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East window dates from the 14th century
East window reglazed in 1897
New organ 1908
Wooden porch to chapel built in 1913
Had been an old aisle with a Lady Chapel at the east portion of
the north side.
May have been founded by Robert de Beaumont, first Earl of Leicester,
who came to England with William the Conqueror, and fought in the
Battle of Hastings. The surrounding site was where a hospital was
founded by Robert de Beaumont’s son, Robert ‘Le Bossu’,
or ‘hunchback’. Robert Ie Bossu tried to mediate in
the dispute between Henry II and Becket.
Robert Ie Bossu founded the hospital, to offer relief for the poor
and to entertain travellers. It was therefore not a hospital in
the modern sense. He also founded a chapel and cemetery to be attached.
His son Robert Ie Blanchmain, the whitehanded, endowed it with land.
While returning from pilgrimage to the Holy Land Robert Ie Blanchmain
died in Rumania. His heart was buried in Brackley. John Clarke believes
it was this that was discovered by workmen in 1836, while digging
a hole in the gallery of the chapel. It is Wodham who first mentions
the discovery of a leaden box being discovered and containing a
piece of old leather that was thrown away. Wodham believed it to
be the heart of Robert de Beaumont.
The first Master of the Hospital was called Soloman and was a Brackley
man. The hospital was effectively a large alms house occupied by
elderly or infirm inmates. It was presided over by the Master and
five or six brethren, who followed but did not belong to the Augustinian
order.
The Hospital of St John became the Hospital of St John and St James
in 1321. A further chapel of St Leonard was built about half a mile
to the north for lepers.
In the fourteenth century, the hospital seemed to contain mainly
old soldiers and ‘minor royal servants’.
Waynflete acquired the hospital in 1484 from Francis Lord Lovell,
notorious associate of Richard III. He did so as a retreat in times
of plague for Magdalen College in Oxford.
John Clarke puts forward the theory that in 1548 there were fears
that the chapel and its lands would be acquired by the crown. The
chapel was primarily being used as a chantry at this time and these
were being confiscated as a result of the reformation. So in order
to secure it for Magdalen College a school was started here.
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