John Hailes, bellman

From the Bench Book, 1571

[In the margin] John hailes appointed to be bell man. & the annuitie he haithe of the hospitall to Sease.
Item the day and yeare abovesaid the said maior & aldermen did give and bestowe the office of the Bell man to John Hailes he to enter to yt at michelmas next. And that from thensfourthe the xls whiche he haithe yerely of benevolence paied him by the maister of the Hospitall shall be paied him no more for that the said office is thought to be a competent Lyvinge for him. (Transcription by Helen Good.)

John Hailes is the first named inmate of the Charterhouse in the records - perhaps.  The 1571 Bench Book is the first to mention the hospital at all, and doesn't call it the Charterhouse, probably because at that stage, only 32 years after the dissolution of the priory, the term was not routinely applied to the hospital.  We can be confident, however, that it's Michael de la Pole's foundation which is referred to.  The only rival at this time, the Trinity House almshouse, was not under the control of the Mayor and Aldermen.

This short paragraph presents us with several unanswered questions.  John Hailes has an annuity from the hospital; can we be sure that he is an inmate?  There was no provision in the founding document to pay an allowance to anyone who didn't have a room in the hospital, so we must assume that he is.  And that allowance was 40 shillings a year.  Presumably he had been awarded his place because he qualified as "aged poor".  Yet here he is being given a job which carried pay of at least 40s.  Did the withdrawal of his allowance also mean that he lost his room in the hospital?
What was a bellman?  (The clerk wrote the term, twice, as two words rather than one, but that seems irrelevant.)  It was unlikely to have been simply the task of ringing a bell to mark the time at the hospital for services.  That would not have carried a salary as large as the inmates' allowances, and it probably would not have required the endorsement of the Mayor and Aldermen.  There are two possibilities in this period.  A "bellman" could be either a town crier or a night watchman.  The second seems more likely.  As with all these questions we can't be sure, but for centuries the job of patrolling the streets of a town at night was given to elderly men.  In the days before police forces the watchmen would carry a bell (and later a whistle) to alert householders to trouble.  Was this John Hailes' new job?
Despite the questions, John Hailes has the honour of being the earliest named beneficiary of Michael de la Pole's foundation.