If you Rob Peter To Pay Paul you take or borrow from one source to contribute to another, and so solve one problem but create another. The expression is traceable back to a specific date in time - 17 December 154 - when the church of St Peter in Westminster, London, became a cathedral. However, it lasted only ten years in this elevated status. The diocese of Westminster was placed back under the authority of St Paul's Cathedral and so St Peter's became merely a church again. To make things even worse, most of the property of St Peter's was then sold off to fund repairs to St Paul's. The public was very unhappy about this robbing of St Peter's to prop up St Paul's, and so the expression became popular. However, there's also evidence that suggests the phrase dates back centuries earlier. The Oxford priest and theologian John Wyclif wrote in 1380, "How should God approve that you rob Peter and give this robbery to Paul in the name of Christ?" So it looks like the phrase had been coined much earlier than the cathedral debacle.