The succeeding years were to present Bishop Henry in a less ambitious and altogether more attractive light. He had played for his great stake--played and lost: his legatine commission had expired, his archiepiscopal dream had rudely disappeared. His political power shattered, and his personal influence largely compromised, he was glad to make peace with the king and full restitution to the monks of Hyde, and he returned to his see to spend the last portion of his life--some fifteen or sixteen years--in acts of quiet episcopal rule and active beneficence. During his stay on the Continent he had amassed many treasures of art, and these he brought back with him--very probably the wonderful and curious black stone font, one of a rare series of seven English fonts, four of which are in our own county and diocese, was placed by him in the Cathedral at this time. But a far nobler and more noticeable monument he was already rearing for himself in the outskirts of the city. Some mile down the valley, in the little village then known as Sperkforde, he had, in the early days of Stephen’s reign, commenced to build a hospital or almshouse--the Hospital of St. Cross--and to this he now devoted himself. Filled as the land then was with misery and ruin, relief of the hungry and distressed was a peculiarly pressing need, and the bishop’s aim was to relieve distress. Following the hospitable example of the great Clugniac house in which he had been reared, the gates of St. Cross were to be ever open, ready to give kindly welcome to all who should enter there in want. Thirteen aged brethren were to be maintained in ease and comfort. One hundred of the poor of Winchester were to be regularly fed there in the “Hundred Mennes Hall,” and seven poor Grammar School boys of Winchester--for Winchester had its Grammar School then, earlier even than the College of Wykeham--were likewise to be fed and provided for daily. In 1157 Bishop Henry committed the guardianship of his hospital to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, the Knights Hospitallers as they were called, whose special care was to aid wandering men, particularly the poor pilgrims visiting the Holy Sepulchre. And so the brethren of St. Cross wear the black gown and the eight-pointed silver cross of the Knights of St. John to this day.