44. THE HOSPITAL OF ST. MARY ROUNCIVALL
This hospital was founded near Charing Cross
by William Marshal, earl of Pembroke, in the
reign of Henry III, and therefore before 1231,
when William the second earl marshal died, and
was endowed by him with 100s. rent at Southampton, land worth £13 in 'Netherwynter,' and
a carucate of land in Ashingdon. (fn. 1) It was the
chief cell in England of the Priory of St. Mary
at Rouncivall in Navarre. (fn. 2) The brothers are mentioned between 1244 and 1260 as the patrons of
a church in London called St. Mary 'Aylward,' (fn. 2a) and by the middle of the next century
the house had acquired a little more property,
but its income must have been derived principally from alms which persons were sent from
the hospital to collect. (fn. 3) Richard II, on a vacancy
of the house about 1382, granted the custody to
his clerk Nicholas Slake. On this occasion the
prior of Rouncivall protested, and his claim to
the ownership of the hospital seems to have been
successful; (fn. 4) in 1393, however, the king again
appointed a warden of the hospital, (fn. 5) which
probably passed entirely out of the control of
the priory at Rouncivall before it came into the
possession of the crown under the Act of 1414. (fn. 6)
About 1421 the vicar of St. Martin's in the
Fields complained to the pope that the master and
brothers under pretext of letters of Boniface IX
detained tithes and other parochial rights due to
him. The genuineness of these and other letters
produced by them had appeared so doubtful to
the archbishop of Canterbury that he had detained them, and in 1422 he was ordered by the
pope to send them to the papal chancery to be
examined. (fn. 7) The archbishop's suspicions were
found to be justified, the letters of Boniface IX,
Urban VI, Clement VI, and Urban V were
declared forgeries, and the pope commanded that
they should be publicly denounced as such and
burned, and that those who had forged them and
those who knowing them to be false had made
use of them were to be punished. (fn. 8) The tithes,
of course, were restored to the vicar. Poverty
probably was the cause of this reprehensible
attempt to replenish the convent's funds, for
just before this sentence the pope had granted
a special indulgence to persons visiting and
giving alms for 'the sustentation and repair of
the chapel of the poor hospital of St. Mary
Rouncevall whose buildings are in need of no
small repair.' (fn. 9)
Nothing further is heard of the house until
1478, when Edward IV granted it with all its
property in frankalmoign to a fraternity or gild
consisting of a master, wardens, brethren, and
sisters, founded in the chapel there in 1474, for
the maintenance of three chaplains and of the
poor coming to the hospital. (fn. 10) There had been
a brotherhood established in St. Mary's in 1385,
especially to celebrate the Feast of the Nativity
of the Virgin, (fn. 11) but whether this had any connexion with the gild of 1474 does not appear.
The story of the hospital ends with the dissolution of the fraternity in November, 1544. (fn. 12)
At the time of the surrender the hospital
possessed a messuage and field in the parish of
St. Clement Danes, which it had received from
the king in 1542 in exchange for some tenements and a wharf in the parish of St. Margaret
Westminster. (fn. 13) About 1291 it held some land
in Hawkwell and Ashingdon, co. Essex, (fn. 14) and in
the fourteenth century a rent of 2s. in Norwich (fn. 15)
and 10 acres of land in Kensington. (fn. 16)
The head of the house was styled prior during
the thirteenth century, (fn. 17) but afterwards master
or warden.
Masters or Wardens of the Hospital of St. Mary Rouncivall
Nicholas Slake, occurs 1382 (fn. 18)
Garcias, occurs 1389 (fn. 19)
John Gedeneye, appointed 1393 (fn. 20)
John Neuwerk, occurs 1399 (fn. 21)
Richard Bromefeld, died 1526 (fn. 22)
Roger Elys, appointed 1526 (fn. 23)
William Jenyns, occurs 1542 (fn. 24)
A seal of the fifteenth century (fn. 25) represents the
Assumption of the Virgin who stands on a
crescent upheld by an angel and surrounded by
radiance. At each side three flying angels issue
from clouds, and overhead in clouds is the
Trinity. Legend:—
SIGILLū . . . . . RNITATIS (?) . GĒ MARIE . DE .
ROUNCEVA . . . . .