_Old Servants, Soldiers, etc._—The most interesting pensioners were veterans who had served in Scotland and France. The year of the battle of Bannockburn (1314), a man was sent to Brackley whose hand had been inhumanly cut off by Scotch rebels.[65] There are several instances of persons maimed in the wars who were sent for maintenance to various hospitals. One of the many grants of Richard II was made—“out of regard for Good Friday”—to an aged servant, that he should be one of the king’s thirteen poor bedemen of St. Giles’, Wilton. Another of Richard II’s retainers, a yeoman, was generously offered maintenance at Puckeshall by Henry IV.[66] _Jewish Converts._—The House of Converts was akin to a modern industrial home for destitute Jewish Christians, inmates being kept busily employed in school and workshop. During the century following the foundation of these “hospitals,” many converts are named, _Eve_, for instance, was received at Oxford, and _Christiana_ in London. Usually admitted after baptism, they were enrolled under their new names. _Philip_ had been baptized upon St. Philip and St. James’ Day, and _Robert Grosseteste_ was possibly godson of the bishop. Converts were brought from all parts. We find John and William of Lincoln, Isabel of Bristol and her boy, [p100] Isabel of Cambridge, Emma of Ipswich, etc.[67] A century later pensioners must have been immigrants, since all Jews resident in England had been expelled in 1290. A Flemish Jew, baptized at Antwerp in the presence of Edward III, was granted permission to dwell in the London institution with a life-pension of 2_d._ a day:— “Inasmuch as our beloved Edward of Brussels has recently abandoned the superstitious errors of Judaism . . . and because we rejoice in Christ over his conversion, and lest he should recede from the path of truth upon which he has entered, because of poverty . . . we have granted to him a suitable home in our House of Converts.” Theobald de Turkie, “a convert to the Catholic Faith,” was afterwards received, together with pensioners from Spain, Portugal, France, and Italy. A chamber was granted to Agnes, an orphan Jewess of tender age and destitute of friends, the child of a convert-godson of Edward II. A later inmate, of whose circumstances we would fain know more, was Elizabeth, daughter of Rabbi Moyses, called “bishop of the Jews” (1399). Converts frequently had royal sponsors. Henry V stood godfather to Henry Stratford, who lived in the _Domus Conversorum_ from 1416–1441. There was a certain risk in being called after the sovereign, nor was it unknown for the king’s converts to change their names. As late as 1532 Katharine of Aragon and Princess Mary stood sponsor to two Jewesses. (iii) INMATES OF SOME LAZAR-HOUSES