As We Are and As We May Be, Walter Besant [the reading strategies book TXT] 📗

destroyed a thing which could never be replaced; they were fain to do something to appease those prickings. They therefore stuck up a new chapel, which the architect called Gothic, with six neat houses in two rows, and a large house with a garden in Regent's Park, and this they called St. Katherine's, 'Sirs,' they said, 'it is not true that we have destroyed that ancient foundation at all; we have only removed it to another place. Behold your St. Katherine's!' Of course it is nothing of the kind. It is not St. Katherine's. It is a sham, a house of Shams and Shadows.

Thus was St. Katherine's destroyed; not for the needs of the City, because it is not clear that the new docks were wanted, or that there was no other place for them, but in sheer inability to understand what the place meant as to the past, and what it might be made to do in the future. The story of the Hospital has been often told: partly, as by Ducarel and by Lysons, for the historical interest; partly, as by Mr. Simcox Lea, in protest against the present we of its revenues. It is with the latter object, though I disagree altogether with Mr. Lea's conclusions, that I ask leave to tell the story once more. The story will have to be told, perhaps, again and again, until people can be made to understand the uselessness and the waste and the foolishness of the present establishment in the Park, which has assumed and bears the style and title of St. Katherine's Hospital by the Tower.

The beginning of the Hospital dates seven hundred and forty years back, when Matilda, Stephen's Queen, founded it for the purpose of having masses said for the repose of her two children, Baldwin and Matilda, She ordered that the Hospital should consist of a Master, Brothers, Sisters, and certain poor persons--probably the same as in the later foundation. She appointed the Prior and Canons of Holy Trinity to have perpetual custody of the Hospital; and she reserved to herself and all succeeding Queens of England the nomination, of the Master. Her grant was approved by the King, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Pope. Shortly afterwards William of Ypres bestowed the land of Edredeshede, afterwards called Queenhythe, on the Priory of Holy Trinity, subject to an annual payment of L20 to the Hospital of Katherine's by the Tower.

This was the original foundation. It was not a Charity; it was a Religious House with a definite duty--to pray for the souls of two children; it had no other charitable objects than belong to any religious foundation--viz., the giving of alms to the poor, nor was it intended as a church for the people; in those days there were no people outside the Tower, save the inhabitants of a few scattered cottages along the river Wall, and the farmhouses of Steban Heath. It was simply founded for the benefit of two little princes' souls. One refrains from asking what was done for the little paupers' souls in those days.

The Prior and Canons of Holy Trinity without Aldgate continued to exercise some authority over the Hospital, but apparently--the subject only interests the ecclesiastical historian--against the protests and grumblings of the St. Katherine's Society. It was, however, formally handed over to them, a hundred and forty years later, by Henry the Third. After his death, Queen Eleanor, for some reason, now dimly intelligible, wanted to get the Hospital into her own hands. The Bishop of London took it away from the Priory and transferred it to her. Then, perhaps with the view of preventing any subsequent claim by the Priory, she declared the Hospital dissolved.

Here ends the first chapter in the history of the Hospital. The foundation for the souls of the two princes existed no longer--the children, no doubt, having been long since sung out of Purgatory. Queen Eleanor, however, immediately refounded it. The Hospital was, as before, to consist of a Master, three Brothers, three Sisters, and bedeswomen. It was also provided that six poor scholars were to be fed and clothed--not educated, The Queen further provided that on November the 16th of every year twelve pence each should be given to the poor scholars, and the same amount to twenty-four poor persons; and that on November the 20th, the anniversary of the King's death, one thousand poor men should receive one halfpenny each. Here is the first introduction of a charity. The Hospital is no longer an ecclesiastical foundation only; it maintains scholars and gives substantial alms. Who received these alms? Of course the people in the neighbourhood--if there were no inhabitants in the Precinct, the poor of Portsoken Ward. In either case the charity would be local--a point of the greatest importance. Queen Eleanor also continued her predecessor's rule that the patronage of the Hospital should remain in the hands of the Queens of England for ever; when there was no Queen, then in the hands of the Queen Dowager; failing in her, in those of the King. This rule still obtains. The Queen appoints the Master, Brothers, and Sisters of the House of Shams in Regent's Park, just as her predecessors appointed those of St. Katherine's by the Tower.

Queen Eleanor was followed by other royal benefactors. Edward the Second, for example, gave the Hospital the rectory of St. Peter's in Northampton. Queen Philippa, who, like Eleanor, regarded the place with especial affection, endowed it with the manor of Upchurch in Kent, and that of Queenbury in Hertfordshire. She also founded a chantry with L10 a year for a chaplain. Edward the Third founded another chantry in honour of Philippa, with a charge of L10 a year upon the Hanaper Office; he also conferred upon it the right of cutting wood for fuel in the Forest of Essex. Richard the Second gave it the manor of Reshyndene in Sheppy, and 120 acres of land in Minster. Henry the Sixth gave it the manors of Chesingbury in Wiltshire, and Quasley in Hants; he also granted a charter, with the privilege of holding a fair. Lastly, Henry the Eighth founded, in connection with St. Katherine's by the Tower, the Guild of St. Barbara, consisting of a Master, three Wardens, and a great number of members, among whom were Cardinal Wolsey, the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk, the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham, the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury, and the Earl and Countess of Northumberland, with other great and illustrious persons.

This is a goodly list of benefactors. It is evident that St. Katherine's was a foundation regarded by the Kings and Queens of England with great favour. Other benefactors it had, notably John Holland, Duke of Exeter, Lord High Admiral and Constable of the Tower, himself of royal descent. He was buried in the church, with his two wives, and bequeathed to the Hospital the manor of Much Gaddesden. He also gave it a cup of beryl, garnished with gold, pearls, and precious stones, and a chalice of gold for the celebration of the Holy Sacrament.

In the year 1546 all the lands belonging to the Hospital were transferred to the Crown.

At this time the whole revenue of the Hospital was L364 12s. 6d., and the expenditure was L210 6s. 5d.; the difference being the value of the mastership. The Master at the dissolution was Gilbert Lathom, a priest, and the brothers were five in number--namely, the original three, and the two priests for the chantries. Four of the five had 'for his stipend, mete, and drynke, by yere,' the sum of L8, which is fivepence farthing a day; the other had L9, which is sixpence a day. It would be interesting, by comparison of prices, to ascertain how much could be purchased with sixpence a day. The three Sisters had also L8 year, and the Bedeswomen had each two pounds five shillings and sixpence a year. There were six scholars at L4 a year each for 'their mete, drynke, clothes, and other necessaries'; and there were four servants, a steward, a butler, a cook, and an under-cook, who cost L5 a year each. There were two gardens and a yard or court--namely, the square, bounded by the houses of the Brothers, and the church.

This marks the closing of the second chapter in the history of the Hospital. With the cessation of saying masses for the dead its religious character expired. There remained only the services in the church for the inhabitants of the Precinct in the time of Henry VIII.

The only use of the Hospital was now as a charity. Fortunately, the place was not, like the Priory of the Holy Trinity, granted to a courtier, otherwise it would have been swept away just as that Priory, or that of Elsing's Spital, was swept away. It continued after a while to carry on its existence, but with changes. It was secularized. The Masters for a hundred and fifty years, not counting the interval of Queen Mary's reign, were laymen. The Brothers were generally laymen. The first Master of the third period was Sir Thomas Seymour; he was succeeded by Sir Francis Flemyng, Lieutenant General of the King's Ordnance. Flemyng was deprived by Queen Mary, who appointed one Francis Mallet, a priest, in his place. Queen Elizabeth dispossessed Malet, and appointed Thomas Wilson, a layman and a Doctor at Laws. During his mastership there were no Brothers, and only a few Sisters or Bedeswomen. The Hospital then became a rich sinecure. Among the Masters were Sir Julius Caesar, Master of the Rolls; Sir Robert Acton; Dr. Coxe; three Montague brothers, Walter, Henry, and George; Lord Brownker; the Earl of Feversham; Sir Henry Newton, Judge of the High Court of Admiralty; the Hon. George Berkeley; and Sir James Butler. The Brothers had been re-established--their names are enumerated by Ducarel--one or two of them were clerks in orders, but all the rest were laymen. They still received the old stipend of L8 a year, with a small house. As for the rest of the greatly increased income it went to the Master after the manner common to all the old charities. During the latter half of the sixteenth and the whole of the seventeenth century St. Katherine's by the Tower consisted of a beautiful old church standing with its buildings clustered round it--a Master's house, rich in carved and ancient wood-work, with its gardens and orchards; its houses for the Brothers, Sisters, and Bedeswomen, each of whom continued to receive the same salary as that ordained by Queen Eleanor. Service was held in the church for the inhabitants of the Precinct, but the Hospital was wholly secular. The Master devoured by far the greater part of the revenue, and the alms-people--Brothers, Sisters, and Bedeswomen--had no duties to perform of any kind.

In the year 1698 this, the third chapter in the life of the Hospital, was closed. The Lord Chancellor, Lord Somers, held in that year a Visitation of the Hospital, the result of which is interesting, because it shows, first, a lingering of the old ecclesiastical traditions, and, next, the sense that something useful ought to be done with the income of the Hospital. It was therefore ordered in the new regulations provided by the Chancellor that the Brothers should be in Holy Orders, and that a school of thirty-five boys and fifteen girls should be maintained by the Hospital. It does not appear that any duties were expected of the Brothers. Like the Fellows of colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, they were all to be in priests' orders, and for exactly the same reason, because at the original foundations of the colleges, as well as of the Hospital, the Fellows were all priests. As for the Master, he remained a layman. This new order of things, therefore, raised the position of the Brothers,