the Pappey, foundations of the fifteenth, and the Savoy Hospital and Milbourne's Almshouses of the sixteenth century. A community of priests in Dowgate known as Jesus Commons might also be considered a hospital. Besides these there may have been several others. Stow says that there was at one time a hospital for lunatics at Charing Cross, but that the inmates were transferred to St. Mary Bethlehem, to which the house was given.^ The Brothers of the Holy Sepulchre, in the first years of Henry III, seem to have had a house in London,' biit this cannot have been the hospital in Holborn, which, according to Stow, was suppressed by Henry V as an alien priory ^ together with others at Aldersgate * and Cripplegate,^ for these were all of the Cluniac order. Except, however, those already mentioned in another connexion, the only alien houses of which any history survives are St. Anthony's Hospital in the parish of St. Benet Fink, and St. Mary Rouncevall near Charing Cross, both founded during the reign of Henry III. In the fourteenth century colleges were established in the churches of St. Laurence Pountney and St. Michael Crooked Lane, and in the chapels of St. Peter in the Tower and St. Mary in the Guildhall ; in the fifteenth in the church of St. Michael Paternoster, and the chapels of Our Lady in AUhallows Barking, and St. Thomas on London Bridge, while the chapel of Leadenhall was entrusted to the charge of a fraternity of sixty priests. The chantry priests of St. James's, Garlickhithe, were constituted a corporate body in 1481, and lived together in a house known as St. James's Commons,^^ and there were possibly other instances of the kind. This list of religious houses is probably however not exhaustive : a house of St. Bridget in London is mentioned in a document of the time of Henry II ^ ; a nunnery is said to have once stood on the ground afterwards occupied by Elsing's hospital ^ ; and Arnold in his catalogue of houses includes a chapel of St. Ursula in the Poultry.* Besides these various associations of religious persons there were always here and there in mediaeval London persons who lived a life of solitude in hermitages or anker-holds. The relations of the citizens with these religious communities did not generally leave much to be desired. There were disputes with St. Paul's about boundaries, with St. Bartholomew's over the Fair, and with St. Martin- le-Grand about sanctuary, but they did not develop into serious quarrels. The only instance of real ill-feeling occurred in the thirteenth century, and was caused by the privileges which raised the abbey at Westminster into a rival. On the whole it may be said that the City was proud of these foundations, most of which owed much to the generosity of the citizens, and that the London houses had a real sense of belonging to and forming part of the City. ' Stow, Surv. ofLond. (ed. Strype), vi, 2. 'In 1226 and 1232 the king gave letters of protection to the Brothers of the hospital of St. Sepulchre, London, seeking alms throughout England. Cal. of Pat. 1226-32, pp. 97 and 499. ^ Stow, op. cit. iii, 248. * Ibid, i, 124. ' Ibid, iii, 88. '"^ See volume on Topography, Vintry Ward. ' Harl. Chart. 43, I, 38. For this, as well as for many references to Charters, the author is indebted to Mr. Ellis of the British Museum. ' Stow, op. cit. iii, 73. * Arnold, Chronicle (ed. 181 1), 75. 408