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The
Hospital of St John
A
further mystery surrounds the early years of St Wulfstan's. By the
thirteenth century the Master of the hospital had taken to calling
himself the Preceptor; the practice of referring to the hospital
itself as 'The Commandery' is documented only from the sixteenth
century, but would seem to have been of equal antiquity. (Smith
1907-10, v, p.91) Was this no more than a conscious aping of the
terminology employed by the Order of St John of Jerusalem, the Knights
Hospitallers? Or does it suggest that the Order had some influence
on the early development of St Wulfstan's? The latter possibility
has generally been dismissed, the former being preferred on the
grounds that there is no indication that the Hospitallers had anything
to do with Worcester. The story that these military trappings were
introduced by a thirteenth-century master of the hospital who had
formerly been a crusader is a fiction which has contributed to the
uncertainty (Marsh 1890, p.3).
In
fact, the existence in Worcester of a short-lived hospital of St
John is not in doubt; only the details both of its origins and its
demise, and of the subsequent assumption of its functions by St
Wulfstan's, remain to be clarified. This hospital was referred to
first between 1189 and 1199, in a grant made to the Order of St
John by Richard I. The grant, recorded in the book of John Stillingflete
made in 1434 to commemorate the founders of the Order, was to the
Commandery of Dinmore situated in the Welsh Marches: it consisted
of two manors and a hermitage in Herefordshire, lands near Bristol,
the hospital of the city of Hereford, and the hospital of Worcester
(Caley, Ellis, Bandinel 1849, vi, p.836; Rees 1947, p.42). If the
record of this grant is to be believed, therefore, the Knights of
St John were given a hospital that was already functioning. And
to whom did it belong? By what right could Richard have given this
hospital to the Order? He could have done so if the foundation had
been his or of one of his ancestors; perhaps, too, he would have
felt able to dispose of it in this way if it had been founded by
the citizens, and was now under the jurisdiction of the reeves of
Worcester. In theory at least, his capacity as lord of the city
enabled him to grant civic property to whomsoever he wished. At
least we can be certain that this was not a hospital under the control
of any ecclesiastical institution; it had not been founded by the
bishop or Cathedral priory, for instance.
Whilst
this account of the origins of the presence of the Hospitallers
in Worcester is not supported by any contemporary or near-contemporary
documentation, and so is not to be accepted without some reservation,
the existence of their hospital there in the decades that followed
is amply demonstrated. The Miracles of St Wulfstan, written probably
around 1240, makes reference to an inmate of the hospital of St
John, apparently at Worcester, freed from captivity in the city
by the miraculous intervention of the saint (Darlington 1928, pp.xx,
177); the first dated reference to the hospital comes in the Eyre
Rolls for 1221. This was the first time since at least early in
John's reign that Worcestershire had been visited by royal justices,
and the Worcester jurors took the opportunity to lodge a complaint
against the tenants of the Prior of the hospital of St John in the
city. They were refusing to pay their share of royal tallages, it
was claimed, which they should have paid and which they had paid
in the past. The tenants' rejection of the jurisdiction of the city
authorities went beyond this, as they also refused to accept that
they should be subject to the exercise of the assizes of bread and
ale like the other citizens, or to contribute to the city watch.
The judgment of the court was that these tenants ought indeed to
submit to the city authorities, as they had previously done; the
only exception was 'quodam libero hospite' of the Prior (Stenton
1934, p. 609). The implication both of the evidence and the judgment
is that on some previous occasion the Prior had been granted freedom
from these burdens for his hospital at Worcester - a grant which
can only have been a royal grant - and that his tenants there had
within living memory begun to claim that the exemption applied to
them also.
Within
nineteen years the Hospitallers had disposed of their Worcester
house, it having been acquired by St Wulfstan's. The survey of chief
rents payable to the various officers of the Cathedral Priory made
in 1240 lists among those of the sacristan a rent of 15d at each
term to be paid by the Master of St Wulfstan's Hospital 'pro Hospitali
quondam Sancti Johannis' (Hale 1865, 110a). According to the rental,
the site of this former hospital was in St Martin's parish (Hale
1865, 109b). The only substantial property of the eight houses held
by the hospital in this parish in the fifteenth century was a tenement
on the corner of the Corn Cheaping, let for 26s 8d (Marsh 1890,
p.111).
The
decision of the Hospitallers to leave Worcester at some time between
1221 and 1240 came about probably as a result of a reassessment
of their position in the city: in contrast with the evidence of
substantial grants of lands to St Wulfstan's by this time, there
is no record of any donation to the hospital of St John. The apparent
conclusion they reached, to sell or otherwise convey their hospital
to St Wulfstan's, implies that there had been insufficient support
from the citizens of Worcester to prevent the hospital of St John
from becoming a financial liability to the rest of the Order. Why
the Masters of St Wulfstan's then considered it appropriate for
them to begin to use the title of 'Preceptor' remains unclear, but
they obviously did so at once upon taking over the hospital of St
John, or very soon thereafter: the earliest examples of their use
of the term come in undated deeds of around 1250 or slightly earlier
(for instance, Marsh 1890, nos.66, 76). The title remained an unofficial
one: 'master' or sometimes 'warden' were clearly preferred in official
contexts, and even in documentation issued by the hospital they
predominated until, apparently, the latter part of the fifteenth
century when 'Preceptor' became the more usual form (for instance,
Marsh 1890, nos.88 and passim).
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