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A very curious difference was made between the new Ward of Bridge Without, then founded, and the other wards. It is this: that in the election of Aldermen the people of the Ward have never had any voice and have never taken any part. And they are not represented in the Common Council.

In one respect the civic history of this reign is very fine—the citizens grappled manfully with the question of the poor and the sick. We have seen how Henry gave them Grey Friars, Bartholomew’s, and Bethlehem. In aid of the former they levied on the City a tax of one-half of a fifteenth, i.e. a thirtieth. And the memory of the old Religious Fraternities lingered still, for we find them founding a Brotherhood for the Relief of the Poor, to which Sir John Gresham, then Mayor, and most of the Aldermen belonged. Nor was this all. They obtained by purchase, at the cost of £2500, the Hospital of St. Thomas in Southwark.

After the poor, the children. Grey Friars House was taken in hand and altered to convert it into a school. In a few months 400 children were admitted. This was the work of Sir Richard Dobbs as Mayor. When Ridley was lying in prison, shortly before his death he wrote to Dobbs in these words:—“Oh 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.”