_Abuse by Wardens and Officials._—Doubtless wardens were responsible for the chief part of maladministration. Misrule by incapable and untrustworthy men was as frequent as it was fatal. The masters and their deputies had not the moral qualities of wisdom and honesty to fit them for so difficult a post. Master Hugh, warden of St. John and St. Thomas’ at Stamford, reduced it to such a condition that he petitioned for liberty to resign (1299). The abbot of Peterborough committed it to a neighbouring rector until “through the blessing of God its most high guardian, it shall arrive at a more flourishing estate.” After four months, however, Hugh was restored to office, and matters became worse. He defrauded the poor of their alms, locked up the rooms where strangers and sick should have been accommodated, and neglected the chapel. Meanwhile the mild abbot died; a new superior interfered and Hugh was again deposed. But having enlisted the mediation of the bishop and archdeacon, he, after a solemn oath of “reformation of all my excesses,” [p218] was actually entrusted for the third time with the wardenship.[137] A more interesting figure is the incorrigible Thomas de Goldyngton—warden of St. Nicholas’, Carlisle, and St. Leonard’s, Derby—who appears upon the roll as a flagrant offender, although a keen medical man. In 1341 he is perilously near forfeiting his Crown appointments for acting as leech to Scottish rebels; in 1348 he “exercises the office of the surgery of the commonalty [of Derby], neglects the duties of the wardenship and has dissipated and consumed the goods and alienated the lands to the great decay of the hospital.” Thomas had been previously warned after sundry visitations, for instance (1343): “the king commands the master at his peril to observe all the rules, constitutions and ordinances of the hospital [Carlisle] in their entirety.”[138] It seems doubtful whether this energetic person ever became an exemplary house-surgeon and physician at that mediæval royal infirmary of Derby. The staff like the warden defied authority, as is shown by visitation reports. The brethren and sisters of St. Nicholas’, York, were cross-questioned by the jury. The general evidence was that they were living as they pleased, carrying on business, omitting services, and wandering. The sisters mostly confessed to knowing nothing, but one deposed that the brethren were disobedient; whilst the chaplain reported that “all are disobedient and do not observe humility.”[139]