Note 61 — Chapter V

She left their erection, however, in the best of hands. It was to her friend and counsellor, Bishop Fisher, who knew her so well, and appreciated her so dearly, that she committed the carrying out of her great design. He was markedly qualified for this purpose, not only by his connection with herself, but by special acquaintance with the spot. For in him we find yet another link between St. John's and Trinity. As Master of Michaelhouse,[61] some years earlier, he had been a close neighbour of the ancient Hospital of St. John, and had noted how far that venerable fraternity had outlived its usefulness. Originally a semi-monastic institution, founded in 1135, as a sort of alms-house for necessitous old men, the lack of any sufficient discipline had brought it to decay. The attempt made by Bishop Hugh de Balsham, in the century after its foundation, to leaven it with the scholars whom he afterwards transported to Peterhouse had proved a failure, and by the sixteenth century the few Brethren left were far from satisfactory in their ways.[62] Fisher, therefore, suggested to Lady Margaret to turn the Hospital into a College, under the same patronage, and after her death, set promptly to work to make the requisite alterations in the existing buildings.