134 St. Nicholas’ Hospital, Salisbury. 
Nicholas’ Street,’ which must, one would think, have been the 
present Exeter Street, leading from St. Anne’s Gate to the hospital. 
And we hear, also, in the next episcopate, casually and not at all as 
if it were a new thiny, of St. Nicholas’ parish. When Bishop 
Wyley was ordaining as to his new college of St. Edmund, he talked 
of “ the tenants who before were parishioners of the hospital of St, 
Nicholas,” and ‘the profits of the parish which the prior and brethren 
of the hospital of St. Nicholas have been accustomed to receive.” 
It seems, then, as if the prior was a parish priest ; in which case the 
brethren might have been his lay assistants. Nay, Bishop Wyley 
thought it necessary to obtain the consent of the prior before 
founding his institution; for he says, in his foundation deed in 1270, 
“with the consent of the venerable Robert the dean and our chapter 
of Sarum, and of the religious men the prior and brethren of the 
hospital of St Nicholas . . . we have built a humble church 
in Salisbury.” This consent was not required of them as landowners, 
for they possessed nothing yet in the town: but it clearly was as 
occupying an important position in one quarter of the town ; perhaps 
as rectors of a contiguous parish. 
This, then, was the position of St. Nicholas’ when Bishop Bridport 
thought well to adopt it, to make himself its custos, and to put a 
prior in to govern it more immediately. There was a custos also of 
the new Valley College, but he was the appointment of the dean 
and chapter, and one of themselves. 
IV.—TueE next Two Hunprep YEARs. 
1271—1470. 
A veil is upon the hospital for the next two hundred years, so 
impenetrable that we cannot explain a great deal that took place 
later. We have the lists both of wardens of the hospital and of the 
Valley College ; we have the deeds which tell us of fresh acquisitions 
of land by the hospital': but all the interior life is quite hidden 
from us, and when the veil rises, it rises upon a hospital strangely 
diverted from its original purpose. 
1 Reg. passim. 
OO 
