HOUSING VETERANS AT LORD LEYCESTER'S HOSPITAL
[LORD LEYCESTER HOSPITAL, WARWICK.]
Account of the Charity of Leicester’s Hospital. Its Foundation & Endowment, Government, Former & Present Rents – Subsequent Acts of Parliament relating to its present state &c.
Warwick, mid-nineteenth century.
Manuscript on paper (watermarked 1822), 4to, ff. [26] in loose quires; neatly written in English in brown ink on rectos only, c. 21 lines per page; marginal soiling to first leaf of text, but otherwise internally clean and fresh; covers chipped and somewhat stained with short closed tear to upper cover.
Added to your basket:
Account of the Charity of Leicester’s Hospital. Its Foundation & Endowment, Government, Former & Present Rents – Subsequent Acts of Parliament relating to its present state &c.
A manuscript copy of the sixteenth-century statues of the Lord Leycester Hospital, an almshouse founded by Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, for impoverished or ageing former soldiers wounded in service.
The present manuscript details the founding of the almshouse – on the site of a medieval chapel – under royal charter by Queen Elizabeth I; the hospital, which predates the Royal Hospital Chelsea by over a century, was operated by a Master (an ‘ordinary Preacher of God’s Word’) and twelve carefully selected Brethren who had been ‘maimed or hurt in in the Wars in Service of the Queen’s Majesty [or] her heirs and Successors’. Particularly interesting are the extensive rules for the Brethren, violation of which resulted in public chastisement, docked allowances, and, in extreme cases, expulsion: among the offences were being ‘an Heretic or notorious Blasphemer or a Drunkard or a Quarreller’; they were forbidden to stay outside the hospital overnight without leave; to keep dogs or hawks; or to have any women under sixty in their chambers (with the exception of wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters); and to beg or steal wood.
Although the Corporation of the Master and Brethren of the Hospital was abolished in 1956, The Lord Leycester Hospital continues to operate under a board of Governors and currently houses eight Brethren and their spouses.
