Service was held in the church for the inhabitants of the
Precinct, but the Hospital was wholly secular. The Master devoured by
far the greater part of the revenue, and the alms-people--Brothers,
Sisters, and Bedeswomen--had no duties to perform of any kind.
In the year 1698 this, the third chapter in the life of the Hospital,
was closed. The Lord Chancellor, Lord Somers, held in that year a
Visitation of the Hospital, the result of which is interesting,
because it shows, first, a lingering of the old ecclesiastical
traditions, and, next, the sense that something useful ought to be
done with the income of the Hospital. It was therefore ordered in the
new regulations provided by the Chancellor that the Brothers should be
in Holy Orders, and that a school of thirty-five boys and fifteen
girls should be maintained by the Hospital. It does not appear that
any duties were expected of the Brothers. Like the Fellows of colleges
at Oxford and Cambridge, they were all to be in priests' orders, and
for exactly the same reason, because at the original foundations of
the colleges, as well as of the Hospital, the Fellows were all
priests. As for the Master, he remained a layman. This new order of
things, therefore, raised the position of the Brothers, and gave a new
dignity to the Hospital; further, the School as well as the Bedeswomen
defined its position as a charity.
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