almshouses at Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire, a gabled structure
near the church with tall, graceful chimneys and mullioned windows,
having a raised causeway in front protected by a low wall. Ewelme, in
Oxfordshire, is a very attractive village with a row of cottages half
a mile long, which have before their doors a sparkling stream dammed
here and there into watercress beds. At the top of the street on a
steep knoll stand church and school and almshouses of the mellowest
fifteenth-century bricks, as beautiful and structurally sound as the
pious founders left them. These founders were the unhappy William de
la Pole, first Duke of Suffolk, and his good wife the Duchess Alice.
The Duke inherited Ewelme through his wife Alice Chaucer, a kinswoman
of the poet, and "for love of her and the commoditie of her landes
fell much to dwell in Oxfordshire," and in 1430-40 was busy building
a manor-place of "brick and Tymbre and set within a fayre mote," a
church, an almshouse, and a school. The manor-place, or "Palace," as
it was called, has disappeared, but the almshouse and school remain,
witnesses of the munificence of the founders. The poor Duke, favourite
minister of Henry VI, was exiled by the Yorkist faction, and beheaded
by the sailors on his way to banishment. Twenty-five years of
widowhood fell to the bereaved duchess, who finished her husband's
buildings, called the almshouses "God's House," and then reposed
beneath one of the finest monuments in England in the church hard by.
The almshouses at Audley End, Essex, are amongst the most picturesque
in the country. Such are some of these charming homes of rest that
time has spared.

The old people who dwell in them are often as picturesque as their
habitations. Here you will find an old woman with her lace-pillow and
bobbins, spectacles on nose, and white bonnet with strings, engaged in
working out some intricate lace pattern. In others you will see the