Part 2 (1/2)
Unfortunately, most of the other churches of Winchester have been either rebuilt or so altered as to retain very little of their original architecture. The Church of St. Maurice, rebuilt in 1841, has saved a Norman doorway, fragments of a fine Decorated screen which now serve for altar rails, and an ancient chest.
Like most of our cathedral cities, Winchester is well supplied with charitable inst.i.tutions, although the best known of them all, the famous Hospital of St. Cross, is situated a mile away from the city proper. The Hospital of St. John, within Winchester, is one of the oldest foundations of the kind in the country, and a portion of the vaulted kitchen remaining in the building may not unreasonably be supposed to have formed part of the almshouse thought to have been founded on the spot in A.D. 935 by St. Brinstan. The chapel connected with the charity dates from the time of the third Henry, and contains a piece of fourteenth-century carving depicting the nimbed head of the Saviour, which is now built into a wall. Considerable doubt exists as to the original founder and early re-founders of this hospital, and little is known concerning it until the time of Edward II, when John Devenish re-founded it. At that period it seems to have been for the ”sole relief of sick and lame soldiers, poor pilgrims, and necessitated wayfaring men, to have their lodging and diet there for one night, or longer, as their inability to travel may require”. Many influential citizens left money or property to this charity. In 1400 Mark le Faire, Mayor of Winchester, bequeathed to it several houses, including the ”great inn called the George”, and the ”house under the penthouse where Mr. Hodgson died”. Richard Devenish, in the time of Henry VI, left a sum of money to provide for a more frequent performance of divine service in the chapel; but in the reign of Henry VIII these and other funds were confiscated, although the building itself was subsequently restored to the Corporation.
[Ill.u.s.tration: BEAUFORT TOWER AND AMBULATORY, ST. CROSS]
After the Reformation, Ralph Lambe re-founded the charity for six poor and needy persons, who were to have six separate homes or chambers within the hospital, each furnished with locks and keys. Each person was to receive ten s.h.i.+llings quarterly, with a gown value ten s.h.i.+llings, and ten s.h.i.+llings' worth of coal yearly. On the election of a new mayor each was to receive two s.h.i.+llings, and any funds remaining were to be divided among the inmates at the discretion of the mayor and aldermen of the city. This inst.i.tution is still a flouris.h.i.+ng one, and the original hall, standing to the west of the chapel, is let as a public dining-hall.
Another old charity was that of St. Mary Magdalene, founded for lepers, in 1173-88, by Bishop Toclyve, the inmates being known locally as ”the infirm people upon the hill”, now Maun Hill. In early times lepers were required to give up the whole of their personal goods, and one of the questions asked by the official visitor to the Hospital of St. Mary Magdalene was whether the goods of the deceased inmates went to the works of the church after the settlement of debts. The funds of this foundation were much tampered with at various times, and it lost some of its property at the Reformation. One of its benefactors left to it four flitches of bacon yearly, this being an important article of diet. The original plan of the hospital was quadrangular: on two sides were the inmates' rooms and the chapel, the remaining sides being occupied by the Master's House and the common hall. The buildings were much damaged in the time of Charles I by the troops stationed there, and again in the reign of Charles II by the Dutch prisoners confined within the hospital.
The chapel was pulled down in 1788, and the materials were used for building purposes, when the fine Early Norman doorway was used in the Roman Catholic Church in St. Peter Street, where it may still be seen.
This was the west doorway of the ancient hospital chapel. The site is now occupied by a hospital of another character, the isolation hospital, but the old ”lepers' well” can still be seen. The charity survives to some extent in six cottages in Water Lane, built in 1788, wherein are housed four men and four women.
In Symond's Street stands the picturesque ”Christes Hospital”, founded in 1586 by James Symonds. It is generally called the ”Bluecoat” Hospital, from the distinctive dress worn by the inmates. A scholastic inst.i.tution was attached to this charity for the education of four poor boys, chosen by the mayor and corporation, who also elected their teacher. The latter was not to be, in the terms of the founder, either a ”Scotchman, an Irishman, a Welshman, a foreigner, or a North-countryman”, lest their p.r.o.nunciation of the English language should suffer.
From among the fertile meadows bordering the banks of the Itchen to the south of Winchester rises the stately grey pile of St. Cross, standing where it has stood for over seven and a half centuries, a witness alike to the munificence of its founders, de Blois and Beaufort, and to the skill of the mediaeval builders.
A good road leads from the city to the pleasing suburb in which the hospital is situated, though a far pleasanter way is by one of the field paths through the meadows.
Henry de Blois became bishop when only twenty-eight years old, and in 1136 he founded the hospital for the entire support of ”thirteen poor men, feeble and so reduced in strength that they can hardly or with difficulty support themselves without another's aid”; and they were to be supplied with ”garments and beds suitable to their infirmities, good wheate bread daily of the weight of 5 marks, and three dishes at dinner and one at supper, suitable to the day, and drink of good stuff”.
Besides this, he provided for a hundred poor men to be supplied daily with dinner. Bishop Toclyve, de Blois's successor in the see, added to the charity the feeding of yet another hundred poor men daily; and it has been said, on somewhat slight evidence, that the poorer scholars of Winchester College dined without fee in the ”Hundred Men's Hall”.
In 1137 the management of the inst.i.tution was given over to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem; the cross still worn as a badge by the Brethren is a link with the ancient Order, being the cross _potent_, or Jerusalem cross, which was an insignia of the Kingdom of Jerusalem established by the Crusaders.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. CROSS FROM THE MEADOWS]
Shortly after the death of de Blois a dispute arose between the Hospitallers and the bishop, but after the lapse of many years the management was restored to the latter, then Peter de Rupibus, who appointed Alan de Soke as Master. In 1446, Cardinal Beaufort, Wykeham's successor in the see, added a new foundation to St. Cross, to be called ”The Almshouse of n.o.ble Poverty”. De Blois's charity had been intended to benefit the very needy; this of Beaufort's was designed for those who had fallen upon evil days after a life of ease and comfort. There were to be two priests, thirty-five brethren, and three sisters. The brethren were to be of gentle birth, or old servants of the founder. The scheme, however, was never completed, owing to the Wars of the Roses intervening, with the result that the estates with which he had intended to endow his almshouse were claimed by the Crown on the accession of the House of York. So it came about that in 1486 Bishop Waynflete was compelled to reduce the recipients of Beaufort's charity to one priest and two brethren. Fortunately, St. Cross was spared at the Reformation, and its endowments were not confiscated. The Vicar-General reported that there were ”certain things requiring reformation”, and that st.u.r.dy beggars were to be ”driven away with staves”; also that the Lord's Prayer and the Creed were to be taught in English, and that relics and images were not to be brought out for the devotion of pilgrims. In 1632 Archbishop Laud caused a strict enquiry to be made, with the result that the Master, Dr. Lewis, reported that the fabric was in a state of great dilapidation. This Master lost his post through his loyalty to Church and King, and John Lisle, the regicide, became Master of the Hospital until Cromwell made him a peer, when his place was filled by John Cooke, the Solicitor-General who drew up the indictment against Charles I. Both these regicides met with misfortune, for Cooke was executed and Lisle a.s.sa.s.sinated, so that at the Restoration Dr.
Lewis was restored to the masters.h.i.+p. Between the years 1848 and 1853, chancery suits, costing a large sum of money, resulted in an entirely new scheme being drawn up, under which the two charities were treated as separate foundations under one head. The differences of qualification between the two sets of Brethren are carefully laid down, and a portion of the income is used for the maintenance of fifty out-pensioners, the modern equivalent for the ”Hundred Poor Men” of mediaeval days. The distinctive dresses of the Brethren are the same with regard to colour and cut as those worn in the time of Henry VI, those worn by the recipients of Beaufort's charity being of red cloth, with the badge, a cardinal's hat and ta.s.sels on a silver plate, worn on the left breast.
The Brethren of the older inst.i.tution, founded by de Blois, wear black gowns, with the silver cross _potent_ pinned on the left breast. On the death of a Brother the cross is placed on a red velvet cus.h.i.+on and laid on his breast in the coffin; but before burial the cross is removed and fastened by the Master on the breast of the Brother elected in place of the deceased.
The Hospital buildings consist of an outer courtyard and gateway, to the right of which are the kitchens, and on the left the old brewhouse and remains of some of the earlier buildings. Immediately facing us is the tower gateway, thoroughly restored, if not built originally, by Cardinal Beaufort, under the groined archway of which is the porter's lodge, where the ”Wayfarers' Dole” is still distributed to all who apply at the hatchway, an interesting and almost sole survival of the mediaeval custom by which food and drink were offered to pa.s.sers-by. The daily dole at the present day consists of two gallons of ale and two loaves of bread, divided into thirty-two portions. The apartment over the archway is the Founder's room, wherein are stored all the ancient doc.u.ments relating to the foundation. Beaufort's arms appear in one of the spandrels above the gateway arch, the corresponding spandrel exhibiting the ancient regal arms of England. On this side of the entrance are three niches, one of which contains a figure of the cardinal in a kneeling posture. The vacant niche in the south front once held a statue of the Virgin, which fell to the ground more than a century ago, and nearly killed one of the Brethren in its descent.
Pa.s.sing through this n.o.ble gateway, which, somehow or other, does not look as old as we know it to be, we enter the great quadrangle, around which the various buildings are grouped. On the eastern side is the Infirmary, with the Ambulatory beneath it, a long, low cloister of sixteenth-century date, which extends along the whole side to the church. In one of the rooms above, a window opens into the church, where there may once have been a gallery to enable the infirm to hear the services. In 1763 Bishop Hoadley granted a license to the Master to pull down the cloister and use the materials for other purposes, but fortunately this was never done. On the opposite side of the quadrangle are the houses of the Brethren. Each dwelling consists of two rooms and a pantry, and has a garden attached.