146 St. Nicholas? Hospital, Salisbury, 



Dawe. This the Queen did by patent dated 2nd May, 1573. 

 Thenceforth Messrs. Tipper and Dawe were the legal proprietors of 

 the whole estate which had belonged to the hospital. But not the 

 actual ; and why not ? Presumably the then master, the Earl of 

 Pembroke, continued his rule quietly, because he was too great a 

 man to be disturbed. His father had kept well in favour with each 

 successive ruling power; and had married the sister-in-law of the 

 old King, Katharine Parr's sister. He himself was a Knight of the 

 Garter, and one of the peers commissioned to try the Queen of Scots: 

 and the husband of Mary Sidney, sister of Sir Philip, whom at the 

 end of her long life Ben Jonson calls " Sidney's sister, Pembroke's 

 mother." We can easily see that while so influential a man held 

 the mastership it was not safe to disturb him. And in 1576 was 

 passed an Act to restrain mercenary informers, who, under colour of 

 espying out lands concealed from the Crown by private persons, 

 sacrilegiously seized upon the lands of parish Churches, almshouses, 

 &c. This statute was confirmed, and its provisions enforced by 

 another in 1584, by which informers were bound to appear in person, 

 and to carry through their action, on penalty of the pillory for two 

 hours. 



During these eight years then (1576 — 84), clearly it would not 

 have been safe to attack St. Nicholas : and accordingly we find that 

 it was when this period of safety had begun, in 1577, that Lord 

 Pembroke resigned his mastership in favour of Mr. Dolshon. 



But six years later, when Mr. Bigge held the mastership, Messrs. 

 Tipper and Dawe succeeded in obtaining recognition of their right. 

 In February, 1590, on Sir Edward Dyer's petition, Messrs. Tipper 

 and Dawe obtain a grant from the Queen in free and common socage 

 of all the hospital lands in Wilts : on December 22nd of the hospital 

 itself ; and on March 30th, 1592, of all the old hospital lands in 

 Dorset. And no sooner had Tipper and Dawe got legal possession 

 of it than they made over their right to one Nicholas Geffe, of 

 London. But in spite of this Mr. Bigge was master : and nothing 

 was done by Tipper and Dawe to disturb his mastership. But this 

 set Bigge himself upon the ingenious and indefatigable manoeuvres 

 which issued twenty years later in the new foundation of the hospital. 



