Kent and Essex

Canterbury. —Although the Anglo-Saxon Archbishop Stigand was displaced at the Conquest by the Italian Lanfranc, Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, afterwards canonised, who founded in that city a hospital in 1085, as we have seen in Chapter IV., enjoyed the good-will of that noble-minded scholar, educationalist, ecclesiastic and statesman. Lanfranc had great influence with William the Conqueror, and some with his son, William Rufus, and when he died, in 1089, was universally lamented. ¹ He founded, contemporaneously with Wulfstan, the hospital of St. John the Baptist at Canterbury, for a hundred poor and impotent men and women. The buildings were of stone, but the greater part were destroyed by a fire in the fourteenth century. Part of the chapel remains, and shows a round-headed doorway ornamented with chevron or zigzag, figured by Miss Clay. Mr. Sidney Heath also gives a charming drawing of the present gate-house, which appears to be of sixteenth-century date. Eadmer (c. 1060– c. 1124), a notable contemporary writer and a monk of Christchurch, Canterbury, described the hospital, which, he said, had ample grounds. At one time a proctor was employed to collect money and other gifts for the hospital, pardons sold by him giving to penitents exemption from 30,000 paternosters and aves. Vestments of Bruges satin and fustian are mentioned, and ancient documents and utensils are preserved at the hospital. It survives to the present day, with a prior and eighteen brethren, the Archdeacon of Canterbury presenting.