invested largely in real estate. Although very frugal, there are
sufficient evidences of his liberality to the poor on his property;
and it seems not improbable that his charitable schemes now began to
take definite form, for after his death a credible witness stated that
Sutton was in the habit of repairing to a summer-house in his garden
for private devotion, and on one of these occasions he heard him utter
the words: "Lord, Thou hast given me a large and liberal estate: give
me also a heart to make use thereof."

About 1608, when he had quite retired from the world, he was greatly
exercised by a rumor that he was to be raised to the peerage--an honor
which it was contemplated to bestow with the understanding that he
would make Prince Charles, subsequently Charles I., his heir. This
was a court intrigue to get his money, but an urgent appeal to Lord
Chancellor Ellesmere and the earl of Salisbury, prime minister,
appears to have put an end to trouble in the matter. He died on the
12th of December, 1611, at the age of seventy-nine, leaving immense
wealth, and on the 12th of December, 1614, his body was brought on the
shoulders of his pensioners to Charter-House Chapel, and interred in
a vault ready for it there, beneath the huge monument erected to his
memory.

"The death-day of the founder is still kept solemnly by Cistercians.
In their chapel, where assemble the boys of the school and the
fourscore old men of the hospital, the founder's tomb stands, a
huge edifice emblazoned with heraldic decorations and clumsy,
carved allegories. There is an old hall, a beautiful specimen of
the architecture of James's time. An old hall? Many old halls, old
staircases, old passages, old chambers decorated with old portraits,
walking in the midst of which we walk as it were in the early