Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Rahere
RAHERE (d. 1144), founder of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, was born in the reign of William the Conqueror. His name, which is probably of Frankish origin, occurs as that of a witness in several charters of the district on the eastern boundary of Brittany, and the fact that Rahere was a follower of Richard de Belmeis (d. 1128) [q. v.] makes it possible that he came from La Perche. He first appears as a frequenter of the dissolute court of William Rufus (Ord. Vit. pt. iii. bk. xc. p. 2; Liber Fundacionis, c. 2), and adopted the church as a career. His patron, Richard de Belmeis, became bishop of London in 1108, and the bishop's nephew, William, dean of St. Paul's in 1111, so that the occurrence of his name as a prebendary of St. Paul's, in the stall of Chamberleyneswode (Le Neve, ii. 374), shortly after 1115, is easily understood. He went a pilgrimage to Rome, of which the date is not mentioned, but which must have been shortly after 1120. In Rome he visited the places of martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul, and at the Three Fountains contracted malarial fever. In his convalescence he vowed that he would make a hospital ‘yn recreacion of poure men.’ It is related that in a subsequent vision the apostle Bartholomew appeared to him, desired the building of a church as well as the hospital, and indicated Smithfield as the site. He returned to London a canon regular of St. Austin, and explained his proposed foundation in Smithfield to the citizens of London. They pointed out that the site was contained within the king's market, and he then made application to the king, supported by the influence of Richard de Belmeis. Henry I gave him authority to execute his purpose, and bestowed on him the title of the desired possession, and in March 1123 he began to build the hospital of St. Bartholomew on its present site, and soon after a priory, of which the church in part remains, and is now known as St. Bartholomew the Great. The whole of Smithfield was then an open space. The whole site of the Charterhouse was included in the grant, and was the property of St. Bartholomew's Hospital long before the Carthusians settled there. In 1133 Rahere obtained from Henry I a charter of privileges (Cartæ antiquæ in Record Office), also confirming his original grant, and granting protection to all comers to the fair already held about the priory on the feast of St. Bartholomew. It is witnessed by Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, Roger, bishop of Sarum, by Stephen himself, by Aubrey de Vere, and others. Rahere made friends with Alfune, the builder of St. Giles, Cripplegate, and with his aid solicited gifts of food for the sick poor in the hospital. The first patient whose admission to the hospital is recorded in the ‘Liber Fundacionis’ is one Adwyne of ‘Dunwych.’ The hospital society consisted of a master and brethren, and, though it owed certain duties to the prior and canons, was independent, and always claimed to be of the first intention and foundation of Rahere. He continued to preside as its first master till 1137, in which year he retired to the priory, and was succeeded at the hospital as master by Hagno. A charter of 1137 is preserved in the hospital in which ‘Raherus sancti Bartholomei qui est in Smythfelde prior’ grants to Hagno the church of St. Sepulchre (original charter), of which the modern representative still stands opposite the end of Newgate Street. Rahere died on 20 Sept. 1144, and was buried on the north side of the altar of the church of the priory (St. Bartholomew the Great). His tomb, on which is a very ancient stone recumbent effigy of him, in the habit of an Augustinian canon, surmounted by a much later perpendicular canopy, remains in its original position, and has never been desecrated.
[The chief authority for the life of Rahere is the Liber Fundacionis Ecclesie Sancti Bartholomei Lond., a manuscript entitled Vespasian B ix. in the Cottonian collection in the British Museum. This manuscript was written about 1400; the English version which it contains at the end was composed at that period. The Latin text, transcribed in 1400, was originally composed about 1180. The English text has been printed with notes by the present writer in the St. Bartholomew's Hospital Reports, vol. xxi. 1885; Charter of Henry I, with notes and a translation by the present writer, 1891.]