The Hospital of St Giles

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Sir Walter Besant, in The Fascination of London, published in 1903, continues his survey of Holborn with this look at the Hospital of St Giles:

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 VIII 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.

Next: St Giles' Hospital: the Manor of St Giles