WILTSHIRE MAGAZINE, 
“MULTORUM MANIBUS GRANDE LEVATUR ONUS.’—Ovid. 
St. Aicholas’ Hospital, Salisbury. 
By the Rev. Canon MoBeERty. 
PURPOSE, in the following pages, to put together a few 
historical notices of the Hospital of St. Nicholas in 
Salisbury, which may not be uninteresting to the readers of this 
Magazine, with some additional facts derived from the cartulary, or 
old register, of the hospital, which is in my keeping as Master. 
I._—First Founpation. 
When was the hospital founded? The answer is that we cannot 
be sure. We can be sure that it was already in existence by 1227, 
as two separate gifts of land are made to it in that year. But of 
the original foundation there is no record. 
It was, perhaps, natural to conjecture that it was founded and 
built as an appendage to the Cathedral Church, soon after its 
foundation in 1220, or its first consecration in 1225. 
But Bishop Bingham, when he is recounting the property be- 
_longing to the hospital in 1245, speaks of a “ vetus hospitale ” which 
he is superseding by another building. Is it likely that he would 
have spoken thus of a building not more than twenty years old? 
It is not impossible, doubtless; but, to my thinking, improbable. 
It is more likely that the original building was “ one of those old 
__ wayside chapels” [to use Canon Jones’s words] “ not uncommon in 
: Wilts, at which a wayfarer might get a night’s shelter; consisting 
_ of a simple chapel, and two or three rooms, It was this that Ela, 
_ Countess of Salisbury, endowed in 1227. It was placed on the 
_ VOL, XXV.—NO. LXXIV. K 
