ll" can still be seen. The charity survives to
some extent in six cottages in Water Lane, built in 1788, wherein are
housed four men and four women.

In Symond's Street stands the picturesque "Christes Hospital", founded in
1586 by James Symonds. It is generally called the "Bluecoat" Hospital,
from the distinctive dress worn by the inmates. A scholastic institution
was attached to this charity for the education of four poor boys, chosen
by the mayor and corporation, who also elected their teacher. The latter
was not to be, in the terms of the founder, either a "Scotchman, an
Irishman, a Welshman, a foreigner, or a North-countryman", lest their
pronunciation of the English language should suffer.

From among the fertile meadows bordering the banks of the Itchen to the
south of Winchester rises the stately grey pile of St. Cross, standing
where it has stood for over seven and a half centuries, a witness alike
to the munificence of its founders, de Blois and Beaufort, and to the
skill of the mediaeval builders.

A good road leads from the city to the pleasing suburb in which the
hospital is situated, though a far pleasanter way is by one of the field
paths through the meadows.

Henry de Blois became bishop when only twenty-eight years old, and in
1136 he founded the hospital for the entire support of "thirteen poor
men, feeble and so reduced in strength that they can hardly or with
difficulty support themselves without another's aid"; and they were to
be supplied with "garments and beds suitable to their infirmities, good
wheate bread daily of the weight of 5 marks, and three dishes at dinner
and one at supper, suitable to the day, and drink of good stuff".

Besides this, he provided for a hundred poor men to be supplied daily
with dinner. Bishop Toclyve, de Blois's successor in the see, added to
the charity the feeding of yet another hundred poor men daily; and it
has been said, on somewhat slight evidence, that the poorer scholars of
Winchester College dined without fee in the "Hundred Men's Hall".

In 1137 the management of the institution was given over to the Knights
of St. John of Jerusalem; the cross still worn as a badge by the
Brethren is a link with the ancient Order, being the cross _potent_, or
Jerusalem cross, which was an insignia of the Kingdom of Jerusalem
established by the Crusaders.

[Illustration: ST. CROSS FROM THE MEADOWS]

Shortly after the death of de Blois a dispute arose between the
Hospi