However, during the course of the 1641 Rebellion the site was occupied by poor people from the city. The hall having fallen into decay (which the College at the time could not afford to repair), Trinity discontinued its teaching there, causing the corporation to seek that the site revert to their ownership on the grounds that the agreements for its use were not being upheld. The situation was resolved by John Stearne, a medical doctor and senior fellow at Trinity, who arranged to have the hall repaired without further expense to the College in return for himself being made its president and for the site being redesignated for the sole use of physicians. The daughter college thus founded in 1654 eventually received a royal charter as the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in 1667, and in the years following Stearne's death it gained virtual independence from Trinity.