(a) _The Master_ or Warden, who was also known as prior, _custos_, keeper or rector, was usually a priest, but occasionally a layman. One of the early masters of St. Mark’s, Bristol, was a knight, Henry de Gaunt, whose mailed effigy remains in the chapel. Crown hospitals were often served by chaplains and clerks, but the appointment of “king’s servants,” yeomen or knights, is noticeable during the fourteenth century. It is rarely recorded that the custodian of the sick was a physician, but the absence of the title _medicus_ in no way proves that he and his helpers were ignorant of medicine. In early days, indeed, it was only the clergy, religious or secular, who were trained in the faculty, and the master and his assistants must have acquired a certain intimacy with disease; they would have a knowledge of the herbals, of the system of letting blood, and other simple remedies. An important medical work, _Breviarium Bartholomæi_, was written late in the fourteenth century by John Mirfield of St. Bartholomew’s, Smithfield. He acknowledges that it is a compilation for the benefit of those who could not afford to buy the treatises whence it was derived; but he adds that part had been personally communicated to him and was supported by the experience of others. The fine manuscript copy in Pembroke [p150] College, Oxford, includes a list of medical ingredients, herbs, etc.[94] In some instances the warden _is_ described as a physician. When the chaplain of St. John’s, Bridport, was incapacitated, Master John de Brideport, physician, was deputed to act for him (1265). The Duke of Lancaster presented his foreign doctor, Pascal de Bononja, to the Preston hospital (1355). “Louis the physician,” who held St. Nicholas’, Pontefract (1399–1401), may be identified with Louis Recouchez, king’s physician, who was then appointed to the hospital at Westminster. It is possible that visiting doctors and barber-surgeons attended hospitals. In an inventory of Elsyng Spital a debt of xxxvij_s._ ij_d._ was due to Robert the leech, and of x_s._ to Geoffrey the barber. One of the inquiries at the Dissolution of religious houses was:—“Whether the maister of the house doo use his brethren charitably when they be syke and diseased; and whether, in tyme of their sykenes, he doo procure unto them physicions.” The duties—and temptations—of a warden are suggested by the “Articles of Inquisition touching the Savoy” (1535). Not only was inquiry made whether the master visited the poor at least twice a week, and the sick twice daily, but also:— “Whether he be mercifull, beningne and louyng to the poore; and not skoymys [squeamish] or lothesome to uisite theym or to be among theym. “Whether he or his ministers by his sufferance do take in suche as they reken moste clene of the poore, and repell theym that they reken most sore or deseased, for auoydyng of their owne lothesomenes or contagion.” [p151] [Illustration: _PLATE XVII._ GOD’S HOUSE, EWELME]