ABSTRACT
As we have seen (Chapter 5), Bethlem had been separately administered from the later sixteenth century by the joint Bridewell and Bethlem Court of Governors. While largely secularized, and freed (although not entirely) from Church politics and patronage in the arbitration of its offices and finances, it had also been a state institution - a City and a royal institution, whose Governors continued to owe allegiance to both powers. From the r630s, despite and because of Bethlem's exposure to the scrutiny of a royal commission, Bethlem was to emerge as a City more than a royal institution, and ultimately as its own Governors' institution more than that of any other authority. As the period progressed, the Governors were to forge a rambling, often contradictory path towards autonomy and self-government. And yet, just as its image was the property of many, Bethlem could never really be the master of its own destiny. The institution was never, before the mid-nineteenth century, to be far removed from the watchful (or prying) eyes of outside authorities, many of whom were anyway as much insiders as outsiders. While Bethlem's patients became a microcosm of mad London, Bethlem's governance became a microcosm of London's governance. As we shall see, the growth of London as a corporation, and the ebbs and flows of City affairs, was intimately reflected in the way in which the Lord Mayor and the Courts of Aldermen and Common Council were able to exert a fluctuating control over the Hospital's government.
