106 



chancel steps ' | hsht gofa of gofare c^artte far tl^e BO«Us abo&e farittn 

 prage ge,'" but of this no visible trace remains. 



The Hospital. 



The generosity and zeal of Prior Cantlow were not satisfied with 

 restoring the Ghapd, he also built or rebuilt the Hospital. That 

 he rebuilt it appears probable from the fact that in 1212 Hugh 

 Wells, Bishop of Lincoln, whose name appears in Magna Charta, 

 who bestowed much on the cathedral at Wells, where his brother 

 was Bishop, and of which city he was a native, made a will leaving 

 a legacy to the " House of Lepers in the suburbs of Bath."* In 

 1322, February, an ordination of John de Dudmarton to the 

 vicarage of St. Mary of Stalls took place, whereby it was 

 appointed among other things that the Prior and Convent of Bath, 

 as rectors of the said Church, should receive the tithe of wool 

 from the Brethren of tJie blessed Mary MagdaleneA And in 

 1332 the Bishop of Bath and Wells, Ralph of Shrewsbury, 

 (Bishop from 1329-1363), granted " an indulgence of twenty days 

 to the benefactors of the Hospital of St. Cross and St. Mary 

 Magdalene of Bath." 



Here it is noticeable that the name of " St. Cross" has been 

 dropped, this however may have been necessitated at the 

 Reformation ; but it is remarkable that the fair which was 

 held till lately at the top of HoUoway, in the immediate 

 neighbourhood of the Chapel, and which was granted as a 

 privilege to the monks of Bath by Edward I. in 1304, took 

 place on the Vigil and Festival of the Invention of the Cross, 

 namely the third of May, and twenty-eight years after the 

 granting of the privilege, the name occurs as connected with the 

 Chapel. I 



Upon this arises the interesting question had this Chapel 

 and Hospital of St. Cross any connection with the Cross Bath 1 

 The latter was not of course " the Lepers' Bath," yet in 1530 



* Tanner's Notitia Monastica. Collinson, I. 74. Warner, 240. Charity 



Com. Report, 1820, p. 555. 



t Warner, History of Bath, p. 240, also App. Ixxv. 



j Warner, p. 173, note. Warner, Appendix xxxiz. 



