their unbreathed memories" in setting forth such subjects as the Birth
of Christ and the Murder of the Innocents. But although Henry VIII
himself was received in 1511 with pageantry and stayed at the Priory,
royal favours and monastic hospitality availed neither men nor
buildings when the Dissolution came. On 15th January, 1539, Thomas
Camswell, the last Prior of St. Mary's, surrendered. "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 _£_731 19
_s_. 5_d_. Deducting a Fee-Ferme rent to the Crown, reserved by Roger
de Montalt, and other annual payments, the clear remainder was _£_499
7_s_. 4_d_. 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