In the meanwhile the civic authorities had been energetically engaged in making regulations for the hospital of the poor in West Smithfield, better known as St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, which they had recently acquired, and in grappling with the poverty and sickness with which they were surrounded. Instead of trusting to the charity of those attending the parish churches on Sunday for raising money for the poor, the Common Council, in September, 1547, resorted to the less precarious method of levying on every inhabitant of the city one half of a fifteenth for the maintenance of the poor of the hospital.(1350) The voluntary system, however, was not wholly abolished. In the following April (1548) a brotherhood for the relief of the poor had been established, to which the mayor (Sir John Gresham) and most of the aldermen belonged, each agreeing to subscribe a yearly sum varying from half a mark to a mark.(1351) In September governors were appointed of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital—four aldermen and eight commoners(1352)—and in the following December the Common Council passed an Act for the payment of 500 marks a year to the hospital, the sum being levied on the livery companies.(1353) (M696) In 1551 the City succeeded in obtaining another hospital. This was the hospital in Southwark originally dedicated to Thomas Becket, but whose patron saint was, after the Reformation, changed to St. Thomas the Apostle. Negotiations were opened in February with the lord chancellor for the purchase of this hospital.(1354) They proceeded so favourably that by the 12th August the hospital and church and part of their endowment were conveyed to the City by deed, whilst the rest of the endowment was transferred by another deed on the following day.(1355) The purchase-money amounted to nearly £2,500. (M697)