betwixt a fantasy and a
belief, that the possession of former Church-property has drawn a curse
along with it, not only among the posterity of those to whom it was
originally granted, but wherever it has subsequently been transferred,
even if honestly bought and paid for. There are families, now inhabiting
some of the beautiful old abbeys, who appear to indulge a species of
pride in recording the strange deaths and ugly shapes of misfortune that
have occurred among their predecessors, and may be supposed likely to
dog their own pathway down the ages of futurity. Whether Sir Nicholas
Lestrange, in the beef-eating days of Old Harry and Elizabeth, was a
nervous man, and subject to apprehensions of this kind, I cannot tell;
but it is certain that he speedily rid himself of the spoils of the
Church, and that, within twenty years afterwards, the edifice became the
property of the famous Dudley, Earl of Leicester, brother of the Earl of
Warwick. He devoted the ancient religious precinct to a charitable use,
endowing it with an ample revenue, and making it the perpetual home of
twelve poor, honest, and war-broken soldiers, mostly his own retainers,
and natives either of Warwickshire or Gloucestershire. These veterans,
or others wonderfully like them, still occupy their monkish dormitories
and haunt the time-darkened corridors and galleries of the hospital,
leading a life of old-fashioned comfort, wearing the old-fashioned
cloaks, and burnishing the identical silver badges which the Earl of
Leicester gave to the original twelve. He is said to have been a bad man
in his day; but he has succeeded in prolonging one good deed into what
was to him a distant future.

On the projecting story, over the arched entrance, there is the date,
1571, and several coats-of-arms, either the Earl's or those of his
kindred, and immediately above the door-way a stone sculpture of the
Bear and Ragged Staff.

Passing through the arch, we find ourselves in a quadrangle, or
inclosed court, such as always formed the central part of a great
family-residence in Queen Elizabeth's time, and earlier. There can
hardly be a more perfect specimen of such an establishment than
Leicester's Hospital. The quadrangle is a sort of sky-roofed hall, to
which there is convenient access from all parts of the house. The four
inner fronts, with their high, steep roofs and sharp gables, look into
it from antique windows, and through open corridors and galleries along
the s