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 thing, 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. — The next Two Hundred 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 1 : 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. 



Reg. passim. 



