al relic of the old world, a more sequestered haven of rest,
than this row of lowly buildings, looking up to the great church
in front, and with its windows opening on to green turf bordered
with flowers in the rear, it could not enter into the heart of man
to imagine."[60]

[60] _Highways and Byways in Berkshire_.

We could spend endless time in visiting the old almshouses in many
parts of the country. There is the Ford's Hospital in Coventry,
erected in 1529, an extremely good specimen of late Gothic work,
another example of which is found in St. John's Hospital at Rye. The
Corsham Almshouses in Wiltshire, erected in 1663, are most picturesque
without, and contain some splendid woodwork within, including a fine
old reading-desk with carved seat in front. There is a large porch
with an immense coat-of-arms over the door. In the region of the
Cotswolds, where building-stone is plentiful, we find a noble set of
almshouses at Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire, a gabled structure
near the church with tall, graceful chimneys and mullioned windows,
having a raised causeway in front protected by a low wall. Ewelme, in
Oxfordshire, is a very attractive village with a row of cottages half
a mile long, which have before their doors a sparkling stream dammed
here and there into watercress beds. At the top of the street on a
steep knoll stand church and school and almshouses of the mellowest
fifteenth-century bricks, as beautiful and structurally sound as the
pious founders left them. These founders were the unhappy William de
la Pole, first Duke of Suffolk, and his good wife the Duchess Alice.
The Duke inherited Ewelme through his wife Alice Chaucer, a kinswoman
of the poet, and "for love of her and the commoditie of her landes
fell much to dwell in Oxfordshire," and in 1430-40 was busy building
a manor-place of "brick and Tymbre and set within a fayre mote," a
church, an almshouse, and a school. The manor-place, or "Palace," as
it was called, has disappeared, but the almshouse and school remain,
witnesses of the munificence of the founders. The poor Duke, favourite
minister of Henry VI, was exiled by the Yorkist faction, and beheaded
by the sailors on his way to banishment. Twenty-five years of
widowhood fell to the bereaved duchess, who finished her husband's
buildings, called the almshouses "God's House," and then reposed
beneath one of the finest monuments in England in the church hard by.
The almshouses at Audl