The best-known member of the Lancastrian family who resided in this palace is the famous John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. During his time, so tradition has it, the well-known poet Chaucer was here married to Philippa, daughter of Sir Paon de Roet, one of the young ladies attached to the household of Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster, and the sister of Catherine Swynford, who at a later period became the Duke's third wife. However this may be, the Savoy was at that time the favourite resort of the nobility of England, and John of Gaunt's hospitality was unbounded. Stow, in his _Chronicle_, declares "there was none other house in the realm to be compared for beauty and stateliness." Yet how very transitory is earthly glory, all the pride of place and power! In the terrible rebellion of Wat Tyler, in the year 1381, the Savoy was pillaged and burnt, and the Duke was compelled to flee for his life to the northern parts of Great Britain. His Grace had become very unpopular on account of the constant protection he had extended to the simple followers of Wickcliffe. After this dire destruction the Savoy was never restored to its former palatial proportions. The whole property passed to the Crown, and King Henry VII. rebuilt it, and by his will endowed it in a liberal manner as a hospital in honour of St. John the Baptist. This hospital was suppressed at the Reformation under Edward VI., most of the estates with which it was endowed passing to the great City Hospital of St. Thomas. But Queen Mary refounded the hospital as an almshouse with a master and other officers, and this latter foundation was finally dissolved in 1762. Over the gate, now long destroyed, of King Henry VII.'s foundation were these words:-- "Hospitium hoc inopi turbe Savoia vocatum Septimus Henricus solo fundavit ab imo." [Illustration: THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.]