ritable 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
seventeenth century. To others than Cistercians, Gray Friars is a
dreary place possibly. Nevertheless, the pupils educated there love to
revisit it, and the oldest of us grow young again for an hour or two
as we come back into those scenes of childhood.

"The custom of the school is that on the 12th of December, the
Founder's Day, the head gown-boy shall recite a Latin oration in
praise _Fundatoris Nostri_, and upon other subjects; and a goodly
company of old Cistercians is generally brought together to attend
this oration; after which[5] ... we adjourn to a great dinner, where
old condisciples meet, old toasts are given and speeches are made.
Before marching from the oration-hall to chapel the stewards of the
day's dinner, according to old-fashioned rite, have wands put into
their hands, walk to church at the head of