Before the Reformation the religious houses were the agencies for the relief of the poor, the sick, the afflicted. The unemployed were assisted with lodging and food on their way as they journeyed in search of a market for their labour, paying for their entertainment at the religious houses by work either on the roads in the neighbourhood or on the buildings or in the gardens and fields, according to their trades and skill. It would seem that King Henry did not realise the importance and extent of this feature in the social economy, because, after he had suppressed the religious establishments, he complained very reproachfully of the number of masterless men and rogues that were everywhere to be found, especially about London. The good Bishop Ridley, in an eloquent appeal addressed to William Cecil, represented the poor and sick and starving in the streets of London in the person of Christ, beseeching the king to succour the poor and suffering Christ in the streets of London by bestowing his palace of Bridewell to be a home for the homeless, the starving, and the sick, where erring ones could be corrected and the good sustained. The good young monarch granted the bishop's request, and Bridewell Hospital was thus founded to do the social work in which Blackfriars monastery on the other side of the Fleet river had formerly borne its share. But single efforts of this kind were quite unequal to cope with the social difficulty; and early in the reign of Elizabeth the first Poor Law was passed and a system of relief came into operation. To meet the difficulty of unemployment, it was part of the policy of Queen Elizabeth's Government to encourage new industries, whether due to invention and discovery or to knowledge gained by visiting foreign countries to learn new processes and manufactures; the inventor or the introducer of the novelty was rewarded with a monopoly, and he received a licence "to take up workmen" to be taught the methods of the new industry. One of the manufactures which had been thus stimulated was glass-making; and in the precinct of Blackfriars was a famous glass-house or factory, a reminiscence of which still exists in the name Glasshouse Yard. It has been shown how the crafts and trades of Elizabethan London gravitated to separate areas: Blackfriars precinct was famous as the abode of artists; one may hazard the guess that some of the portraits of Elizabethan and Jacobean players in the Dulwich Gallery may have been painted here. In the reign of Charles I. Vandyke had his studio in Blackfriars, where the king paid him a visit to see his pictures. The precinct was famous also as the abode of glovers; and in the reigns of James and Charles it became a notorious stronghold of Puritans. The existing name of Playhouse Yard, at the back of _The Times_ newspaper office, affords some indication of the site of the theatre; and the name Cloister Court is the sole remnant of the cloisters of Blackfriars monastery.