A little beyond Northgate Street, on a knoll, stands the Priory, formerly dedicated to St. Sepulchre, and founded by Henry de Newburgh, first Earl of Warwick, as a monastery for Canons Regular. At the time of the Dissolution of Monasteries this ancient foundation was granted to a trusted retainer of John Dudley, Earl of Northumberland, Thomas Hawkins, whose father sold fish at the town Market Cross. Unappreciative of either antiquity or the traditions of the building into whose possession he had come, Hawkins, as might be anticipated, pulled down the monastery and on the site of it erected the present building, which was finished about 1565. In this fine old Elizabethan mansion, with its many windows and gables and air of ancient peace, is a lofty hall and a magnificent old oak staircase and oak–panelled dining–room. The south front is comparatively modern, as it was rebuilt about the middle of the eighteenth century; but the north front still preserves many of its original features. One of the most interesting incidents connected with the house was the surprise visit paid by Queen Elizabeth on August 17, 1572, who, coming over from Kenilworth unexpectedly, found the Earl and Countess of Warwick at supper, and sat down to the meal with them. The owner of the house was confined to his bed; but the Queen, who, if tradition may be believed, was less austere than historians would have us infer, setting aside ceremony, visited “the good man of the house, who at that time was grievously vexed with the gout.” The first owner of the Priory, by means of grants and judicious purchases, managed to accumulate a large amount of property, which, in less than four years from the date of his death—occurring in 1576—his son Edward had squandered, even to the selling of his home to Sergeant Puckering, then Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, whom he sought to cheat by means of a fraudulent conveyance. Hawkins was prosecuted in the Star Chamber, and eventually ended his days in the Fleet Prison. The Priory remained in the possession of the Puckering family until the beginning of the eighteenth century, when it became the property of a Mr. Henry Wise, a superintendent of the Royal Gardens at Hampton Court. Although this fine survival of domestic architecture of Elizabethan times was of necessity acquired by the Great Western Railway Company in the middle of the last century, in connection with the extension of their line to Birmingham, it fortunately escaped destruction, and was eventually sold by the Company to Mr. Thomas Lloyd, a banker of Birmingham. At the foot of Smith Street, which runs down from the East Gate, stands the fine old house known as St. John’s Hospital, founded in the reign of Henry II. by William de Newburgh, Earl of Warwick, as a hospital in aid of the poor, and for relief and reception of strangers.