St. Anthony's Hospital, St Benet Fink

[1] The hospital of St. Anthony when mentioned later was certainly in the now defunct parish of St. Benet Fink (an abbreviation of "St Benedict Finch"), near today's Threadneedle Street.

However, it is unlikely a synagogue had ever occupied a site in the parish of St. Benet Fink, as such Jewish places of worship were confined to the Jewry district of the City, some distance away to the east.

The brothers of St. Anthony of Vienne established a cell before 1254 on some land given to them by King Henry III, in a place previously occupied by a Jewish synagogue.

The hospital appears to have been funded by ad hoc donations of alms, not by an endowment, as in 1291 the whole property within the parish of St. Benet Fink was not worth more than the small sum of 8 shillings per annum.

Judgement was given against the brothers in August, 1311, in the Court of Arches, when the chapel was judged to be prejudicial to the Bishop and to the parish church of St. Benet Fink, and was to be reduced to the form of a private house within eight days on pain of greater excommunication.

Macclesfield had in fact misappropriated the Hospital's funds by disposing of much of its property and by the granting of pensions to his children, and other persons, and in 1424 the pope ordered the bishop of Winchester to annul such alienations as should be found unlawful.

In 1442 King Henry VI granted to the Hospital the manor of Pennington with pensions in Milburn, Tunworth, Charlton, and Up-Wimborne, Hampshire, in order to maintain five scholars at Oxford University, who were first to study grammar at his royal foundation of Eton College.

[5] Largely due to financing by Sir John Tate, an Alderman of the City of London, the church was rebuilt in 1499 on the old now enlarged site.

At the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries the Hospital was despoiled, not as was usual by the crown, but by a prebendary of Windsor named Johnson, who gave each almsman in compensation for the loss of his room a weekly pension of 1 shilling.

And in The World of Wonders is the following epigram upon the subject: Walter Thornbury in his Old and New London (1872), wrote as follows:[7] The following served as masters of St Anthony's Hospital:[10]