heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

MORTIMER. 343
charity, " made," says Stowe, " a fruitful and godly exhortation to the rich
"to be merciful to the poor." The young King was touched, sent for
the preacher, and a long interview took place between them, alone, in
the great gallery of the palace of Westminster; the result of which
was an autograph letter from the King himself to Sir Richard Dobbes,
the Lord Mayor, urging the special claims of the poor in London. This
Ridley the same day delivered. The day following his Worship invited the
bishop, two aldermen, and six commoners, to discuss the same. At this I
suppose I may say first of the many charity dinners which have since
taken place a report to the King was drawn up, upon which Edward
acted at once, confirming his father's grant of the old Grey Friars monastery,
endowing it with lands and tenements which had belonged to the
Savoy, to the yearly value of ^450, and other lands to the yearly value
of 4,000 marks, exclaiming, as he signed his name, with his usual pious
fervour: "Lord, I yield Thee most hearty thanks that Thou hast given
name." In a
"me life thus long to finish this work to the glory of Thy
month from that time the King was dead.
Much of the building was demolished to adapt the old monastery
to its new purpose and in six months'
; time, so energetically did the
Corporation carry out the late King's benevolent wish, 340 boys were
admitted into "Christ's Hospital."
In 1545 Sir Martin Bowes, Lord Mayor of London (I hope not from
Yorkshire), basely and stupidly sold the monuments and tombs for 50,
and in 1660 the great fire completed the utter destruction of the whole
fabric. In 1673 the school was rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren, Charles II.
founding an additional mathematical school. And for more than 200 years
the good work has gone on, an inestimable blessing from generation to
generation to 'poor parents in training their children for the battle of life.
But we live in days of change. The quaint dress of the time of
Edward VI., hitherto worn by the boys, is passing, or has already passed
away. New and more commodious premises are to be found elsewhere ;
the present buildings are to be demolished, and the tide of mammon, pure
and unadulterated, is to sweep over a spot for so many centuries set
apart for devotion or intellectual culture.
The place where queens were laid at the close of life, and where
Camden, the great antiquary-bishop
; Bishops Stillingfleet and Middleton ;
Joshua Barnes, the Greek scholar ; Markland, the critic and scholar ;
Richardson, the novelist; Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "logician, metaphysician,
bard ;
"
Mitchell, the translator of Aristophanes ; Leigh Hunt ;
William Henry Neale, master of Beverley School ; James Schofield, the
Regius Professor of Greek ;
a host of other distinguished men ;
and last,
not least, Charles Lamb, with his "pensive, brown, handsome, kindly