[500] Letters Patent, 1 Edw. VI. No. 54. _Charters, Oaths and Charities of the City of Norwich_, p. 50.
Occasionally these ancient charities came to be managed by the vestry. Thus in Bristol there were three old endowments of this sort. Redcliffe almshouse was supposed to have been established about 1440 by the famous Bristol merchant William Canninge; the Temple Gate almshouse and Burton's were probably foundations of an even earlier date. The two former were governed by the vestry of St Mary, Redcliffe, and long before 1821 had become simply houses in which aged paupers were placed by the overseers[501]. Burton's almshouse was governed by the vestry of St Thomas's parish, and was used as an almshouse from which paupers were not excluded. These institutions had thus then become part of the compulsory and legal system of poor relief rather than of the voluntary charity which existed by its side.
[501] _Charity Com. Rep._ 7, pp. 204, 205, 234.
But not only were there many old foundations for helping the aged poor, but the century from 1550 to 1650 was itself the great time of the foundation of new almshouses. It is rare to find a town of any size in which some institutions of this kind were not established during these years, though in country parishes they were not so frequent. They were governed in many different ways, but generally by some public body or by some set of men closely connected with the authorities who were responsible for the administration of poor-relief. Some were governed by the Corporation like the small almshouse founded by Fox at Beverley. Many resembled the Temple Hospital at Bristol; this was endowed by Sir Thomas White and was vested in trustees who were members of the Corporation. A few were managed by merchant or craft companies associated with the government of the town; such was the case with the Merchants' Hospital of Bristol and Dame Owen's almshouses in Islington. Others were in the hands of private trustees sometimes connected with the founder's family, at other times with his position. The Archbishops of Canterbury were generally associated with some of the favourite charities of the time. Grindal provided a stock for setting the poor to work, Abbot a workhouse, Laud apprenticeship endowments, and Whitgift an almshouse at Croydon for twenty-eight poor people, the government of which he vested in his successors in the see of Canterbury. These hospitals were usually filled by the aged and impotent of the poorer classes. But occasionally they also supplied the wants of the poor in a better social position. The Charterhouse of Colonel Newcome fame was a foundation of the reign of King James, and supplied a refuge for eighty poor gentlemen, merchants, soldiers, or mariners.