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It was a very ancient site formerly the site of Elsing's Hospital, the oldest hospital in the whole City. Everything about it was venerable, and yet the City clergy themselves its official guardians sold it for what it would fetch, and stuck up the horrid thing on the embankment which they call Sion College. There they still use the old seal and arms of the college.
"My brother Jonathan has returned." Helen joined Betty at the door, and looked over her shoulder. "Wal, Jack, ye got two on 'em, anyways," drawled a voice which she recognized as that of Elsing's. A man, lithe and supple, slipped from the back of one of the horses, and, giving the halter to Elsing with a single word, turned and entered the gate. Colonel Zane met him there.
The London Clergy, who, of all people, might have been expected to guard the monuments of the past, have sold Sion College for what it would fetch. The site of the Cripplegate nunnery; of Elsing's Spital for blind men; of Sion College, or Clergy House, has been destroyed by its own trustees.
Elsing's Sunday-school gave out the depth of their poverty fifty-four dollars in pennies to be hung on the Christmas tree as their offering to the persecuted Armenians. One of their teachers told me of a Bohemian family that let the holiday dinner she brought them stand and wait, while they sent out to bid to the feast four little ragamuffins of the neighborhood who else would have gone hungry.
Fortunately, the place was not, like the Priory of the Holy Trinity, granted to a courtier, otherwise it would have been swept away just as that Priory, or that of Elsing's Spital, was swept away. It continued after a while to carry on its existence, but with changes. It was secularized. The Masters for a hundred and fifty years, not counting the interval of Queen Mary's reign, were laymen.
Sion College is situated against London Wall, a little to the eastward of Cripplegate, where anciently stood a nunnery, and afterwards a hospital founded for a hundred blind men, anno 1320, by W. Elsing, mercer, and called Elsing's Spittal: he afterwards founded here a priory for canons regular, which being surrendered to King Henry VIII. anno 1530, it was purchased by Dr.
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