entreaty to the King and the great courtiers; staring
wild-eyed at the early July sunlight beyond the hospital chimneys, and
wondering whether he should see another Sunday dawn. It was his last; on
the Wednesday morning his head was hacked from his shoulders.

Abbot's Hospital has pleasanter memories. Foremost must be the memory of
its founder, Guildford's greatest citizen, the stern, kindly old
Archbishop Abbot, son of a poor clothworker of the town, scholar of
Balliol College, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, and predecessor
to Laud in the See of Canterbury. It was a great career, and, according
to an old family story, it had a curious beginning. Aubrey gives this
version:--

"His mother, when she was with child of him, dreamt, that if she
should eat a _Jack_ or _Pike_, her son in her womb would be a great
man, upon this she was indefatigable to satisfy her longing, as well
as her dream: she first enquired out for the fish; but accidentally
taking up some of the river water (that runs close by the house) in
a pail, she took up the much desired banquet, dress'd it, and
devour'd it almost all: This odd affair made no small noise in the
neighbourhood, and the curiosity of it made several people of
quality offer themselves to be sponsors at the baptismal fount when
she was delivered; this their poverty accepted joyfully, and three
were chosen, who maintained him at school, and at the university
afterwards."

[Illustration: _Abbot's Hospital, Guildford._]

The great archbishop's days ended in gloom. He was shooting deer in Lord
Zouch's park at Bramshill, and by an unlucky accident killed a keeper,
one Peter Hawkins. Kingsley has pictured the scene:--

"I went the other day" (he writes in a letter from Eversley) "to
Bramshill Park, the home of the _seigneur de pays_ here, Sir John
Cope. And there I saw the very tree where an ancestor of mine,
Archbishop Abbot, in James the First's time, shot the keeper by
accident! I sat under the tree, and it all seemed to me like a
present reality. I could fancy the noble old man, very different
then from his picture as it hangs in our dining room at Chelsea. I
could fancy the deer sweeping by, and the rattle of the cross-bow,
and the white splinters sparkling off the fated tree as the bolt
glanced and turned--and then the death shriek, and the stagger, and
the heavy fall of the sturdy f