Again, there is not much in the modern Church of St. Giles in the Fields to suggest the past--a large stone church with a church-yard, standing in a miserable district, which for two hundred years has been the haunt of criminals and vagabonds. Yet here was one of the very earliest Houses of piety and charity. Here was perhaps the earliest hospital founded in this land of Britain. It was instituted by Queen Maud, wife of Henry I., as a lazar-house for lepers and other poor sick men. What became of the lepers when there was no house for them? They crept into empty hovels; they perished miserably, outcast, neglected. So long as they were strong enough to creep out they begged their bread; when they could no longer crawl, they lay down and died. Thanks to the good Queen, some of them, at least, were cared for in their last days. A sweet fragrance of thanksgiving lingers still about the slums of St. Giles. The poor lepers who lie buried in that squalid church-yard still uplift a voice of praise for those who remember the sick and all that are desolate and sore oppressed. Nor is there at Charing Cross much to remind the visitor of the past. Yet here was a Foundation somewhat unusual of its kind. It was an "alien" House. The Chapel, Hospital, or House of St. Mary Rounceval was founded by William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, who gave certain tenements to the Prior of Rounceval, or _de Roscida Valle_, in the Diocese of Pampeluna, Navarre. It was a House for eleven brethren. Henry IV. suppressed all alien priories, this among the rest, but it was restored by Edward IV. as a Fraternity. After the Dissolution the site of the House was used by the Earl of Northampton for the palace which, under the name of Northumberland House, stood until the other day, the last of the river-side palaces. Other great Houses are sometimes reckoned as London Houses, such as those of Barking, Wimbledon, Merton, and Chertsey; but these are outside our limits. Nor can I touch here upon any of the religious Foundations of Westminster. We have seen that when we lay down the monastic establishments upon the map, they occupy a very considerable part of the area within the walls. But when we consider, in addition, the great number of smaller Foundations, the colleges, hospitals, and fraternities with Houses, the parish churches and the church-yards, we shall begin to understand that the space required for ecclesiastical buildings alone in the confined area of a mediæval town gives a very fair idea of the power and authority of the Church. After the Monasteries come the Colleges, so called, by which we must not understand seats of learning, but colleges of priests. There were several of these: