now cut up into three
parts, the choir being turned into lodgings for poor women, part of the
nave and aisles into the same for poor men, while the intermediate
portion is used for divine services. A charity that owns an annual
income of 10,000 pounds, might, we think, find some better arrangements
possible to be made. Kirkpatrick, the celebrated antiquarian, lies
buried here. Over the south entrance to the church are these lines--

The house of God
King Henry the Eight of noble Fame
Bequeathed the City this commodious place,
With lands and rents he did endow the same,
To help decrepit age in woful case,
Edward the Sixth, that prince of royal stem,
Performed his father's generous bequest.
Good Queen _Eliza_, imitating them,
Ample endowments added to the rest;
Their pious deeds we gratefully record,
While Heaven them crowns with glorious reward.

St. Giles' Hospital, to which the church of St. Helen has been united by
the appropriation of its nave and chancel, is a relic of great
antiquity--a memorial of the liberality of Bishop Suffield, who in 1249
founded it, appointing four chaplains to celebrate service there for his
soul, and all poor and decrepit chaplains in the diocese, endowing it
with means to support the same number perpetually, and to lodge thirteen
poor people with one meal a day. There were also appointed afterwards
four sisters, above fifty years of age, to take care of the clothing, &c.
&c. The master and chaplains were to eat, drink and sleep, in one room,
and daily, after grace at dinner before any one drank, the bell was to
ring and the chaplains to go into the choir and sing _Miserere mei Deus_.
There was also an _Archa Domini_, or Lords' Box, from which the poor that
passed by, were daily to be relieved as far as the funds permitted. From
Lady day to the Assumption, at a certain hour the bell was to ring and a
quantity of bread, "enough to repel hunger," to be given to the poor then
present; and "because the house should be properly 'Domus Dei,' or the
house of God, and of the Bishops of Norwich," it was ordained that "as
often as any bishop of the see should pass by, he should go in and give
his blessing to the sick." Edward VI. dissolved the Hospital and gave it
to the city as a house for the poor. A school was also established,
which was afterwards transferred to the Free School. The cloisters of
the old hospital still remain almos