ered. "The Prior,"
reported Dr. London, the king's commissioner, "is a sad, honest priest
as his neighbours do report him, and is a Bachelor of Divinity. He
gave his house unto the king's grace willingly and so in like manner
did all his brethren." The Doctor asks for good pensions for the
dispossessed, not on the plea of justice but so that "others
perceiving that these men be liberally handled will with better will
not only surrender their houses, but also leave the same in the better
state to the King's use."

The yearly revenue had been certified in the valuation at _L731 19s.
5d._ Deducting a Fee-Ferme rent to the Crown, reserved by Roger de
Montalt, and other annual payments, the clear remainder was _L499 7s.
4d._ Bishop Rowland Lee, writing to "my singular good Lord Cromwell,"
implies that he had a promise from him to spare the church. "My good
Lord," he says, "help me and the City both in this and that the church
may stand, whereby I may keep my name, and the City have commodity and
ease to their desire, which shall follow if by your goodness it might
be brought to a collegiate church, as Lichfield, and so that fair City
shall have a perpetual comfort of the same, as knoweth the Holy
Trinity, who preserve your Lordship in honour to your heart's
comfort."

But his entreaties, and those of the mayor and corporation, were all
in vain, the church and monastic buildings were dismantled and
destroyed piecemeal, and like so many other magnificent structures
became a mere quarry for mean buildings and the mending of roads.

The site having been granted by Henry VIII to two gentlemen named
Combes and Stansfield, passed soon into the hands of John Hales, the
founder of the Free School, and in Elizabeth's reign was purchased by
the Corporation.

The changes in religious opinion of the successive sovereigns were
felt here by many poor victims. Seven persons were burnt in 1519 for
having in their possession the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments,
and the Creed in English, and for refusing to obey the Pope or his
agents, opinions and acts that would have been counted meritorious
twenty years later. In 1555 Queen Mary burnt three Protestants in the
old quarry in Little Park--Laurence Saunders, a well-known preacher,
Robert Glover, M.A., and Cornelius Bongey.

Ten years after this Queen Elizabeth's visit was the occasion of much
pageantry and performing of plays by the Tanners', Drapers', Smiths',
and Weavers' Companies