By the Rev. Canon Moberly. 



147 



"Our hospital/' says Mr. Hickman, "was certainly a concealment ; 

 for had the master thereof but shewed the foundation (which was 

 only Bishop Robert's Ordination and Bishop Beauchamp's statutes) 

 in the times either of King Henry VIII., Edward VI., or Queen 

 Elizabeth, it had most assuredly fallen to the Crown, with the many 

 other superstitious foundations in those days." It is impossible, on 

 considering the evidence, to arrive at any other conclusion than that 

 thus candidly avowed. The restriction of the office of warden to a 

 priest: the giving him charge of St. John's chapel, where also 

 priests said masses : the injunctions to the chaplain of the hospital 

 itself about serving the sick (by saying masses for quick and dead, 

 by visiting the sick, and by hearing their confessions) make it plain 

 that the hospital might too easily have been brought within the 

 scope of the statute, and thus destroyed, however lamentable and 

 unjust such destruction would have been. But to Mr. Bigge it 

 seemed an intolerable injustice that such a thing should be possible : 

 and therefore he set to work to prevent it by all the means in his 

 power, and was finally successful. 



The Earl of Pembroke died January 19th, 1 601, and was succeeded 

 by his eldest son, William. In this year also passed the statute o£ 

 charitable uses : which empowered the Queen to send into each 

 county commissioners, of whom the bishop and chancellor of the 

 diocese are to be two, authorizing them to enquire concerning 

 charitable foundations, to examine witnesses, and to decree as to 

 them. Mr, Hickman says : — " It is supposed that when she sent 

 her commissioners into Wiltshire her eye was chiefly (in favour of 

 the said Tipper and Dawe, to whom she had given it two or three 

 years before)* on this hospital of St. Nicholas, to which she bare no 

 good will." But we can hardly suppose that a measure intended 

 for all the kingdom alike was set on foot because of ill will to one 

 small institution. 



The commissioners sent to Wiltshire were thirteen ; the bishop, 

 the dean, the chancellor of the diocese, the archdeacon of Sarun\„ 

 four knights, and five esquires. They issued searching articles of 

 enquiry : and to them Bigge had to make answer. His answer at 

 large does not survive, but the account that he made showing his 



