The Priory Church of St Peter with its monastery (Dunstable Priory) was founded in 1132 by Henry I for Augustinian Canons in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, England. St Peter's today is only the nave of what remains of an originally much larger Augustinian priory church. The monastic buildings consisted of a dormitory for the monks, an infirmary, stables, workshops, bakehouse, brewhouse and buttery. There was also a hostel for pilgrims and travellers, the remains of which is known today as Priory House. Opposite the Priory was one of the royal palaces belonging to Henry I, known as Kingsbury.
The present church and Deanery form part of the Archdeaconry of Bedford, located within the Diocese of St Albans. It became a Grade I listed building on 25 October 1951.
History
The Augustinian priory of Dunstable was founded by Henry I about the year 1132,"Dunstable Priory church was once much larger, says survey", BBC News, 7 April 2021 and endowed by him at the same time with the lordship of the manor and town in which it stood. Tradition says that the same king was also the founder of the town and had caused the forest to be cleared away from the point where Watling Street and the Icknield Way crossed each other, on account of the robbers who infested the highway."Dunstable Priory". The Downside Review, vol. 13, no. 1, Mar. 1894, pp. 37–60 He granted to the priory all such liberties and rights in the town of Dunstable as he held in his own demesne lands. He also endowed the Priory with the quarry at Totternhoe.
His charter was confirmed by Henry II; and before the reign of Richard I a great many of the churches of the neighborhood had also been granted to the priory by as many as thirteen different benefactors, besides the chapel of Ruxox, in the county of Bedford, with Cublington, North Marston and half Chesham, Buckinghamshire, and Higham Ferrers with half Pattishall, Northamptonshire. Several of these gifts were disputed before the century was out, but most of them were retained by the priory throughout its existence.Page, William; Doubleday, Herbert Arthur, eds. Houses of Austin canons: The priory of Dunstable in The Victoria History of the County of Bedford: Volume 1, 1904, pp. 371–377
Dunstable priory was a daughter house of Holy Trinity Priory, which itself had been founded from St. Botolph's Priory in Colchester."The History of the Priory Church", Dunstable Parish Bernard, the first prior of the house, was closely associated with the introduction of Austin Canons into England. His brother Norman became prior first of St. Botolph's, and then of Holy Trinity. They had traveled to Chartres and Beauvais to learn the Rule of Saint Augustine, with a view to introducing it into England.
13th century At the beginning of the 13th century, in the year 1202, Richard de Morins, a canon of Merton, became prior of Dunstable. From 1210 he took over as Dunstable's chronicler.Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England c. 550-c. 1307 (1974), p. 335. He was evidently a man of very varied interests and a considerable capacity for affairs. Before he had been prior a year he was dispatched on the king's business to Rome; and it was probably owing to his influence that the lordship of Houghton Regis, with other gifts, were confirmed to the priory in 1203.
During his term of office, in the year 1219, he secured the right of holding a court at Dunstable for all pleas of the Crown, and of sitting beside the justices itinerant at their visits to the town: a privilege which brought him into less happy relations with the townsmen and may have helped to hasten their revolt against his authority in 1228. He also successfully established the right of his house to the Harlington church in 1223. The priory was twice visited by Henry III. during the time of Richard de Morins: once after the siege of Bedford Castle, and again in the midst of the troubles connected with the burgesses, whom he attempted to pacify, at the prior's earnest request.
In spite of the losses under King John and the difficulties with the burgesses, the priory seems to have enjoyed greater prosperity at this time than at any later period of which we have a clear account. In 1213 the conventual church was dedicated by Bishop Hugh of Wells. The gift of the church of Bradbourne in the Peak, with its chapels and lands, provided maintenance for three canons, and formed a kind of cell to the priory. The death of Richard de Morins in 1242 was followed immediately by heavy losses. In 1243, 800 of the sheep belonging to the priory in the Peak district died, and a succession of bad seasons led to great scarcity. By 1255 the canons not only had no corn to sell but not enough for themselves; they had to buy all their food at great expense, for two years after this; so that the Friars Preachers, when they arrived in 1259, were even less welcome than they would have been at any ordinary time. When Simon of Eaton became prior in 1262, he found the house 400 marks in debt, and all the wool of the year already sold.
But in spite of the pressure of debt and poverty, which was not diminished during his term of office, the prior was as much interested as his predecessors had been in the course of public events. Like most of the clergy and religious of the period, he was in sympathy with Simon de Montfort, whom he looked upon as the champion of the Church; and in 1263, when the earl visited Dunstable, the prior went out to meet him, and admitted him to the fraternity of the house. In 1265 a council was held at Dunstable to consider the possibility of peace with the defeated barons, and the king and queen visited the house in the course of the year; but though Simon de Montfort had been there quite recently, and the sympathy of the prior with his cause could not have been altogether a secret one, no fine was imposed upon the priory on that account.
In 1274 a long and expensive suit was begun between the prior and convent of Dunstable and Eudo la Zouche, who had become lord of Houghton and Eaton Bray by his marriage with Millicent de Cantelow. Eudo refused to recognize the rights of the prior (established not only by charter but by long custom) to a gallows and prison in Houghton; he released one of his men from the prison and overthrew the gallows. Under the next prior, William le Breton, the gallows was restored; but Eudo still refused to recognize the prison as the prior's right, and presently erected a gallows of his own. The dispute went on for some years, and, after the death of Eudo, was continued by his wife Millicent until the year 1289, when it was finally decided in favor of the prior.
In 1286, the priory had to trim its trees and hedges along the King's Highway, pursuant to the Statute of Winchester to curb the activities of highwaymen.Gransden, Antonia. Historical Writing in England, Routledge, 2013, p. 427 It was just at this time that the king was asking for subsidies for his Welsh war. By an accumulation of misfortune, in the same winter, the outer walls of the priory had collapsed in the wet weather, and their hayricks had been destroyed by fire; and the tithes due to the Hospitallers from North Marston church were in such long arrears that a new arrangement had to be made to pay them off. In 1295 the house at Bradbourne was so poor that all the wool produced there had to be granted to the support of the three brethren who served the church and chapels. The later pages of the annals are a long story of poverty and struggle to get clear of debt.
Clock 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. Its fate is unknown.
14th to 16th century Of the fourteenth 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 house from serious loss, and his burghers from punishment. Henry VI visited Dunstable in 1459, but there is no record of his relations with the priory; its history during the fifteenth century is not recorded in any way. But in the sixteenth 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 and the bishops of Winchester, London, Bath and Lincoln pronounced the marriage between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon to be null and void. The location arose as Catherine was then residing at nearby Ampthill, some 12 miles to the north. In 1535 the prior, Gervase Markham, with twelve canons, signed the acknowledgement of the Royal Supremacy, and on 20 January 1540–1, he surrendered his house to the king and received a pension of £60.
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 the 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. 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.
There were only thirteen monks besides the prior at the time of the dissolution; eleven canons and two lay brothers; in the early days there were probably more, though never a very large number. Between the years 1223 and 1275 only twenty-five admissions to the novitiate are recorded, and thirteen deaths; but the entries were perhaps not always made with equal care, and the entrance of lay brothers was not noticed at all. Besides the religious there were a number of other inmates of the priory; a 'new house for the carpenters and wheelwrights within the court' was built in 1250; there was accommodation also for the chaplains of the monastery, and for boarders who had bought corrodies, as well as pensioners in the almonry. The porter of the great gate was sometimes a secular, unlike the custom of Benedictine houses.
Visitations There can be no doubt of the good order of the house during the time of Richard de Morins; he would scarcely have been chosen twice to visit other houses unless he had ruled his own with care and diligence. During his forty years of office canons of Dunstable were at least five times elected priors to other monasteries of the order—at Caldwell, St. Frideswide's, Ashby and Coldnorton. Bishop Grosseteste visited the house once in 1236, not so much to inquire into the daily life of the priory as to investigate its title to several appropriate churches; but he exacted an oath on this occasion from all the canons individually, and one of them fled to Woburn rather than submit to it.