In the year (Edward III.) a terrible pestilence devastated London. The dirt and crowding of the old mediaeval cities made them at all times nurseries of infectious disease, and when a great epidemic did come it mowed down thousands. The plague of was so inappeasable that it is said grave-diggers could hardly be found to bury the dead, and many bodies were carelessly thrown into mere pits dug in the open fields.

Ralph , Bishop of London, shocked at these unsanctified interments, in his zeal to amend the evil consecrated acres of waste ground, called

No Man's Land,

Stow, in his mentions a stone cross in this cemetery, recording the burial there during the pestilence of persons. In , Michael de Northburgh, Bishop Stratford's successor, died, bequeathing the sum of , for founding and building a Carthusian monastery at Pardon

The House of the Salutation of the Mother of God.

The order of Carthusians, we may here remind our readers, was founded by Bruno, a priest in the church of St. Cunibert, at Cologne, and Canon of Rheims, in Champagne, in (William the Conqueror). Bruno, grieved at the sins of Cologne, withdrew with disciples to the Chartreuse, a desert solitude among the mountains of Dauphine. A miracle hastened the retirement of Bruno. of his friends, supposed to be of unblemished life,. rose from his bier, and exclaimed,

I am arraigned at the bar of God's justice. My sentence is just now passed. I am condemned by the just judgment of God.

Not content,

Carthusian,

with the rigorous rule of St. Benedict, the founder imposed upon the order precepts so severe as to be almost intolerable, and a discipline so harsh, that it was long before the female sex could be induced to subject themselves to such repugnant laws.

One

of their peculiarities was, that they did not live in cells, but each monk had a separate house, in which were

two

chambers, a closet, refectory, and garden. None went abroad but the prior and procurator, on the necessary affairs of the house. They were compelled to fast, at least

one

day in a week, on bread, water, and salt; they never ate flesh, at the peril of their lives, nor even fish, unless it was given them; they slept on a piece of cork, with a single blanket to cover them; they rose at midnight to sing their matins, and never spoke to

one

another except on festivals and chapter days. On holy days they ate together at the common refectory, and were strictly charged to keep their eyes on the meat, their hands upon the table, their attention on the reader, and their hearts fixed upon God. Their laws professed to limit the quantity of land they should possess, in order to prevent the luxury and wealth so prevalent among the other orders. Their clothing consisted of

two

hair-cloths,

two

cowls,

two

pair of hose, and a cloak, all, of the coarsest manufacture, contrived so as almost to disfigure their persons.. Their rigorous laws seem to have prevented the increase of their order, for in the height of their prosperity they could not boast of more than

172

houses, of which

five

only were of nuns.

The London Charterhouse was the house of the order founded in England, the being at Witham, in Somersetshire, where Hugh, the holy Bishop of Lincoln, was the prior. The grants to the new London monastery of the Carthusians were no doubt numerous, as we find, among others enumerated in the given by Felicia de Thymelby, in the reign of Richard II., for the endowment of a monk

to pray and celebrate the divine offices for the souls of Thomas Aubrey and the aforesaid Felicia, his wife;

the soul of Brother William Hulles, the Prior of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, might the sooner be conveyed, with God's providence, into Abraham's bosom.

About the latter part of the

fifteenth

century,

we find our convent the home of a future Lord Chancellor of England; for we read that Sir Thomas More

gave himself to devotion and prayer, in the Charterhouse of London, religiously living there without vow about four years.

The Charterhouse had flourished for nearly centuries in prosperity, its brethren retaining a good character for severe discipline and holy life, when the storm of the dissolution broke upon them. of Cromwell's cruel commissioners, visited the Charterhouse, and their merciless eyes soon found cause of complaint. In John Houghton, the prior, and Humfry Midylmore, procurator, after being sent to the Tower for a month, were released on signing a certificate of conditional conformity. The majority of the brethren refused to subscribe to Henry's supremacy. The exertions, however, of the Confessor to the Brigettine Convent, at Sion House, gradually led the refractory monks to subscribe to the king's supremacy. In

As they were proceeding from the Tower to execution, Sir Thomas More, who was then confined for a similar offence, chanced to espy them from the window of his dungeon; and, as

one

longing in that journey to have accompanied them, said unto his daughter, then standing there beside him,

Lo, dost thou not see, Megg, that these blessed fathers be now as cheerfully going to their deaths as bridegrooms to their marriage?

Not long after he followed their steps on his way to the scaffold.

The heads were exposed on , and the fragments of Prior Houghton's body were barbarously spiked over the principal gate of Charterhouse. The prior's fate, however, only roused the fanatical zeal of the brotherhood, and the very next month more monks were condemned and executed. From the letter of Fylott, of the king's assistant commissioners, we learn that though the Charterhouse monks claimed to be solitary, there had been found no less than keys to the cloister doors, and to the buttery. The monks plainly told the commissioners that they would listen to no preacher who denounced images and blasphemed saints; and that they would read their Doctors, and go no further.

The monks had not long to rest. In the Charterhouse brothers refused, to renounce the Pope by oath, or acknowledge Henry as supreme head on earth of the English Church. Some of the order who had previously yielded now refused to obey, and were at once hurried to prison. The monastery was then dissolved, and Prior Trafford at once resigned. The majority of the monks consented to the surrender, the prior receiving an annual pension of , and the monks each. out of brothers, cruelly handled in Newgate, were literally starved to death. The survivor, after years' misery, was executed in .

According to Dugdale,

Carthusian,

the annual revenues of this house amounted at the dissolution to £ 642 0s. 4d., whilst the united revenues of the nine houses of Carthusians in England were valued at the sum of £ 2,947 15s. 4 1/4d.

Before the final departure of the convent from London, sundry miracles are said to have been wrought, and revelations to have been made, urging the brothers to abide in the faith, and to bear witness of the truth of the Christian religion at the expense of their lives. Unearthly lights were seen shining on their church. At the burial of one of their saints, when all things appeared mournful and solemn, a sudden flash of heavenly flame kindled all the lamps of their church, which were only lighted on great days; and a deceased father of the convent twice visited a living monk who had attended him in his last illness. The narrative of this last pseudo-miracle is given in the following letter, written by the favoured monk : item. The same day, at five of the clock at afternoon, I being in contemplation in our entry, in our cell, suddenly he appeared unto me in a monk's habit, and said to me, Why do ye not follow our father? and I said, Wherefore? He said, For he is entered in heaven, next unto angels; and I said, Where be all our other fathers, which died as well? he answered and said, They be well, but not so well as he? And then I said to him, Father, how do you? And he answered and said, Well enough. And I said, Father, shall I pray for you? And he said, I am well enough, but prayer, both from you and others, doeth good; and so suddenly vanished away. item. Upon Saturday next after, at five of the clock in the morning, in the same place, in our entry, he appeared to me again, with a large white beard, and a white staff in his hand, lifting it up, whereupon I was afraid; and then, leaning upon his staff, said to me, I am sorry that I lived not till I had been a martyr. And I said, I think that he, as well as ye, was a martyr. And he said, Nay, Fox, my lord of Rochester, and our father, was next unto angels n heaven. And then I said, Father, what else? And then he answered and said, The angels of peace did lament and mourn without measure ; and so vanished away.

The remnant of the order sought refuge in Bruges. Returning in , they were reinstated at Shene, near Richmond, by Cardinal Pole, but Elizabeth soon expelled them, and they fled to Nieuport, in Belgium, where they remained till the suppression of religious orders by Joseph II., in . of their chief treasures, an illuminated bible, given the Shene monastery by Henry V., was in existence in the Tuileries in .

The dissolution pressed heavily on the Charterhouse Priory, of which almost all that now remains is part of the south wall of the nave, incorporated in the present chapel. When the monasteries became lumber-rooms, stables, and heaps of mere history materials, Charterhouse was tossed (as Henry threw sops to his dogs) to John Brydges, yeoman, and Thomas Hale, groom of the king's

hales

But even he,

was not free from Henry's suspicion and distrust, as the following anecdote will show:--

One

morning, a messenger from the king arrived at Charterhouse, commanding the immediate presence of Sir Edward at court.

One

of North's servants, a groom of the bedchamber, who delivered the message, observed his master to tremble. Sir Edward made haste to the palace, taking with him this said servant, and was admitted to the king's presence. Henry, who was walking with great earnestness, regarded him with an angry look, which Sir Edward received with a very still and sober carriage. At last the king broke out in these words:

We are informed you have cheated us of certain lands in Middlesex.

Receiving a humble negative from Sir Edward, he replied,

How was it then? did we give those lands to you? To which Sir

Edward responded,

Yes, sire; your Majesty was pleased so to do.

The king, after some little pause, put on a milder countenance, and calling him to a cupboard, conferred privately with him for a long time; whereby the servant saw the king could not spare his master's service yet. From this period Sir Edward advanced still higher in the estimation of the king, and at his death received a legacy of

£ 300

, besides being included among the

sixteen

guardians appointed during the minority of his son, Edward VI. North was compelled to acknowledge Lady Jane Grey's right to the throne, but subsequently changed his opinions, and was

one

of the

first

to proclaim the Princess Mary queen. For his flexibility he was soon after reelected to the Privy Council, and elevated to the peerage,

17th February, 1554

, being then summoned to Parliament by the title of Baron North.

Sir Edward North conveyed Charterhouse to the Duke of Northumberland; but on the execution of the duke the house was granted again to Sir Edward North. In , on her journey from Hatfield to London, Queen Elizabeth was met at Highgate by the Lord Mayor and corporation, and conducted to Charterhouse, where she stayed many days. In Elizabeth made another visit to Lord North, and remained with him days. This visit is supposed to have crippled this nobleman, who lived in privacy the remainder of his days, but was, in compensation, appointed Lord Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely. Lord North died in ; and his son Roger sold Charterhouse in to the Duke of Norfolk (without Pardon Chapel and Whitewell Beach) for , and for a further eventually surrendered the rest of the estate.

Here the duke,

resided till the year

1569

, when he was committed to the Tower for being implicated in a conspiracy for the restoration of Mary Queen of Scots, and for engaging in a design of espousal between himself and fallen royalty. From the Tower he was released in the following year, and allowed to return to the Charterhouse; but he resumed his traitorous idea of marriage, and his papers and correspondence being discovered in concealment, some under the roof of his house, and others under the door-mat of his bedchamber, he was attainted of high treason, and again incarcerated in the Tower, on the

7th of September, 1571

. This unfortunate nobleman suffered on the scaffold in the year

1572

, when the Charterhouse, along with his other estates, escheated to the Crown. His son Philip, Earl of Arundel, was impeached in

1590

, for also favouring Mary, and died in prison in the year

1595

, most probably escaping by disease a more disgraceful and ignominious death by the hands of the executioner.

On the death of Mary Queen of Scots, that fair siren who had been so fatal to the House of Norfolk, Elizabeth generously returned the forfeited estates to the Norfolk family, Lord Thomas Howard, the duke's son, receiving Charterhouse. The Howards flourished better under King James, who remembered they had assisted his mother, and he visited Charterhouse for several days, knighted more than gentlemen there, and soon after made Lord Howard Earl of Suffolk. Of this earl, Charterhouse-or Howard House, as it was now called--was purchased by that remarkable man, Thomas Sutton, the founder of of London's greatest and most permanent charities.

Of noble and worthy parentage, this gentleman,

descended from one of the most ancient families of Lincolnshire, was born at Knaith, in that county, in the year 1531. His father was Edward Sutton, steward to the courts of the Corporation of Lincoln, son of Thomas Sutton, servant to Edward IV.; and his mother, Jane, daughter of Robert Stapleton, Esq., a branch of the noble family of the Stapletons of Yorkshire, one of whom was Sir Miles Stapylton, one of the first Knights of the Garter, and Sir Bryan Stapylton, of Carleton, tempore Richard II., also a Knight of the Garter: ancestors, as the learned antiquary, Herne, justly observes, not so low, that his descent should be a shame to his virtues; nor yet so great, but that his virtue might be an ornament to his birth. He was brought up for three years at Eton, under the tuition of Mr. Cox, afterwards Bishop of Ely, and two years in St. John's College, Cambridge. In 1553, however, he removed from Cambridge, without having taken a degree, and became a student of Lincoln's Inn. But here he did not remain long; his desire of travel increasing with his knowledge, and his principles (he being a member of the Anglican Church) compelling him to leave London, he determined to visit foreign parts. He accordingly departed for Spain, and having stayed there half a year, passed into Italy, France, and the Netherlands. He is said to have taken a part in the Italian wars, and was present at the sacking of Rome, under the Duke of Bourbon. He returned to England in the year 1561, and through a recommendation from the Duke of Norfolk, he became secretary to the Earl of Warwick, who, in consideration of trewe and faithful service to us done by our well-beloved servant, Thomas Sutton, appointed him Master of the Ordnance of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and granted him an annuity of £ 3 6s. 8d. for life. When Lord Westmoreland's rebellion broke out in the North, the Earl of Warwick created Mr. Sutton Master-General of the Ordnance in that quarter, a post which he himself The Charterhouse, From The Square. (From A View By Grey, Published In 1804.) had once held; and it appears that Mr. Sutton himself acted as a volunteer, and commanded a battery at the memorable siege of Edinburgh, when that city held out for the unfortunate Mary. After a blockade of five weeks, the castle surrendered on the 28th May, 1573. On his return from Scotland, Mr. Sutton obtained a lease of the manors of Gateshead and Wickham, near Newcastle. This was the source of his immense wealth, for having several rich veins of coal, which he worked with great advantage, he had become, in 1585, worth £ 50,000. The following year he left Newcastle for London, and assisted against the Spanish Armada, by fitting out a ship, named after himself, Sutton, which captured for him a Spanish vessel, worth £ 20,000.

He brought with him to London the reputation of being a moneyed man, insomuch that it was reported that his purse returned from the North fuller than Queen Elizabeth's Exchequer. He was resorted to by citizens, so that in process of time he became the banker of London, and was made a freeman, citizen, and girdler of the city.

Mr. Sutton, being now advanced in years, thought proper to retire from public life. He relinquished his patent of Master-General of the Ordnance, and on the 20th of June following he executed a will, in which he surrendered all his estates in Essex to the Lord Chief Justice, Sir John Popham, and others (with power of revocation), in trust, to found an hospital at Hallingbury Bouchers, in Essex, which place, as will be seen, he afterwards changed for London; and, as a proof of his trewe and faitheful heart borne to his dread sovereign, Queen Elizabeth, he bequeathed Her Majesty £ 2,000 in recompense of his oversights, careless dealinge, and fearfulness in her service, most humbly beseeching her to stand a good and gracious lady to his poor wife. He also instituted a great many scholarships at Magdalen and Jesus Colleges, Cambridge; his generous will, in fact, being one long schedule of benevolent legacies.

Among other curious bequests in the interminable will of this great philanthropist, are the following:-- to the fishermen of Ostend, and for mending the highways between and , &c.

Sutton, who by many is thought to have been the original of Ben Jonson's Volpone, the Fox, that

The following passage in a letter from Mr. Hall, of Waltham, afterwards the celebrated Bishop of Exeter, served to fix the old man's determination:

The very basest element yields gold. The savage Indian gets it, the servile apprentice works it, the very Midianitish camel may wear it; the miserable worldling admires it, the covetous Jew swallows it, the unthrifty ruffian spends it. What are all these the better for it? Only good use gives praise to earthly possessions. Hearing, therefore, you owe more to God, that He hath given you an heart to do good, a will to be as rich in good works as great in riches; to be a friend to this Mammon is to be an enemy to God; but to make friends with it is royal and Christian.

Whatever, therefore, men either shew or promise, happy is that man that may be his own auditor, supervisor, executor. As you love God and yourself, be not afraid of being happy too soon. I am not worthy to give so bold advice; let the wise man Syrach speak for me:-- Do good before thou die, and according to thine ability stretch out thine hand, and give. Defraud not thyself of thy good day, and let not the portion of thy good desires pass over thee. Shalt thou not leave thy travails to another, and thy labours to them that will divide thy heritage? Or, let a wiser than he speak, viz., Solomon :-- Say not, To-morrow I will give, if thou now have it; for thou knowest not what a day will bring forth. It hath been an old rule of liberality, He gives twice who gives quickly; whereas slow benefits argue uncheerfulness, and lose their worth. Who lingers his receipts is condemned as unthrifty. He who knoweth both, saith, It is better to give than to receive. If we are of the same spirit, why are we hasty in the worst, and slack in the better? Suffer you yourself, therefore, good sir, for God's sake, for the Gospel's sake, for the Church's sake, for your soul's sake, to be stirred up by these poor lines to a resolute and speedy performing of your worthy intentions. And take this as a loving invitation sent from heaven by an unworthy messenger. You cannot deliberate long of fit objects for your beneficence, except it be more for multitude than want; the streets, yea, the world is full. How doth Lazarus lie at every door!--How many sons of the prophets, in their meanly-provided colleges, may say, not Mors in ollâ, but Fames! How many churches may justly plead that which our Saviour bad his disciples, The Lord hath need!

This letter fixed the wandering atoms of the old man's intentions. He at once determined to found a hospital for the maintenance of aged men past work, and for the education of the children of poor parents. He bought Charterhouse of the Howards for , and petitioned King James and the Parliament for leave and licence to endow the present hospital in . This

triple good,

this masterpiece of Protestant English charity,

the greatest gift in England, either in Protestant or Catholic times, ever bestowed by any individual.

Letters patent for the hospital were issued in . Sutton himself was to be master; but

man proposes, and God disposes.

But what greediness, envy, and hatred often lurk under a mourner's cloak! The act of Mr. Thomas Baxter, the chief mourner, at his cousin's funeral, was, as heir-at-law, to claim the whole of the property, and to attempt to forcibly take possession of Charterhouse. The case was at once tried, Sir Francis Bacon, Mr. Gaulter, and Mr. Yelverton appearing for the plaintiff, and Mr. Hubbard, Attorney-General, Mr. Serjeant Hutton, and Mr. Coventry arguing for the hospital. It was then adjourned to the Exchequer Chamber, where it was solemnly argued by all the judges of the land, except the Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, who was indisposed; and, by Sir Edward Coke's exertions, a verdict was at last given for the defendants, the executors of Sutton. The rascally Baxter (although all impugners of the will were held by Sutton to forfeit their legacies) received the manor of Turback, in Lancashire, valued at a year, a rectory worth , and by will.

But the old man's money had still a greedy mouth open for it. Bacon, that wise but timid man, that mean courtier and false friend, was base enough to use all his eloquence and learning to fritter away, for alien purposes that would please and benefit the king, the money so nobly left. Hurt vanity also induced Bacon to make these exertions; his name not having been included in Sutton's list of governors. Bacon's subtle letter opening the question is a sad instance of perverted talent. It begins-

May it please your Majesty,--I find it a positive precept in the old law that there should be no sacrifice without salt; the moral whereof (besides the ceremony) may be, that God is not pleased with the body of a good intention, except it be seasoned with that spiritual wisdom and judgment as it be not easily subject to be corrupted and perverted; for salt, in the Scripture, is both a figure of wisdom and lasting. This cometh into my mind upon this act of Mr. Sutton, which seemeth to me as a sacrifice without salt; having the materials of a good intention, but not powdered with any such ordinances and institutions as may preserve the same from turning corrupt, or, at least from becoming unsavoury and of little use. For though the choice of the feoffees be of the best, yet neither can they always live; and the very nature of the work itself, in the vast and unfit proportion thereof, is apt to provoke a misemployment.

King James, though eager enough to lay his sprawling hands on the old man's money, which he had left to the poor of London, hardly dared to go as far as such a confiscation as Bacon had proposed; but he dropped a polite hint to the governors that he would accept , to repair the bridge of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and this they reluctantly gave.

In the officers of the hospital were appointed, and the Rev. Andrew Perue chosen as master. Sutton's tomb in the Charterhouse Chapel being now completed, the corpse was carried there by torchlight on the shoulders of his pensioners and re-interred, a funeral oration being pronounced over the grave.

Malcolm gives the following summary of the property bequeathed in Mr. Sutton's will :--He left in legacies, and nearly was found in his chest. His gold chain weighed ounces, and was valued at . His damask gown, faced with wrought velvet, and set with buttons, was appraised at ; his jewels at ; and his plate at The total expenses of his funeral amounted to , and his executors received, from the time of his decease to ,

At an assembly of governors in , among other resolutions passed, it was agreed to have an annual commemoration of the founder every , with solemn service, a sermon and

increase of commons,

the present physician, auditor, and receiver,

But the hospital had still another terrible danger to encounter. King James (who had no more notion of real liberty than an African king), at the instigation of his infamous favourite, Buckingham, demanded the revenues of Charterhouse to pay his army; but Sir Edward Coke, who had saved the charity before, stepped to the front, and boldly repelled the king's aggression. The hospital at last reared its head serene as a harbour for poverty, an asylum for the vanquished in life's struggle. As an old writer beautifully says,

The imitation of things that be evil doth for the most part exceed the example, but the imitation of good things doth most commonly come far short of the precedent; but this work of charity hath exceeded any foundation that ever was in the Christian world. Nay, the eye of time itself did never see the like. The foundation of this hospital is

opus sine exemplo

.

The governors of Charterhouse are in number, inclusive of the master. The Queen and the archbishops are always in the list. The master was entitled to fine any poor brother or for any misdemeanour. He was to accept no preferment in church or commonwealth which would draw him from his care of the hospital. The physician was to receive a year, and not to exceed a year for physic bills. The poor brethren were not to exceed score in number, and were required to be either poor gentlemen, old soldiers, merchants decayed by piracy or shipwreck, or household servants of the king or queen.

Herne, in his a small vo volume published in , shows that the world had not been kind to the founder's memory. Herne, in his preface, says:

Sir Richard Baker, Dr. Heylin, Mr. Heylin, and Mr. Fuller say little of him, and that little very full of mistakes; for they call him Richard Sutton, and affirm he lived a bachelor, and so by his single life had an opportunity to lay up a heap of money, whereas his dear wife is with much honour and respect mentioned in his will. Others give him bad words, say he was born of obscure and mean parents, and married as inconsiderable a wife, and died without an heir; but then, to give some reason for his wealth (having no time nor desire to inquire into the means of his growing rich), to cut short the business, they resolve all into a romantic adventure. They say it was all got at a lump by an accidental shipwreck, which the kind waves drove to shore, and laid at his feet, whilst the fortunate Sutton was walking pensively upon the barren sands. They report that in the hulk coals were found, and under them an inestimable treasure, a great heap of fairy wealth. This I fancy may go for the fable, and his farming the coal-mines for the moral.

Percival Burrell, the preacher of Sutton's funeral sermon thus describes the character of the generous man:--

He was,

a great and good builder, not so much for his owne private as for the publicke. His treasures were not lavished in raysing a towre to his own name, or erecting stately pallaces for his owne pompe and pleasure, but the sustaining of living temples, the endowing of colledges, the enriching of corporations, the building causewayes, and repairing of high-wayes. Above all, the foundation of King James his Hospitall, at his sole and proper charge, were the happy monuments of his architecture. Surely this was to be a Megarensis in the best sense--that is, to build for ever. He did fulfill the letter of the apostle, in building gold, silver, and precious stones; for he commanded plate and jewels to bee sold and converted into money, for the expediting of our hospitall.

I shall not mention thousands conferred upon friends and servants, but these legacies ensuing merit a lasting memory:--In the renowned University of Camb., to Jesus Colledge, 500 markes; to Magdalen, 500 pound; for the redemption of prisoners in London, 200 pound; for the encouragement of merchants, 1,000, to bee lent gratis unto ten beginners. Nor was his charity confined within these seas, but that western Troy, stout Ostend, shall receive 100 pound, for the relief of the poore, from his fountain. In all these his piety was very laudable; for in many of these acts of bounty, his prime, repose was in the conscionable integrity of the priest, in those places where he sowed his benefits. Certes, this was to build as high as heaven.