Holborn and Bloomsbury | Page 4

in St. Giles's yet, but civilization is making its softening influence felt even here, and though cases of Hooliganism in broad daylight still occur, they are less and less frequent.
So much for a brief history of the parish. Its soil was from very early times damp and marshy. To the south of the hospital was a stretch of ground called Marshlands, probably at one time a pond. Great ditches and fosses cut up the ground. The most important of these was Blemund's Ditch, which divided the parish from that of Bloomsbury. This is supposed to have been an ancient line of fortification. Besides this, a ditch traversed the marshlands above mentioned, another encompassed the croft lying by the north gate of the hospital, and there were several others of less importance.
The Hospital of St. Giles was the earliest foundation of its kind in London, if we except St. James's Hospital. Stow sums it up thus: "St. Giles-in-the-Fields was an hospital for leprous people out of the City of London and shire of Middlesex, founded by Matilde the Queen, wife to Henry I., and suppressed by King Henry VIII." The date of foundation is given by Leland and Malcolm as 1101, though Stow and others give 1117, which was the year before the foundress died. Before this time this part of London had apparently been included in the great estate of Rugmere, which belonged to St. Paul's.
Matilda gave the ground, and endowed the hospital with the magnificent sum of ��3 per annum! Her foundation provided for forty lepers, one chaplain, one clerk, and one servant. Henry II. confirmed all privileges and gifts which had accrued to the hospital, and added to them himself. Parton says, "His liberality ranks him as a second founder." During succeeding reigns the hospital grew in wealth and importance. In Henry III.'s reign Pope Alexander issued a confirmatory Bull, but the charity had become a refuge for decayed hangers-on at Court who were not lepers. This abuse was prohibited by the King's decree. In Edward III.'s reign the first downward step was taken, for he made the hospital a cell to Burton St. Lazar. The brethren apparently rebelled, refusing to admit the visitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and destroying many valuable documents and records belonging to the hospital. Two centuries later King Henry VIII. desired the lands and possessions of St. Giles's, and with him to desire was to acquire.
The hospital was thus shorn of the greater part of its wealth, retaining only the church (not the manor) at Feltham (one of its earliest gifts), the hospital estates at Edmonton, in the City of London, and in the various parishes in the suburbs; and in St. Giles's parish the actual ground it stood on, the Pittance Croft, and a few minor places. But even this remnant came into the possession of the rapacious King two years later, at the dissolution of the monasteries, when Burton St. Lazar itself fell into the tyrant's hands. Henry held these for six years, then granted both to John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, Lord High Admiral. From the time of the dissolution the hospital became a manor.
In the earliest charters the head of the hospital is styled Chaplain, but not Master. The first Master mentioned is in 1212, and after this the title was regularly used. The government was vested in the Master or Warden and other officers, together with a certain number of sound brethren and sisters--and in certain cases lepers themselves--who formed a chapter. "They assembled in chapter, had a common seal, held courts as lords of the manor."[1] There were also guardians or custodians, who did not reside in the precincts of the hospital, and these seem to have been chosen from the most eminent citizens; they formed no part of the original scheme.
[1] "Some Account of the Hospital and Parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields," 1822, by John Parton.
[Illustration: SEAL OF ST. GILES'S HOSPITAL.]
The sisters appear to have been nurses, for there is no mention made of any leprous sister. The chapel of the hospital appears from King Henry II.'s charter to have been built on the site of some older parochial church. The Bull of Pope Alexander mentions that the hospital wall enclosed eight acres. Within this triangular space, which is at present roughly bounded by the High Street, Charing Cross Road, and Shaftesbury Avenue, was one central building or mansion for the lepers, several subordinate buildings, the chapel, and the gate-house. Whether the number of lepers was reduced when the hospital possessions were curtailed we are not told. After the hospital buildings fell into the hands of Lord Dudley they underwent many changes. The principal building he converted into a mansion for his own use; this was the manor-house. It stood between the present Denmark Street and Lloyd's