Note 29 — Chapter I · THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

In the xi and xii centuries a large number of hospitals of the order of S. Augustine were founded for the relief of poor and impotent persons, the type being that of the Whittington hospital in London. Sometimes their object was to succour the wayfarer, sometimes they were virtually almshouses where leprous and indigent “brethren” formed the larger part of the community with a few “healthful brethren” and the master to look after them. Such was the origin, in the xi c., of the Knights of Malta, or Order of the Hospital of S. John of Jerusalem. At Canterbury Lanfranc erected a hospital of S. Gregory; at Oxford the hospital of S. Bartholomew, founded in the reign of Hen. I., was bestowed by Edw. III. on Oriel College; and Magdalen, Oxford, was erected on the site of another S. John’s hospital, which numbered brethren and sisters among its members. Amalfi merchants trading to the Holy Land endowed the first “master and brethren” of the Order of S. John of Jerusalem; a well-to-do burgess endowed the Cambridge hospice, and the nobles, the bishops, and the sovereign himself are to be numbered among the founders and benefactors of these first almshouses and hospitals. Cf. ii. p. 117 n.