In the meanwhile the city had been made to feel the heavy hand of the king and of his new minister, Thomas Cromwell. In May, 1530, Elsing Spital, a house established by William Elsing, a charitable mercer, for the relief of the blind, but which had subsequently grown into a priory of Augustinian canons of wealth and position, was confiscated by the Crown. What became of the blind inmates is not known. In the following year (1531) the Priory of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, shared the same fate. The priory had existed since the time of Henry I and the "good queen" Matilda,(1162) and its prior enjoyed the singular distinction of being _ex__ officio_ an alderman of the city. The canons were now removed to another place and the building and site bestowed by Henry upon his chancellor, Sir Thomas Audley.(1163) (M611) Between 1531 and 1534 the City enjoyed some respite from attack. It even recovered some of its lost privileges. In 1521 Henry had deprived the City of its right to the Great Beam, and of the issues and profits derived from it, and had caused a conveyance of it to be made to Sir William Sidney. In 1531 the beam was re-conveyed to the City.(1164) The Grocers’ Company were scarcely less interested in the beam than the City, for to them was deputed the choice of weighers, who were afterwards admitted and sworn before the Court of Aldermen. Both the City and the company used their best endeavours to recover their lost rights, the former going so far as to sanction the distribution of the sum of £23 6_s._ 8_d._ between the king’s sergeant, the king’s attorney, and one "Lumnore,"(1165) a servant of "my lady Anne,"(1166) with the view of gaining their object the easier.(1167) A compromise was subsequently effected by which Sir William Sidney continued to hold the beam at an annual rent payable to the City,(1168) until, in 1531, he consented to a surrender, and it became again vested in the Corporation. (M612) Finding it hopeless to obtain the Pope’s sanction to his divorce from Catherine, Henry at last lost all patience, and on the 25th January, 1533, was privately married to Anne Boleyn. The match was unpopular with the citizens, who took occasion of a sermon preached on Easter-day to show their dissatisfaction. According to Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador, who sent an account of the affair to the emperor, the greater part of the congregation got up and left the church when prayers were desired for the queen. When Henry heard of the insult thus offered to his new bride he was furious, and forthwith sent word to the mayor to see that no such manifestation should occur again. Thereupon, continues Chapuys, the mayor summoned the guilds to assemble in their various halls and commanded them to cease murmuring against the king’s marriage on pain of incurring the royal displeasure, and to order their own journeymen and servants, "and, a still more difficult task, their own wives," to refrain from speaking disparagingly about the queen.(1169) (M613)