When night fell these wayfarers would tax all available resources for their shelter and sustenance. At the manor-house they were very unwelcome; the lord had good cause to detest the idea of poor people going on pilgrimage. The monastery could only receive a small proportion. Many needed nursing as well as rest. And so a special form of lodging-house--half inn, half charitable institution had to be devised. The great Hospice at Jerusalem, which provided for fully a thousand visitors at one time, was regarded as the model, but the idea is much older. At Cebrero, in Northern Spain, there is a _Hospicio Real_, founded in 836 by King Alphonso II, for pilgrims crossing the pass of Piedrafita on the way from Segovia to St. James of Compostella. St. John’s Hospital at Winchester claims to have been originally founded by St. Brinstan about the year 930 for sick and poor pilgrims to St. Swithin.
For the Canterbury pilgrims there were many of these hospices. That at Rochester, a private benefaction, we have already mentioned. The _George Inn_, which still can show a fine Early English crypt, may also be described as a pilgrims’ inn, though, perhaps, like that at St. Albans, for the better class of people. There was a pilgrims’ resting house at Bapchild, near Sittingbourne. Ospringe, near Faversham, takes its name not from the spring which used to babble so pleasantly along the water lane, but from the great hospice founded by Henry III. By a similar “derangement of epitaphs” the hospice at Colnbrook has developed into the _Ostrich Inn_. A considerable portion of the hospice at Ospringe survives to this day in half-timbered buildings around the _Crown Inn_, and the chapel is said to form the foundations of the _Ship Inn_ on the opposite side of the road. It is more likely that this inn stands on the site of the separate establishment provided for lepers. This hospice must have been of great extent and provided accommodation for rich and poor alike. A master and three regular brethren of the Order of the Holy Cross were to superintend the work of hospitality and nursing. Owing to an outbreak of the plague in the reign of Edward IV the brethren forsook the place in a panic and died without taking care to choose their successors. The property escheated to the Crown; hence the presence of the _Crown Inn_.