members of the community
naturally objected. In 1244 Bishop Bruere resigned the guardianship of
the leper hospital to the corporation, and was given in its stead the
mastership of the hospital of St. John. One of the mayors of Exeter,
Richard Orange, was a great patron of the lazar house, and when he
himself contracted leprosy he took up his abode in the hospital, where
he died and was buried in the chapel. Even so late as the sixteenth
century there would appear to have been lepers in Exeter, for we find
that in 1580 no one was to be admitted to the Magdalen Hospital except
"sick persons in the disease of the leprosy".

[Illustration: ST. MARY STEPS]

In South Street is College Hall, or the Hall of the College of
Priest-Vicars or Vicars Choral, a fine oak-panelled apartment. The
original hall was built by Bishop Brantyngham about 1388, and access was
then gained to it from the Close; the houses of the priest-vicars
being arranged on each side of a green. All this has now disappeared
with the exception of the hall, which was rebuilt in the fifteenth
century. At one end is a gallery upon the upper panels of which are
paintings representing former bishops of the diocese, beginning with
Leofric. On the carved mantelpiece is the date, 1629, and the owls which
constitute the punning, or allusive, arms of Bishop Oldham. Near the
hall a road leads into the Close, passing the church of St. Mary Major,
a modern building replacing a beautiful old one which appears to have
been needlessly destroyed. On the eastern side of the Close is a
picturesque Elizabethan building known as Mol's Coffee House. At the
time of the Armada it was a private residence. In 1596 the original
house was pulled down and the present building erected. On the
introduction of coffee into England it was opened as a Club and Coffee
House by an Italian named Mol. As such it was a well-known and popular
resort with the citizens of Exeter and the squires of the neighbourhood
until 1829. It is now used as a shop by a firm of fine-art dealers, but
the fine "Armada" room upstairs is willingly shown to all visitors who
express a wish to see it. It is a good panelled room with low windows,
and an elaborate frieze of shields bearing the arms of many ancient
Devonshire families, among them being those of Sir Francis Drake, Sir
Walter Raleigh, and General Monk. Adjoining Mol's Coffee House is the
very small Church of St. Martin, now but rarely used for divine service.