St. Anthony's Hospital was a medieval charitable house in the parish of St Benet Fink in the City of London. It was founded before 1254 as a cell by the Hospital Brothers of St. Anthony of Vienne in France.
Location The hospital of St. Anthony when mentioned later was certainly in the now defunct parish of St. Benet Fink (an abbreviation of "St Benedict Finch"), near today's Threadneedle Street. However, it is unlikely a synagogue had ever occupied a site in the parish of St. Benet Fink, as such Jewish places of worship were confined to the Jewry district of the City, some distance away to the east. It is possible therefore that either the brothers changed their quarters afterwards or at one time the Jews had spread beyond the Jewry. Such an outlying synagogue may have been permitted by the 1252/3 decree of King Henry III (1216-1272) that there should be no synagogues except where they existed during the reign of his father King John (1199–1216).
Establishment and funding The brothers of St. Anthony of Vienne established a cell before 1254 on some land given to them by King Henry III, in a place previously occupied by a Jewish synagogue. In the bull of Pope Alexander V confirming the grant the place is not further described.
The house was founded to look after twelve poor men, and was governed by a Master, two priests and a schoolmaster.
The hospital appears to have been funded by ad hoc donations of alms, not by an endowment, as in 1291 the whole property within the parish of St. Benet Fink was not worth more than the small sum of 8 shillings per annum.
One source of income, traditional to certain religious foundations dedicated to Saint Anthony the Great of Egypt, was from donated free-range pigs: any pig considered by the supervisor of the London Livestock market unfit to be killed for food was reserved for the use of the Hospital as follows: a proctor of St. Anthony's placed a collar around its neck from which hung a bell. It was then released onto the City streets to scavenge, protected by the status afforded by its bell, from molestation by the population.VCH it was a virtuous deed to feed these pigs, which quickly fattened and when ready for the table were reclaimed by the Hospital and sold or slaughtered for food.VCH The privilege appears on occasion to have been abused, as in 1311 one of the Hospital's tenants Roger de Wynchester, was forced to promise the City authorities not to claim pigs found wandering about the City, nor to put bells on "any swine but those given in charity to the house".VCH
History In 1310 the brothers built a new chapel, for which they had neglected to obtain the permission of the Bishop of London. Judgement was given against the brothers in August, 1311, in the Court of Arches, when the chapel was judged to be prejudicial to the Bishop and to the parish church of St. Benet Fink, and was to be reduced to the form of a private house within eight days on pain of greater excommunication.
During the wars with France and the schism the hospital was cut off from communication with the parent house at Vienne. In 1380 the warden Geoffrey de Lymonia was excused by the antipope Clement VII from making contributions due to Vienne. In 1389 King Edward III appointed as warden one of his clerks, John Macclesfield, in place of the papal choice for the position. Pope Boniface IX confirmed his appointment on condition he should become a monk within three months, which on his failure so to do resulted in the pope making his own appointment. The pope later relented and allowed Macclesfield to hold the position for ten years.
The hospital was by then virtually a royal "free chapel" and this may account for the benefits conferred on it by Pope Boniface IX. In 1392 he granted 100 days' remission of penance to those who during seven years should visit the "House of St. Anthony" on the chief festivals connected with Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and St. Anthony, and gave alms towards the fabric of the chapel and for the maintenance of the sick and poor. In 1392 he also gave it the revenues of All Saints Church, Hereford, and of the annexed chapel of St. Martin, which had been given to the house at Vienne in 1249 by King Henry III.
Shortly before 1400 the advowson of St. Benet Fink's parish church had been donated to the Hospital by two Citizens of London, John Sauvage and Thomas Walington, and in that year the pope donated in addition that church's revenues to the Hospital. However, as later disputes between the church and Hospital attest this grant was not put into effect. In 1440 St. Benet's Church was again donated to the hospital by the Bishop of London for the maintenance of a grammar school.
Macclesfield had in fact misappropriated the Hospital's funds by disposing of much of its property and by the granting of pensions to his children, and other persons, and in 1424 the pope ordered the bishop of Winchester to annul such alienations as should be found unlawful. (fn. 24)
In 1429 the Master acquired adjoining land from the Abbot of St. Albans and enlarged the building and formed a garden and cemetery. The new building was uncompleted in 1441, and the Hospital was then described by King Henry VI as "wretched and almost desolate, reduced to the very verge of poverty".
In 1442 King Henry VI granted to the Hospital the manor of Pennington with pensions in Milburn, Tunworth, Charlton, and Up-Wimborne, Hampshire, in order to maintain five scholars at Oxford University, who were first to study grammar at his royal foundation of Eton College. In 1449 a bequest was made by the will of William Wyse of his brewery "Le Coupe super le hoop" in the parish of Allhallows London Wall, for the purpose of maintaining a priest to instruct the children of St. Anthony's in singing as well as praying for his soul.
Alien Priory During the French wars in 1414 the Alien Priories Act was signed by King Henry V which confiscated into the king's hands the English property of all French mother-houses, and the Hospital was treated henceforth as a royal free chapel. Later King Henry VI appointed the wardens and King Edward IV on two occasions granted to a third party the right to present a Master on the next vacancy. The popes evidently acquiesced with the royal confiscation as in 1446 Pope Eugenius IV gave leave to the bishops of Worcester and Norwich, the Provost of Eton and the Warden William Say, to make statutes for the Hospital and in 1447 Pope Nicholas V exempted the Hospital from all spiritual and temporal jurisdiction, especially from that of the former mother-house of St. Anthony, Vienne.
The Hospital did not exist for long as an independent house and in 1475 was annexed and appropriated to the College of St. George, Windsor Castle. It was at that time a profitable enterprise, with receipts in 1478–9 of £539 19 shillings exceeding expenses by £96 4 shillings 10 pence. "From the accounts it may be gathered that the surplus was not obtained by stinting the inmates of food".VCH
Largely due to financing by Sir John Tate, an Alderman of the City of London, the church was rebuilt in 1499 on the old now enlarged site.
St. Anthony's pigs still existed in 1525 and in 1537 an agent of St. Anthony's was recorded collecting offerings and selling hallowed bells for cattle.
Dissolution of the Monasteries At the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries the Hospital was despoiled, not as was usual by the crown, but by a prebendary of Windsor named Johnson, who gave each almsman in compensation for the loss of his room a weekly pension of 1 shilling. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) the church was let to French Protestants.
Landholdings In 1565 the Hospital possessed lands including the following: : Manor of Esehall (earlier spelled as "Esthall") Manor of Walens (earlier spelled as "Valance") Manor of Fryslyng (earlier spelled as "Thyrstelyng") 'Jurdens land' in Essex; Rectories of All Saints and St. Martin in the City of Hereford, in the possession of the house since 1392 A tenement in Winchester, A tenement in Portsmouth, Tenements in the City of London, including three tenements near the school, and the capital messuage, called 'Lady Tate's House,' then tenanted by Sir Henry Sydney and the Rectory of St. Benet Fink.
Stowe's Survey of London John Stow (1524–1605) in his 1598 Survey of London wrote of St Anthony's Hospital thus:Stow, John, Survey of London, 1598, 1842 edition, London, ed. Thoms, William J., pp.70-1