The English Hospital, 1070-1570

The first English hospitals appeared soon after the Norman Conquest. By the year 1300 they numbered over 500, caring for the sick at every level of society—from the gentry and clergy to pilgrims, travelers, beggars, and lepers. Excluded from towns but placed by main highways where they could gather alms, they had a complex relation with medieval society: cherished yet marginalized, self-contained yet also parasitic.

This book—the first general history of medieval and Tudor hospitals in eight...