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impress the warden. I confess that I was nervous at the thought of going to the asylum. I knew next to nothing of madness; I was fortunate enough never to have encountered it among my family or friends. I knew only the doctors divided the brain - sick between those suffering from mania, who often engaged in wild and frenzied behaviour, and the melancholies who withdrew from the world into sadness. Melancholy was more common, and usually less serious; I knew I had a melancholic turn of mind myself. And Adam Kite, I thought. Which is he? What is he?
    The inconstant weather had turned bitter again; during the night there had been another dusting of snow, which glittered in the cold sunlight. I rode out on my good horse Genesis. I was sorry to take him from his stable but the streets were too slippery to make for easy walking and the Bedlam was on the other side of the city.
    I passed under London Wall at Newgate and rode along Newgate Street to the market. Traders were setting up their stalls under the looming bulk of the abandoned church of the dissolved St Martin's friary, a few white - coifed goodwives already looking over the produce as it was laid out. As I rode past the market I heard someone shouting. On the corner where Newgate Market met the Shambles, a man in a dark doublet, coatless despite the cold, stood on an empty box waving a large black Testament at the passers-by, who mostly averted their eyes. This must be the ranter old Ryprose had mentioned at the dinner. I looked at the man: a young fellow, his face red with passion.
    The butchers in the slaughterhouses behind the Shambles had already started work. Lent would be over on Thursday and already they were killing sheep and cattle. Trails of blood were trickling from the yards to the sewer channel in the centre of the frosty street. The preacher pointed to them with his Bible. 'So it will be for mankind in the last days of the world!' he shouted in a deep voice. 'Their eyeballs will melt, the skin will drop from their bones, all that will be left is their blood, deep as a horse's bridle for two hundred miles! So it is foretold in Revelation!' As I rode off down the Shambles I heard him cry, 'Only turn to God, and you will know the sweet joy of his salvation!' If the constables took him he would be in serious trouble for preaching without a licence.
    Along Cheapside the bluccoated apprentices were setting up their masters' shops for the day's trade, erecting brightly coloured awnings, their breath steaming in the cold. Some were ordering away the beggars who had sought shelter in the doorways overnight, with kicks and blows if they did not move fast enough. A host of destitute men and women had already limped over to the Great Conduit to beg from those who came for water, huddling against each other on the steps that surrounded it like a flock of starveling crows. As I passed I looked into their pinched, chapped faces. One, an old man with a shock of grey hair, drooling and trembling, caught my eye. He held out a hand and called, 'Help an old monk of Glastonbury, sir. They hanged my master the abbot!' I threw a sixpence to him, and he dived for it with a sudden turn of speed, before others could.
    So many homeless in the streets now. To live in London since the monasteries were dissolved was to be inured to pitiful scenes everywhere. Most people simply looked away, made the sufferers invisible. Many beggars were former monastic servants, others poor folk who had come in from the countryside where much land was being enclosed to pasture sheep, their villages demolished. And the sick who had once been able to find at least temporary shelter at the monastic hospitals now lay in the streets, and often died there. I thought, I will help Roger with his hospital scheme; I shall at least do something.
    I passed under the city wall again and rode up the Bishopsgate
    Street. The hospital was beyond the city walls, where new houses encroached more every year. I had gone back