Preserved To Perfection

Lyddington Palace, Rutland In the care of English Heritage. A residence of the Bishop of Lincoln, converted into an almshouse, offers a unique insight into the realities of grand domestic life in England in about 1500.

- John Goodall

BY a deed dated November 6, 1600, Sir Thomas Cecil, Lord Burghley (and later 1st Earl of Exeter), founded an almshouse called the Jesus Hospital at Lyddington. The new institution, governed by a warden, was to support a community of 12 poor men and two women in perpetuity. According to its regulations or ‘Ordynaunces’, issued in March 1601, the community members were to be selected by their patron from among those of good character.

The men and women had to be over the ages of 30 or 45 respectively and were to receive small weekly allowances of money and fuel besides a livery of blue gowns and black caps. They were to occupy themselves appropriately during the day and observe a regular regimen of prayer, including all baptisms and funerals in the parish church.

The English nobility had been founding almshouses constituted in broadly the terms of the Jesus Hospital since the early 15th century. These institutions characteristically accommodated communities of symbolic size—in this case, 12 being the number of the Apostles—and were governed by a master or warden according to written statutes. The Reformation had caused an almost complete cessation of such foundations, but, in the early 17th century, there is apparent a remarkable resurgence of interest in institutions of this kind. Where the Jesus Hospital strikingly differs from its peers, however, is the way in which it was accommodated.