In 1549 the City was already in treaty with the Protector Somerset[[20]] “for the alteration of parcel of the foundacion of the house of the poor.” Nothing, however, was done during his stormy reign, which ended by his being sent to the Tower in January 1550. In the following Lent, Lever,[[21]] the Master of St. John’s College, Cambridge, preached some famous sermons at St. Paul’s Cross, inveighing against the breach of the Acts of dissolution both of monasteries and chantries, according to which the proceeds were to be applied “for erecting of Grammar Schools, the further augmenting of the Universities and better provision for the poor.” He voiced, not merely the wishes of his own college and university, but also those of the City of London. Edward VI.’s action has been attributed to a sermon of Ridley “the martyr,” the Bishop of London, in 1552. It seems doubtful, however, whether Ridley was the prime mover or only an agent of the City. A letter of his own, intended to be pathetic, but which surely must have had a ring of comicality even to his contemporaries, goes to show that Lord Mayor Sir Richard Dobbs was the originator of the movement.
“O Dobbs, Dobbs, alderman and Knight, thou in thy year didst win my heart for evermore for that honourable act, that most blessed work of God, of the erection and setting up of Christ’s holy hospitals and truly religious houses which by thee and through thee were begun.... Thou didst plead their cause (the cause of Christ’s ‘silly members’) yea and not only in thine own person thou didst set forth Christ’s cause but to further the matter thou broughtest me into the Council Chamber of the City before the Aldermen alone, whom thou hadst assembled there together to hear me speak what I would say as an advocate by office and duty in the poor man’s cause.”[[22]]
The Bishop, in fact, acted as the Bishops of London now do, as a kind of public orator and common vouchee of all charitable organisations; he was not the originator or organiser.
The detailed story of the foundation is told in an account written by J. Howes, “Renter” of Christ’s Hospital, in the form of a delightful dialogue between Dignity (an Elizabethan alderman) and Duty, or Howes himself.[[23]]
Dobbs, he tells us, with the Bishop and a few others, “devised a book” to provide for the various classes of poor. “First[[24]] they devised to take out of the streets all the fatherless children and other poor men’s children that were not able to keep them, and to bring them to the late dissolved house of the Grey Friars, which they devised to be an Hospital for them, where they should have meat and drink and clothes, lodging and learning, and officers to attend upon them. They also devised that there should be provision made to keep the sick from the whole, and laid a ‘platte’ (a plot or plan) to have purchased Finsbury Court, and there to have kept the children in fresh air in the time of sickness, because they feared lest through the corrupt nature of the children, who might infect one another, being packed up in one house, and so put the whole city in danger of infection. Then the Governors devised that the sucking children and such as were not able to learn should be kept in the country and always at Easter brought home.” The lame and aged poor were to be removed to St. Thomas’s Hospital, forthwith; the “Lazar” people should be removed out of the streets, and have monthly pensions paid to them to the end they should not annoy the King’s subjects resorting to the City; and all the decayed poor citizens should be made known and every one of them have weekly a pension according to his necessity. But “all the idle and lusty rogues, as well men as women, should all be taken up and conveyed into some house where they should have all things necessary and be compelled to labour.” A committee of thirty was appointed to collect statistics. They reported that the number to be provided for was—
| Fatherless children | 300 |
| Sore and sick persons | 200 |
| Poor men overburthened with their children | 350 |
| Aged persons | 400 |
| Decayed householders | 650 |
| Idle vagabonds | 200 |
| 2100 | |
They then set to work to provide ways and means.
The committee of thirty found close on £1500 themselves. The parsons were set to work to extract weekly “pensions” from their parishioners; boxes were distributed to the wardens of every Company. There was a “devise that every honest householder in London should have a bill printed, wherein there was a glass window left open for his name and for his sum of money,” and the churchwardens were to get these filled in.
In February 1551[[25]] the City began to negotiate for the purchase of “the Hospitall in Suthwarke,” the Hospital of St. Thomas à Becket in Southwark, which until the Dissolution had been in the hands of Augustinian canons. On the 25th March the Privy Council granted an order for the purchase to be carried into effect. A detailed estimate of the charges and net income of the hospital on the proposal to purchase is extant at the Record Office.[[26]] From this it appears that the total gross value of its possessions was £314 : 17 : 1: the charges for the poor, the priests, and so on were estimated at £154 : 17 : 1, leaving a surplus of about £160 a year. Of this, £36 odd was derived from land estimated at twenty years’ purchase, and £123 from houses and cottages taken at fourteen years’ purchase. The City paid £2461 : 2 : 6 down for the grant of the endowment, with the hospital site and buildings thrown in. The transaction was completed by Letters Patent of August 12 and 13, 1551, which included a licence in mortmain up to £46 a year above the issue of the lands, i.e. £200 a year in all.
Having acquired St. Thomas’s Hospital for the sick poor, the City next set itself to work to petition[[27]] the King for a grant of the old palace of Bridewell. For the proposed inhabitants of this they had in “readiness most profitable and wholesome occupations for the continuing in godly exercise ... which is the guider and begetter of all wealth, virtue and honesty.” This was followed up by a further grant of the Savoy Hospital, founded by Henry VII. on the site of the old mansion of John of Gaunt, and completed by Henry VIII. It was intended for old soldiers and pilgrims.