APPENDIX 2:
Register of the Hospital of St. Mary: A Calendar
The Register of the Hospital of St. Mary, Great Yarmouth, is written on
vellum in a fair script. A compilation of various documents relating to
the hospital may have been begun soon after the borough authorities took
responsibility for the hospital in 1386 – an initiative which it is
tempting to associate with the same spirit that produced
constitutional reform of the same year,
although the two survivals are probably only coincidence. On the other
hand, medieval pagination suggests that the 1398 rental of the properties
which provided the operating fund for the hospital was originally a
separate document entirely. The creation of a register incorporating the
rental would therefore seem to post-date 1398. Various hands are seen in
the register, whose compilation continued into the reign of Henry VIII, if
one includes amendments to the rental. Henry Manship, who had
been town clerk of Yarmouth from 1579 to 1585 and thereafter served the
corporation in a variety of roles, was engaged from 1612 in a project to
organize and catalogue the borough records. He added to the hospital
register an English translation of the whole, and the binding together of
the original document and his translation may also be his work. The
register, like many of the other documents listed in his catalogue,
subsequently disappeared from the borough archives. It is now to be found
in the Bodleian Library as Ms. Gough Norfolk 20 (Bodleian 18076).
The hospital is said to have been founded by Thomas Fastolf, in the early
years of the reign of Edward I; the Fastolfs
were one of the most prominent and longest-lived of the medieval dynasties
in Yarmouth (and are best known for being the source of Shakespeare's
Falstaff). At about the same time, a leading member of another important
(and sometimes rival) local family, William
Gerberge, bequeathed money to support
priests at the hospital. Its purpose was to support 8 men and 8
women – possibly impoverished or disabled townspeople, although there is
mixed evidence in this regard – living a semi-monastic life. It should
be remembered that today "hospital" is applied specifically to health-care
facilities, but its medieval use was broader – more akin to uses to which
we would apply terms such as "hospice", "lodgings" and particularly "a
home". St. Mary's hospital was established on a chunk of territory
apparently carved out of the marketplace (in the north-east sector of
town); an Elizabethan plan of the town shows a fairly extensive structure
with a north-south orientation, but with two wings on the east side and
a large house at the south end. The marketplace was on the west side
of the hospital and the town wall formed its western boundary (there
being gates in the wall on either side of the hospital precinct, which may
indicate the hospital predated that section of the town wall.
From the time of the original foundation, bailiffs and community were
given a certain amount of control over the hospital. It appears to have
been a jurisdictional claim over the hospital by the cathedral-priory of
Norwich that prompted the local authorities to intervene and assert their
own rights (although the decline or disappearance of the rents
bequeathed by Gerberge may also have warranted intervention); a compromise
settlement of the dispute between the rival claimants, largely in
Yarmouth's favour, resulted in the promulgation of a set of regulations in
1386 to provide a framework for governance. This was a prelude to the
corporation taking firmer possession of the hospital, a fairly involved
process due to the obstacles of the statute of mortmain and the lack of
formal borough incorporation;
the process was completed by 1398. In addition to this hospital, the
borough government oversaw the running of leper houses outside the north
gate.
My aim here is to provide a calendar, not a complete transcript, of the
document, although in a few, select cases the calendared text follows
the original closely. The abbreviations N., S., E. and W. are used in
regard to locations of real estate, to refer to abutting property or
topographical features lying to the north/south/east/west of the real
estate being itemized.
History of
medieval Yarmouth
