It appears that no response was made to this appeal until 1544. St. Mary’s had been dissolved, never to be restored, St. Thomas’ was deserted, and St. Bartholomew’s, “vacant and altogether destitute of a master and all fellows or brethren.” After six years’ delay, the king heeded the petition. He was exceedingly anxious to emphasize his compassionate character and eager desire for the improvement of hospitals. If the petitioners had invited him to win the name of conservator, defender and protector of the poor, he writes as though he were indeed all these:—
“We being of the same [hospital] so seised, and, divine mercy inspiring us, desiring nothing more than that the true works of piety and charity should not be abolished there but rather fully restored and renewed according to the primitive pattern . . . and the abuses, in long lapse of time lamentably occurring, being reformed, we have endeavoured . . . that henceforth there be comfort to the prisoners, shelter to the poor, visitation to the sick, food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, and sepulture to the dead administered there . . . we determine to create, erect, found and establish a certain hospital.”
By virtue of these letters-patent the name of the ancient institution was to be “The House of the Poor in West Smithfield of the foundation of King Henry VIII.” The noble “founder” is commemorated by the gateway and by a portrait in the Common Room; whilst a window in p238 the hall depicts Sir R. Gresham receiving the “foundation-charter.”
If the “creation” of St. Bartholomew’s—after above four hundred years of usefulness—was due to Henry VIII, its preservation was due almost entirely to the good citizens of London. Its former possessions being now vested in the Crown, the king agreed by an Act of Common Council to endow it to the extent of 500 marks a year (about £333). The citizens—“thinkying it for their partes rather to litle then enough”—gladly met the offer with a similar sum annually; they also raised nearly £1000 for initial expenses and opened the repaired and refitted hospital for one hundred patients. They agreed henceforth to buy and provide all manner of apothecary’s ware, and all that was necessary for making salves and all other things touching physic or surgery, for the healing of inmates. From this time onwards the citizens interested themselves in this great institution which they supported nobly. It did not become a municipal hospital, but was under the guidance of the Lord Mayor and Governors.
By the same covenant the king “gave” St. Mary’s of Bethlehem to the city. Stow says:—“It was an Hospitall for distracted people. . . . the Mayor and Communalty purchased the patronage thereof with all the landes and tenementes thereunto belonging, in the yeare 1546, the same yeare King Henry the eight gave this Hospitall unto the Cittie.” In other words, the citizens bought back that which had already been in the guardianship of the city for about two hundred years.
In “The Ordre of St. Bartholomewes”[155] drawn up in p239 1552, a report is given, so that all might know how things were administered and support the work. During the preceding five years, eight hundred persons had been discharged healed, and ninety-two had died. The charity had been carried on in spite of great difficulties, and now there was a design to increase it:—
“The Citie of their endlesse good wil toward this most necessarie succour of their pore brethren in Christ, . . . wyshe al men to be most assuredly perswaded, that if by any meanes possible thei might, they desire to enlarge the benefyght to a thousand.”
A wish is expressed that all almoners and houses of alms might be stirred up to do likewise “at this tyme namely, when the mysery of the poore moste busily semeth to awake.” This same year the manor of Southwark was purchased and St. Thomas’ repaired, so that whereas it lately accommodated forty sick, it was reopened with 260 beds for the aged, sick and sore. This “Hospitall of great receite for the poore, was suppressed but againe newly founded and indowed by the benevolence and charitie of the citizens,” says Stow. King Edward’s letters-patent (1551) describe the miserable condition of the sick poor lying and begging in the streets, “to their no small grief and pain and to the great infection and molesting of his subjects. The king desiring the health of the citizens in general no less than the cure of the sick, therefore grants permission to the mayor and corporation to undertake the work.”
The work of the re-founded houses of St. Bartholomew, St. Thomas, and Bethlehem was supplemented in 1553 by Christ’s Hospital for fatherless children, and Bridewell for the correction of idle vagabonds. These institutions p240 were provided partly from Edward VI’s private purse and partly from the dissolved Savoy Hospital and Grey Friars. Their initiation was due to the influence of Ridley, Bishop of London, who took counsel with the Lord Mayor as to the condition of the poor, and reported it to the young king. With the charitable provision after 1547 we are not, however, concerned, and only the ultimate effect of the general Dissolution remains to be shown.
For, happily, this volume is no history of obsolete institutions. The heritage of the past is to a certain extent ours to-day, and we can rejoice in the uninterrupted beneficence of St. Bartholomew’s which receives in the twentieth century as in the twelfth, “languishing men grieved with various sores.” Words spoken by the Prince Consort in reference to another foundation at once ancient and modern, are equally true of St. Bartholomew’s and of the sister-hospital of St. Thomas:—