The “corrody” was an even greater, because a permanent, burden. The privilege of board and lodging was frequently given away by patrons as a reward for service, but sometimes it was created by grant of the community itself, or sold by greedy officials. This grievance marks a period of decline. Whereas Henry III pensioned his nurses from the Exchequer, Edward I imposed upon hospitals the maintenance of old servants of the Crown, sending a former damsel of the queen-mother and her man-servant to Ospringe to be maintained for life. He appointed only to houses of royal foundation, but his son went further, demanding admission, for example, to the episcopal hospital at Worcester. Caring little that Bishop Wulstan was the founder, Edward II declares that “the hospitals in the realm were founded by the king’s progenitors for the admission of poor and weak persons, and especially of those in the king’s service who were unable to work.” An order is sent to Oxford to admit the king’s [p214] chaplain to St. John’s, finding him and his clerk food, drink, robes, shoe-leather, wood, litter, and a fitting dwelling-place. The Statute of 1314–15 condemned the tyrannous practice of burdening religious houses in this manner. Edward III was checked in the first year of his reign by a more forcible enactment entitled, “There shall be no more grants of Corrodies at the King’s Requests.” It states that many have been hitherto grieved by such requests “which have desired them by great threats, for their clerks and other servants, for great pensions and corrodies.” Edward declares that he “will no more such things desire, but where he ought”; and henceforth letters patent of this character are less numerous. Where the demand was considered unjust, resentment sometimes took the form of violence. Thus in 1341 the master of St. John’s, Oxford, with eight men, assaulted and imprisoned a certain Alice Fitz-Rauf; they carried her off by night with veiled face, threw her into a filthy place, and so left her, having taken away the writ requesting her reception into the hospital. More often a mild protest was made by officials; they acquiesce “of mere courtesy,” but beg to be excused in future. Forgetting that the courtesy of one generation may be the custom of the next, the much-abused York hospital submits (1331) provided the demand shall not form a precedent. Fifty years later, a strong-minded master of that house refuses to admit a man at King Richard’s command, replying that it was “founded for the bed-ridden and not for the able-bodied.”