Cross, standing
where it has stood for over seven and a half centuries, a witness alike
to the munificence of its founders, de Blois and Beaufort, and to the
skill of the mediaeval builders.
A good road leads from the city to the pleasing suburb in which the
hospital is situated, though a far pleasanter way is by one of the field
paths through the meadows.
Henry de Blois became bishop when only twenty-eight years old, and in
1136 he founded the hospital for the entire support of "thirteen poor
men, feeble and so reduced in strength that they can hardly or with
difficulty support themselves without another's aid"; and they were to
be supplied with "garments and beds suitable to their infirmities, good
wheate bread daily of the weight of 5 marks, and three dishes at dinner
and one at supper, suitable to the day, and drink of good stuff".
Besides this, he provided for a hundred poor men to be supplied daily
with dinner. Bishop Toclyve, de Blois's successor in the see, added to
the charity the feeding of yet another hundred poor men daily; and it
has been said, on somewhat slight evidence, that the poorer scholars of
Winchester College dined without fee in the "Hundred Men's Hall".
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