Dunstable Priory. (Part Five).

Print of Dunstable Priory.

Published 24 December 1819.

Longman & Lackington & Co

and Joseph Harding, London.

Illustration: THE VIRTUAL LIBRARY

Text from Wikipedia — the free encyclopædia,

unless stated otherwise.

Dunstable Priory.

Ground Penetrating Radar.

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The Dunstable Priory clock was one of the oldest mechanical clocks in England, built in 1283. Accounts say it was installed above the Rood Screen.[9] Its fate is unknown.

Of the 14th-Century, there are only a few scanty notices, the only events told at any length being those connected with the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381, when the Prior, Thomas Marshall, appears by his courage and moderation to have saved his own Priory from serious loss, and his Burghers from punishment. 

King Henry VI visited Dunstable in 1459, but there is no record of his relations with the Priory; its history during the 15th-Century is not recorded in any way. 

But in the 16th-Century it was again connected with an important historical event, when, on 23 May 1533, in the Lady Chapel of the Conventual Church at Dunstable, Archbishop Cranmer, together with the Bishops of Winchester, London, Bath and Lincoln, pronounced the marriage between King Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon to be Null and Void.

Dunstable Priory.

Drone imagery of Dunstable Priory Church.

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The location arose as Catherine was then residing at nearby Ampthill, some twelve miles to the North. In 1535, the Prior, Gervase Markham, with twelve Canons, signed the acknowledgement of the Royal Supremacy, and on 20 January 1540 he surrendered his Priory to the King and received a pension of £60.[6]

The smaller English Religious Houses had been Dissolved by Act of Parliament in 1536, and the Church and Priory at Dunstable were closed down in January 1540. 

The Prior and twelve Canons were granted pensions and given dispensations to serve as Secular Priests. 

The great Church and the buildings of the Priory were initially kept standing intact, since it was intended to create a See at Dunstable, with the Priory Church as its Cathedral. 

Dunstable Priory.

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However, the scheme for the creation of new Bishoprics fell through after a few years and the beautiful Church (with the exception of the Parochial Nave) shared the fate of the Monastic buildings, being plundered of all that was valuable and left in ruin.

PART SIX FOLLOWS.