The Priories of St. Bartholomew and of St. John belong to Norman London. On the north of Bartholomew's, however, stood the house of the Carthusians. The Carthusian Order was a branch of the Benedictine Rule, to which the Cluniacs and Cistercians also belonged. The house of the Salutation of the Mother of God--which was its full title--was founded in the year 1371 by Sir Walter Manny. Those who know their Froissart know that gallant Knight well and can testify to his achievements; how he entreated King Edward for the citizens of Calais; how he rescued the Countess of Montfort besieged in the castle of Hennebont, and, for his reward, was kissed--he and his companions--not once, but two or three times, by that brave lady; these and many other things can be told of this noble Knight. Not the least of his feats was the foundation of this House of Religion. When we speak of the Plague of London we generally mean that of 1664-65. But this was only the last, and perhaps not the worst, of the many plagues which had visited the City. Thirteen great pestilences fell upon the City between the years 1094 and 1625--in the last year 35,000 died. That is to say, one plague happened about every forty years, so that there never was a time when a recent plague was not in the minds of men. Always they remembered the last visitation, the suddenness and swiftness of destruction, the desolation of houses, the striking down of young and old, the loss of the tender children, the sweet maidens, the gallant youth. Life is brief and uncertain at the best; but when the plague is added to the diseases which men expect, its uncertainty is forced upon the minds of the people of every condition with a persistence and a conviction unknown in quiet times when each man hopes to live out his three score years and ten. In the year 1347 there happened a dreadful plague. It began in Dorsetshire and spread over the whole of the south country, reaching London last. After a while the church-yards were not large enough to hold the dead, and they were forced to enclose ground outside the walls. The Bishop of London, therefore, bought a piece of ground north of Bartholomew's, called No Man's Ground, which he enclosed and consecrated, building thereon a "fair chapel." This place was called the Pardon Church-yard. It stood, as those who know London will be interested to know, beyond the north wall of the present Charter House. Two years later, the plague still continuing, Sir Walter Manny bought a plot of thirteen acres close to this church-yard, and built a chapel upon it--it stood somewhere in the middle of the present Charterhouse Square--and gave it for an additional church-yard. More than fifty thousand persons were buried here in one year, according to Stow; but the number is impossible, unless the whole of London died in that year. There used to be a stone cross standing in the church-yard with the following inscription: