Page:The histories of Launceston and Dunheved, in the county of Cornwall.djvu/59

ST. LEONARD'S HOSPITAL. 43 The daily walk of the messenger from the Hospital for his loaf, and the quarterly journey of the Priory Chaplain to the Hospital, were along the road by old " Riggrove- mylle," over which the traveller of to-day passes from one of these places to the other. A peaceful intercourse of the Mother Church with its dependent Chapel and Hospital probably continued for the long period of 280 years, when the parent was herself destroyed in 1536-9. The Valor Ecclesiasticus of Hen. VIII., already cited, shows that, at the moment of the dissolution of the Priory, the poor in the Hospital of St. Leonard were receiving from the Convent the fixed yearly alms of 6s. 8d. The helpless Lepers were now without their religious head. They had, however, during their spiritual connection with the Canons at Launceston, asserted some civil rights. Thus, in the account of the Stewards of the Borough of Dunheved for the year 1467-8, is the following entry [translation] : William Symons, one of the Lepers of St. Leonard, was ad- mitted into the Guild of the Blessed Mary Magdalene according to the ancient custom of the Borough [Dunheved], on payment of 6s. 8d., because that the Prior of St. Leonard and his brother Lepers of the same place cannot be rejected, nor can those brothers or any brother by ancient custom be refused admission, by the Mayor of the Borough aforesaid, during the time the brother was a burgess, of which custom the Mayor and Com- monalty of the Borough aforesaid and their predecessors have been seized and have enjoyed from a time beyond memory. William Chapelyn, a brother of the Lepers' House of St. Leonard, was admitted into the Guild on payment of 6s. 8d. William of Stoke, one of the Lepers of the House of St. Leonard, was admitted into the Guild on payment of 6s. 8d. Again, in 1478, John Northecote of St. Leonard entered as a burgess into the Guild of St. Mary Magdalene, and was sworn on payment of 6s. 8d.; and in 1492 Elinora Greston of the Com- monalty, a washerwoman at St. Leonards, was admitted into the