In founding St John’s College, Lady Margaret Beaufort followed the precedent of Bishop Alcock. It is curious to observe how the most fervent Catholics of the Renaissance era subordinated monasticism to the revived learning and disestablished religious houses on merely nominal pretexts. The close likeness between the document which explains the dissolution of St Rhadegund’s Nunnery and that which excused the abolition of St John’s Hospital detracts from the value of the charges they contain and leads us to believe that they are merely repetitions of a recognised form. St John’s Hospital was a small religious alms-house which had been founded in 1135 by one Henry Frost, and was under the management of Black Canons. It had a certain importance as being the first site of Hugh de Balsham’s collegiate scheme. He grafted his scholars upon the monastic stock, but his plan was anything but a success, and he removed his _protégés_ to Peterhouse. The hospital was not a very flourishing affair, and, whether the charges of immorality were true or not, there was sufficient excuse for its dissolution in the fact that in 1509 it contained only two brethren. The Lady Margaret, in that same year, the year of her own and her son’s death, obtained leave to suppress it and found a college on its site. She had been prompted to this work by her confessor and faithful adviser, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, himself a man of great distinction in the University, a friend of learned men and a patron of study. And, although the college is very justly proud of its royal foundress and shares her coat-of-arms with Christ’s College, the active part of the work was carried out by Fisher as her executor. The Charter of foundation was granted by Henry VIII. in 1511, and Fisher himself consecrated the Chapel in 1516. It follows that, although Fisher was a member of Queens’ College, his name is connected almost entirely with St John’s. This close relation of one man to two colleges is clearly manifested by the likeness which those parts of St John’s built by Fisher’s instrumentality bear to parts of Queens’ College.