ital Society. The Act of 1539
superseded all previous legislation affecting the monastic foundations;
the Priory and Hospital were separated; and the revenues of both
transferred to the royal exchequer. But on the petition of Sir Richard
Gresham, Lord Mayor of London, and father of Sir Thomas Gresham, the
Hospital was refounded by royal charter--27th December, 1546, 38 Henry
VIII--which restored the greater part of its former revenues, in
consideration of

the miserable estate of the poore, aged, sick, low, and impotent
people, as well men as women, lying and going about begging in
the common streets of the said City of London and the suburbs of
the same, to the great paine and sorrowe of the same poore,
aged, sick, and impotent people, and to the great infection,
hurt, and annoyance of His Grace's loving subjects, which of
necessity must daily goe and pass by the same poore, sick, low,
and impotent people, being infected with divers great and
horrible sicknesses and diseases.

The Indenture goes on to convey to the mayor, commonalty, and citizens
of London the buildings formerly belonging to the Grey Friars as well as

the late Hospital of St. Bartholomew, in West Smithfield,
otherwise called the Hospital of Little St. Bartholomew, and the
Church of the same, and all the manors, parsonages, messuages,
lands, tithes, advowsons, and hereditaments, late part of the
possession of the said Hospital

with certain specified exceptions which the charity had to lose, and
no longer form part of its history. The immediate result was that the
Church of the Grey Friars became the parish church of Christ Church,
Newgate, and the chapel pertaining to the hospital (the survivor of
four, three of which were alienated) the parish church of Little St.
Bartholomew, now more familiarly known as St. Bartholomew-the-Less. Two
priests were then attached to it, one called the vicar, who was granted
a mansion and a stipend of _L13 6s. 8d._ per annum; the other, the
hospitaller or visitor, whose stipend was fixed at _L10_. The
accommodation of the hospital at that time was for one hundred poor men
and women, lodging within it, under the superintendence of a single
matron, with twelve women assistants. It is interesting to compare these
figures with those of the present day, when the hospital contains as
many as six hundred and seventy beds, with three hundred and fifty
nurses on the st