A short walk brought them in sight of a stately pile of buildings.
“If we were back in our own century,” said Godmother, “this spot on which we are standing, would be Newgate Street. Remember that, and now think of London as we saw it in the reign of Richard the Second. Do you remember the Grey Friars?”
“Yes, the monks in grey robes, with bare feet? There were hundreds of them about.”
“Well, that’s their splendid church and monastery, though the monks themselves are no longer there.”
“Henry the Eighth turned them out, I suppose?” asked Betty.
“Yes, he turned them out, and gave their dwelling to the City of London. Then his son, the young Protestant King Edward VI, came to the throne. Now only a few days before he died, Edward listened to a very touching sermon from one of the new Protestant bishops, about the need for looking after poor children who were fatherless. He was so impressed, that he set apart this Grey Friars’ monastery to be a school for orphan boys for ever, and called it Christ’s Hospital.”
“And it’s still a school for them, isn’t it?” Betty exclaimed eagerly. “Why, my cousin Dick goes to it. But it’s not in London now. Dick goes to school somewhere in the country.”
“It’s only about twenty years ago that Christ’s Hospital, or, as we generally call it now, the Blue Coat School, was moved to Horsham in Sussex. Up to that time it stood here. At first, as you see, the boys were lodged and taught in the monastery that once belonged to the Grey Friars. Long years afterwards, the monastery part was pulled down and new houses built. But the school still stood on the old ground, and forty years ago, boys played over the place where hundreds of Grey Friars were buried. Now they play in green fields in the country, and live in red-brick newly-built houses, and have a new red-brick chapel instead of this ancient church.”
“Isn’t there any of it left in our time?” asked Betty.
Godmother shook her head. “Another and quite a different church stands on its site, and instead of the old Courts of Christ’s Hospital, you will see when you come to this place in our day, a huge modern building—the London Post Office.”