Foundation
The priory of the Order of St Mary of Bethlem was founded in 1247 during the reign of Henry III in the city of London following a donation of property by the London Alderman Simon fitzMary to the Bishop-elect of Bethlehem, the Italian Goffredo de Prefetti. Its first site was in the parish of St Botolph outside Bishopsgate, just beyond London's wall and where the south-east corner of Liverpool Street station now stands. The priory, obedient to the House of Bethlem, would house the poor and, when they visited, the Bishop, canons and brothers of Bethlehem. It was intended to function as a centre for the collection of alms to support the crusader church and to link England to the Holy Land. From approximately 1330 it was referred to as either a hospice or hospital.
Read more about this topic: Bethlem Royal Hospital
Famous quotes containing the word foundation:
“Remember that whatever knowledge you do not solidly lay the foundation of before you are eighteen, you will never be master of while you breathe.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“But I hate things all fiction ... there should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric—and pure invention is but the talent of a liar.”
—GGeorge Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“In a country where misery and want were the foundation of the social structure, famine was periodic, death from starvation common, disease pervasive, thievery normal, and graft and corruption taken for granted, the elimination of these conditions in Communist China is so striking that negative aspects of the new rule fade in relative importance.”
—Barbara Tuchman (1912–1989)