At Gloucester the sale of pensions, jewels, corn, and even of beds, is reported; bed-money was extracted from the poor (20_s._ from one, and 6_s._ 8_d._ from another, who had lost his legs). Part of St. Bartholomew’s was unroofed, pigs had access to it, the inmates lacked food and clothing, whilst the utmost depravity prevailed in the household (1380). One extravagant warden of God’s House, Portsmouth, spent eight or nine hundred marks yearly, yet kept no hospitality:— “butt the master will not obey to that and so seruys the powr pepull at hys pleysure, that ys, with uere cowrse bred and smaller drynke, wiche ys contrary to all good consyens.” When a warden was to be elected to the Maison Dieu, Dover (1533), a certain John de Ponte announced to Cromwell:—“The master is dead, and a great benefice [p224] is fallen unto the king, with which you may oblige your friends or take it yourself, and I will serve the same.” If such was the prevalent tone of those in authority, it is small wonder that Brinklow wrote about the year 1536:—“I heare that the masters of your hospitals be so fat that the pore be kept leane and bare inough.” There is strong censure upon the administration of the London hospitals in the petition for their re-foundation (1538); they had been provided to relieve the poor, but “nowe a smalle nomber of chanons, preestes and monks be founden for theyr own synguler proffytt lucre and commodytye onely,” and these do not regard “the myserable people lyeing in the streete offendyng every clene person passyng by the way.” About the year 1536, Robert Copland, in _The hye way to the Spyttell hous_, says:— “For I haue sene at sondry hospytalles That many haue lyen dead without the walles And for lacke of socour haue dyed wretchedly Vnto your foundacyon I thynke contrary. Moche people resorte here and have lodgyng, But yet I maruell greatly of one thyng That in the nyght so many lodge without.”