By the Rev. J. J. Reynolds. 



267 



his consecration, a poor woman to the monastery, and in the latter 

 case to appoint a Nun to instruct her in religion. The Abbey appears 

 to have maintained to the last the high reputation it bore in the 

 time of William of Malmesbury, but the good order of the house 

 and the exemplary conduct and usefulness of the Nuns, were 

 in this, as in other similar cases, of no avail for its preservation. 

 The monastery was dissolved March 23rd, 1539, in the 30th year 

 of King Henry VIII. Pensions were assigned out of the revenues 

 to fifty-six Nuns, including the lady Abbess, Elizabeth Zouch, the 

 Prioress and Sub-Prioress, amounting altogether to £431 per annum. 

 The revenue at this time is rated by Dugdale at £1166 8s. 9d. per 

 annum ; and by Speed at £1329 Is. 3d. per annum. On the disso- 

 lution the work of destruction seems immediately to have commenced. 

 Leland, who visited Shaftesbury about a year after, says " The 



Abbey stood by of the town," which implies that it had 



been already demolished. A confirmation of the early destruction 

 of the Abbeys, chantries, hospitals and other religious houses of this 

 and other towns, and the decline and decay of these towns conse- 

 quent thereon, is found in an Act of Parliament passed just afterwards 

 32 Henry VIII., c. 18, 19, " Whereas there hath been in times past 

 many beautiful houses within the walls and liberties of" (58 cities 

 and towns are here named and among them) " Shaston, which houses 

 are now fallen down decayed, and at this time remain un-re-edified, 

 as desolate and vacant grounds ; many of them nigh adjoining to 

 the high streets, replenished with much uncleanness and filth, with 

 pits, cellars and vaults, lying open and uncovered to the great peril 

 of the king's subjects ; and other houses are in danger of falling : 

 now if the owners of the waste grounds on which houses have stood 

 within twenty-five years back, and of the decaying houses, do not in 

 three years, &c, then the lords of whom the ground is held, may 

 re-enter and seize the same, &c." 



By an Act passed 26 Henry VIII. this town was made the seat of 

 a suffragan Bishop. John Bradley S.T.B., Abbot of Milton, and 

 William Pelles were presented to the King for his nomination. 

 He nominated Bradley, who was consecrated under a commission 

 issued by Archbishop Cranmer dated Feb. 23rd, 1558. This Act, 



