The sweet old place, the
peacefullest spot in the whole city, with its long low library, its
Bedesmen's rooms, and its quiet reading room, is gone. You might just
as well destroy Trinity College, Cambridge, and then stick up a modern
wing to Somerset House, and call that Trinity. In the same way St.
Katherine's by the Tower was destroyed sixty years ago.
Let me repeat that the Hospital suffered four changes.
First, it was founded by Queen Matilda, for the repose of her
children's souls. Next, it was dissolved and again founded, and
subsequently endowed as a Religious House with chantries, certain
definite duties of masses for the dead, certain charitable trusts, and
other functions. Thirdly, when the Mass ceased to be said it was
secularized completely. Service was held in the church, but the
Hospital became a perfectly secular charity, supporting a few
almspeople with niggard hand, and a Master in great splendour.
Fourthly, it was again treated as a semi-ecclesiastical foundation,
for reasons which do not appear. At the same time, while its charities
were enlarged, no duties were assigned to the Brothers, who seem to
have been considered as Fellows, forming the Society, and, therefore,
like the Fellows at Oxford and Cambridge, obliged to be in Holy
Orders.
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