City magnates who desired to build and endow hospitals for the aged nearly always showed their confidence in and affection for the Livery Companies to which they belonged by placing in their care these charitable foundations.  Thus Sir Richard Whittington, of famous memory, bequeathed to the Mercers’ Company all his houses and tenements in London, which were to be sold and the proceeds distributed in various charitable works.  With this sum they founded a College of Priests, called Whittington College, which was suppressed at the Reformation, and the almshouses adjoining the old church of St. Michael Paternoster, for thirteen poor folk, of whom one should be principal or tutor.  The Great Fire destroyed the buildings; they were rebuilt on the same site, but in 1835 they were fallen into decay, and the company re-erected them at Islington, where you will find Whittington College, providing accommodation for twenty-eight poor women.  Besides this the Mercers have charge of Lady Mico’s Almshouses at Stepney, founded in 1692 and rebuilt in 1857, and the Trinity Hospital at Greenwich, founded in 1615 by Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton.  This earl was of a very charitable disposition, and founded other hospitals at Castle Rising in Norfolk and Clun in Shropshire.  The Mercers continue to manage the property and have built a new hospital at Shottisham, besides making grants to the others created by the founder.  It is often the custom of the companies to expend out of their private income far more than they receive from the funds of the charities which they administer.

[Illustration:  Inmate of the Trinity Bede House at Castle Rising, Norfolk]

The Grocers’ Company have almshouses and a Free Grammar School at Oundle in Northamptonshire, founded by Sir William Laxton in 1556, upon which they have expended vast sums of money.  The Drapers administer the Mile End Almshouses and school founded in 1728 by Francis Bancroft, Sir John Jolles’s almshouses at Tottenham, founded in 1618, and very many others.  They have two hundred in the neighbourhood of London alone, and many others in different parts of the country.  Near where I am writing is Lucas’s Hospital at Wokingham, founded by Henry Lucas in 1663, which he placed in the charge of the company.  It is a beautiful Carolian house with a central portion and two wings, graceful and pleasing in every detail.  The chapel is situated in one wing and the master’s house in the other, and there are sets of rooms for twelve poor men chosen from the parishes in the neighbourhood.  The Fishmongers have the management of three important hospitals.  At Bray, in Berkshire, famous for its notable vicar, there stands the ancient Jesus Hospital, founded in 1616 under the will of William Goddard, who directed that there should be built rooms with chimneys in the said hospital, fit and convenient for forty poor people to dwell and inhabit it, and that there should be one chapel or place convenient to