Margaret. The string-course between the first and second stages is formed of the branch of a vine, bearing leaves and fruit. Two portcullises and two roses are set among the foliage. Below the string-course is a band of daisies, or marguerites, in allusion to the name of the foundress. These bands project outwards in the centre of the façade and form a bracket for the niche containing the statue of S. John. This statue was set up in 1662 probably to replace an older one destroyed in the Civil War. Below the bracket the hood-mould of the arch terminates in a bold finial. The shield beneath the finial bears the arms of France and England quarterly, crowned, and supported by the antelopes of Beaufort. Beneath the shield and immediately above the keystone of the arch is a rose. To the right of the central device is a portcullis, to the left a rose, both crowned. The crown of the former has the points composed of bunches of daisies, and the whole ground of the splendid space is powdered over with daisies and other flowers.]

Let us turn now to the second and perhaps greater Lady Margaret Foundation of S. John's College.

Three years after Henry VI.'s incompleted foundation of God's House had been enriched by a fair portion of the Lady Margaret's lands and opened as Christ's College, the Oxford friends of the Countess petitioned her for help in the endowment of a college in that University. For a time it seemed as if Christ's Church was to have the Lady Margaret and not Cardinal Wolsey as its founder. But Bishop Fisher again successfully pleaded the cause of his own University, and the royal licence to refound the corrupt monastic Hospital of S. John as a great and wealthy college was obtained in 1508.

Of the Hospital of the Brethren of S. John the Evangelist, which was founded in the year 1135, we have already spoken in the chapter on Peterhouse. It owed its origin to an opulent Cambridge burgess, Henry Frost, and was placed under the direction of a small community of Augustinian Canons, an Order whose rule very closely resembled that of a monastery,

their duties consisting mainly in the performance of religious services, and in caring for the poor and infirm. The patronage which the little community received would seem to show that, during its earlier history at least, the Brethren of S. John had faithfully discharged their duties. Several of the early Bishops of Ely took the Hospital under their direct patronage. Bishop Eustace, a prelate who played a foremost part in Stephen's reign, appropriated to it the livings of Horningsea and of S. Peter's Church in Cambridge, now known as Little S. Mary's. Bishop Hugh de Balsham, as we have seen in our account of his foundation of Peterhouse, endeavoured to utilise the Hospital for the accommodation of the many students who in his time were flocking to the University in quest of knowledge, and to that end endowed the Hospital with additional revenues. After the failure of that scheme and the successful foundation of Peterhouse, Bishop Simon Montagu came to the help of the little house, and decreed, that in compensation for the loss of S. Peter's Church, the Master and Fellows of Peterhouse should pay to the Brethren of S. John a sum of twenty shillings annually, a payment which has regularly been made down to the present day. The Hospital continued to grow in wealth and importance down to the time of its "decay and fall" in Henry VII.'s reign. The last twelve years of the fifteenth century, under the misrule of its then Master, William Tomlyn, saw its estates mortgaged or let on long leases, its discipline lax and scandalous, its furniture, and even sacred vessels, sold. At the beginning of the sixteenth century it had fallen into poverty and decay, and the number of its brethren had dwindled to two. Its condition is described in words identical with those applied to the Priory of S. Rhadegund.1 The words,

1 It might almost be supposed that the officials who drew royal charters kept a "model form " to meet the case of a

as given in the charter of S. John's College, are these:

"The House or Priory of the Brethren of S. John the Evangelist, its lands, tenements, rents, possessions, buildings, as well as its effects, furniture, jewels and other ornaments in the Church, conferred upon the said house or priory in former times, have now been so grievously dilapidated, destroyed, wasted, alienated, diminished and made way with, by the carelessness, prodigality improvidence and dissolute conduct of the Prior, Master and brethren of the aforesaid House or Priory; and the brethren themselves have been reduced to such want and poverty that they are unable to perform Divine Service, or their accustomed duties whether of religion, mercy or hospitality, according to the original ordinance of their founders, or even to maintain themselves by reason of their poverty and want of means of support; inasmuch as for a long while two brethren only have been maintained in the aforesaid House, and these are in the habit of straying abroad in all directions beyond the precincts of the said religious House, of the grave displeasure of Almighty God, the discredit of their order, and the scandal of their Church."

The legal formalities necessary for the suppression of the Hospital were so tedious, that it was not "utterly extinguished," as Baker, the historian of S. John's, called its dissolution, until January 1510, when it fell," a lasting monument to all future ages and to all charitable and religious foundations not to neglect the rules or abuse the institutions of their founders, lest they fall under the same fate." Meanwhile, before these difficulties could be entirely overcome, King Henry VII. died, and within little more than two months after, the Lady Margaret herself was laid to rest by the side of her royal son in Westminster Abbey. Erasmus composed her epitaph. Skelton sang her elegy. Torregiano,1 the Florentine sculptor, immortalised her features in that monumental suppressed religious house, altering the name and place to fit the occasion. 1 Cf. Frontispiece.