Almshouses we usually call them now, but our forefathers preferred to
call them hospitals, God's hostels, "God huis," as the Germans call
their beautiful house of pity at Luebeck, where the tired-out and
money-less folk might find harbourage. The older hospitals were often
called "bede-houses," because the inmates were bound to pray for their
founder and benefactors. Some medieval hospitals, memorials of the
charity of pre-Reformation Englishmen, remain, but many were
suppressed during the age of spoliation; and others have been so
rebuilt and restored that there is little left of the early
foundation.
We may notice three classes of these foundations. First, there are the
pre-Reformation bede-houses or hospitals; the second group is composed
of those which were built during the spacious days of Queen Elizabeth,
James I, and Charles I. The Civil War put a stop to the foundation of
almshouses. The principal landowners were impoverished by the war or
despoiled by the Puritans, and could not build; the charity of the
latter was devoted to other purposes. With the Restoration of the
Church and the Monarchy another era of the building of almshouses set
in, and to this period very many of our existing institutions belong.
[Illustration: Gateway of St. John's Hospital, Canterbury]
Of the earliest group we have several examples left.
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