balance being £1055 11 shillings 4 pence. 1723 also saw Gibbs being made a governor of St Bartholomew's Hospital; other governors included fellow architects Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and George Dance the Elder. On 1 August 1728 it was decided to rebuild the Hospital. Gibbs offered his service for free, and designed a quadrangle of with four near-identical plain blocks. In March 1726 Gibbs was made a member of the Society of Antiquaries of London. and in 1727 he was awarded with the only government post he ever held, Architect of the Ordnance, which he held for life. He was given it thanks to the Duke of Argyll who was Master of the Ordnance and in 1729 he was elected to the Royal Society. One of the most serious disappointments of Gibbs's career was his failure to win the commission for the Mansion House, London. There were two competitions for the building, both of which he entered – the first in 1728 and a second in 1735; in the end George Dance the Elder won the commission. In 1735, Gavin Hamilton painted A Conversation of Virtuosis... at the Kings Arms, a group portrait that included Michael Dahl, George Vertue, John Wootton, Gibbs and Rysbrack, along with other artists who were instrumental in bringing the Rococo style to English design and interiors. After the death in 1736 of Nicholas Hawksmoor, who was architect for the Radcliffe Camera, Gibbs was appointed on 4 March 1737 to replace him. The Radcliffe Camera was finished by 19 May 1749. Gibbs was awarded by Oxford University an honorary degree of Master of Arts in 1749 recognition of the completion of the Radcliffe Camera. Collections A list of the nearly 700 books in his library is preserved in the Bodleian Library. While architecture and related crafts made up the bulk of his books, other subjects covered included antiquities, coins, and heraldry; histories of England, Scotland and Rome and other nations; literature including works by Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe and Matthew Prior; travel books including Egypt, the South Seas, Russia, Hungary, Lapland, Virginia, Ceylon and Abyssinia; missionary travels including China, Formosa, Guinea, Borneo and the East Indies; books on religion including both Anglican and Roman Catholic works; and even cookery books. The most significant of the architectural works were Vincenzo Scamozzi's L'Idea dell'Architettura Universale, Sebastiano Serlio's Sette Libri d'Architettura, Domenico Fontana's Della transportatione