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too strong to be disbelieved, to have translated the Latin version of Æsop into that despised tongue. And unabashed might the "gleeman" take his place beside the foreign minstrel; for he brought with him spirited odes, ingenious allegories, and long poems, so perfect in the structure of their fable, and so judicious in their development of plot and character, as to approach nearer to the form of epic than any other poems of the day. That spirited ode on the battle of Brunaburgh, that wild and highly poetical Song of the Soul," and that noble poem (almost an epic) "Beowulf," might be listened to with proud exultation by the daughter of Saxon race.*

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But scholars as well as minstrels enjoyed the patronage of Maude; "learned clerks" are expressly mentioned as the objects of her bounty. To her, Hildebert, the learned bishop of Mans, addressed several Latin poems; an evident proof that she could understand them and Henry of Huntingdon celebrates her praise in a way that renders it not improbable that he partook of her liberality. But it was not her liberal patronage of the wandering minstrel, nor her profuse munificence to clerks and scholars, that gained the Saxon queen that epithet with which her name is always associated, "the good queen Maude; " but that general kindliness of feeling which seems to have rendered her the idol of her de. pendants, that extensive almsgiving, and that strict and willing submission to all those duties, which religion, and not infrequently superstition, enjoined.

* All these are in Conybeare's Illustrations.

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When we read that duly each Lent, wearing sackcloth beneath her royal garments, she, barefooted, trod the thresholds of the churches, we feel inclined to view her but as one of that numerous class of devotees, who have considered mortification in this life, a sure passport to felicity in the world to come. When, however, we read of her charity to the prisoner, the destitute, the maimed, and the leper; of the humility which dressed their wounds, and superintended their table, we perceive that the superstitious observances are attributable but to the age, while the conscientious feeling and sincere devotion were her own.

To numerous religious houses, especially those devoted to females, queen Maude was a liberal and active patroness. The nunnery at Stratford, an establishment which for many generations was celebrated as a school, was frequently visited by her; and the first stone bridge erected in this country is said to have been built by her direction at Bow, in consequence of the difficulty she on one occasion found in passing the river Lea † during winter. To the ancient and noble abbey of Barking-that convent whose abbess took precedence of every abbess in the kingdom, and whose crosier was first wielded by St. Ethelburga-queen Maude was peculiarly attached; she added largely to its already large endowments, diligently superintended its affairs, and, on the death of its abbess Elfgiva, took for some time its government into her own hands. To the monks of Westminster, and to the conventual establishments of + Stowe.

* Vide Malmsbury.

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London, she was also a liberal benefactress; while the hospital of St. Giles in the Fields, and the priory of the Holy Trinity at Aldgate, remained, for many centuries, monuments of her munificent bounty.

The hospital of St. Giles was founded by the queen soon after her marriage. It was by the original charter endowed for the maintenance of forty lepers, one chaplain, and one messenger; to which were afterwards added a number of healthful brothers and sisters to take charge of the sick. A large plot of ground was selected, and a church, a hospital, and numerous offices erected; and as the original endowment was only "£3. per annum from the customs of the ripa reginæ, usually called Edredshithe," it is supposed that the deficiency was made up by the inmates being permitted every market-day to go to the market with a clap-dish (a wooden dish with a moveable cover, which, during the middle ages, was borne by every class that wished to excite attention to their wants), and there beg corn. Subsequently, leprosy having been discovered to be very contagious, lepers were prohibited from going abroad; they were therefore permitted to send a messenger once a-month with a box to the churches and chapels of religious houses, during divine service, to receive gifts and alms from the congregation.* It is not improbable that this hospital of St. Giles was the first establishment of the kind in this kingdom, since, of all the numerous houses for lepers which the charity of this age erected, none date so early. Tradition has recorded, and Stowe has adopted, the Vide Parton's "History of St. Giles in the Fields."

opinion, that on the site of St. James's palace a hospital for female lepers stood even before the conquest; but in the absence of direct testimony, this is very questionable; for the introduction of this terrible scourge of the middle ages, has been always assigned by the most competent historians to that era of pilgrimages to Jerusalem-the latter half of the 11th century. Certain is it and it affords a strong corroboration that this loathsome disease was imported from Palestine that all the hospitals throughout the kingdom, for the reception and cure of lepers, were founded during the twelfth century. In subsequent times the superintendence of all these hospitals was committed to the master and brethren of Burton-Lazars, in Leicestershire; and a system of regular visitation and controul, similar to that exercised by the superiors of the various religious confraternities, was rigidly established.

If, in reflecting on the habits and customs of our forefathers, and contrasting many of their rude arrangements with the more refined and artificial regulations of modern times, a feeling of undue exultation should arise in our minds, we should do well to mark the sound judgment that superintended the internal management of their hospitals, and the kindly feeling that watched over the inmates. This seems especially the case in respect to the establishment of their lazar-houses. There, the leper, cut off by law from all intercourse with general society, felt not himself a precarious dependant on casual benevolence, nor a being whose very existence was a burthen on the community. He was not thrust

into some general receptacle of human misery, where his scanty meal was grudgingly and contemptuously doled out; but hospitals of noble and even royal foundation-asylums partaking the dignity and hallowed character of monastic establishments-opened their doors expressly to receive him; and there, in the society of his brethren in calamity, exposed to no privation, subjected to no restraints save those of the conventual rule, he might lead his monotonous but not unhappy life, and, engaged in the often recurring services of religion, find a solace for the present, and comfort and hope for the time to come.

The hospital of St. Giles received, during this and the following centuries, numerous rich and important endowments. Henry the second granted it a charter, and gave an additional £3 per annum to buy its inmates a regular habit. It was at the great gate of this establishment that, towards the close of the 14th century, when the gallows were removed from the Elms to "the north land of the wall belonging to the hospital," that that singular custom was observed, the presenting to the criminals, on their way to execution, a large bowl of ale, termed the "St. Giles's bowl."

The other establishment which owes its foundation to queen Maude, was the priory of the Holy Trinity, for canons of the order of St. Augustine, and which was situated just withinside Aldgate. From Maude's charter, which dates 1108, we learn that it was founded at the instance of archbishop Anselm and Richard de Belmeis, the new and ac

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