The year 1547 serves as a useful limit to our period, and may well for the purposes of this book denote the close of the Middle Ages in England. Its selection in no way implies a lack of continuity in the Church with which every hospital was intimately associated,—yet it marks a time of transition. Charity was crippled for a time by the confiscations of endowments designed for the relief of the destitute, until a new generation of philanthropists arose and endeavoured to replace them. Thomas Fuller truly says, “the reformed Religion in England hath been the Mother of many brave Foundations.” To support this he instances certain famous hospitals, as that at Warwick, built by the Earl of Leicester (1571); Croydon, by Archbishop Whitgift (1596); Guildford, by Archbishop Abbot (before 1617), and Sutton’s Charterhouse (1611). There is, indeed, no fundamental difference between the earlier and later almshouses of the sixteenth century. The author of _A History of English Philanthropy_ gives two reasons for using the period of the dissolution of monasteries as a starting-point. “It was then,” he says, “that modern problems began to formulate themselves with great precision; and charity was then ceasing to be under the immediate direction and tutelage of the Church.” For the same reasons, the year 1547 is here used to conclude the earlier philanthropic era. A tabulated list of hospitals will be found in Appendix B. Additions and corrections are earnestly invited by the author, as local and particular knowledge is required to make it accurate and exhaustive. From this list are excluded such infirmaries as formed an integral part of a monastic house; but in cases where some abbey maintained a separate institution outside its gates (with distinct constitution, separate dedication-name, and sometimes a separate seal), the foundation is set down as a hospital. The institutions known as Colleges have no place unless, indeed, they maintained bedemen. The “House of Converts” does, however, rightly belong to our subject, for it was an almshouse and industrial home. “Hospitals” of the Orders of the Temple and St. John of Jerusalem are excluded, because they differ in character, although the work they carried on was partly the same. Moreover, as they formed part of great societies, famous in and beyond Europe, they have their own historians. Houses of the Knights of St. Lazarus must, however, consistency notwithstanding, find a place, because any account of relief provided for lepers would be incomplete if that comparatively small Order were passed over. “Hospital” was a wide-embracing term, and the occasional application of the word to religious foundations of one kind or another has not always been accounted a reason for their inclusion.