Opposite Paris Garden, across the river, was Blackfriars; and here the change from the ancient order to what was distinctively Elizabethan London was most manifest. The ancient monastery had existed here from 1276, when the Dominican or Black Friars moved hither from Holborn, until 1538, when the establishment was surrendered to King Henry VIII. It possessed a magnificent church, a vast palatial hall, and cloisters. Edward VI. had granted the whole precinct, with its buildings, to Sir Thomas Cawarden, the Master of the Revels. It became an aristocratic residential quarter; and in the earlier period of Queen Elizabeth's reign plays were performed here, probably in the ancient hall of the monastery, by the children of Her Majesty's chapel and the choir-boys of St. Paul's. At a later period--viz., in 1596--James Burbage, who built the theatre in Shoreditch, built a new playhouse in the precinct, or more probably adapted an existing building--the hall or part of the church--to serve the purpose of dramatic representation. This playhouse, consequently, was not open to the weather at the top like the common playhouses, and it was distinguished as the "private" theatre at Blackfriars. The west wall of the precinct was built along the bank of the Fleet river. Across the river opposite was the royal palace of Bridewell, which Edward VI. had given to the city of London to be a workhouse for the poor and a house of correction. This contiguity of a house for the poor and the remains of a monastery suggests a reflection on the social problem of Elizabethan London.