St Neots Priory was a Benedictine monastery beside the town of St Neots in the historic county of Huntingdonshire which is now a district of the English county of Cambridgeshire.
Anglo-Saxon monastery A monastery was first founded here in about 974 by Earl Ælfric Cild (or Leofric) and his wife Aelfleda (or Æthelflæd), who granted it two hides of land, part of the manor of Eynesbury, later called the manor of St Neots. Its site is uncertain, though it may have been where the present St Mary's parish church stands. It is said that the relics of the Cornish Saint Neot were obtained from Neotstoke (now St Neot) in Cornwall and brought to the priory in order that it might have relics to attract pilgrims; hence the name of the town.
Alien priory of Bec Abbey Saint Anselm, abbot of Bec Abbey in Normandy and later to be Archbishop of Canterbury, apparently visited the shrine of St Neot in 1078-9. In 1081 he sent eighteen monks from Bec to replace the Saxon monks, and had it re-founded by Richard Fitz Gilbert and his wife Rothais or Rohais, lords of the manor, as a male Benedictine priory dependent on Bec. In 1113 Rothais granted the whole manor of St Neots to the priory, which it held until its suppression.
The Anglo-Norman nobility gave considerable support to Bec Abbey, enriching it with extensive properties in England, where in addition to St Neots, Bec possessed in the 15th century several priories, namely, Stoke-by-Clare, Wilsford, Steventon, Cowick, Ogbourne, and at some point also Blakenham Priory and Povington Priory. Among these St Neots Priory was particularly large.Marjorie M. Morgan, The Suppression of the Alien Priories, in History NS 26, 103 (1941) 204, 208 Bec also had Goldcliff Priory in Monmouthshire. The London suburb of Tooting Bec takes its name from the medieval village having been a possession of Bec Abbey.
At some point, quite possibly at the time of its re-foundation as a Benedictine priory, the monastery moved to a site on the riverside adjacent to a ford subsequently replaced by a bridge, a little way north of the present Market Square.
Because it was an alien priory (i.e., the dependency of a French mother-house) it suffered difficulties whenever there were hostilities between France and England, and particularly during the Hundred Years' War. Its property was continually seized for this reason, until like certain other alien priories it was eventually given its independence from Bec in 1409 by the quasi-naturalisation process known as denization.
Dissolution The priory was finally seized during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539.
After the dissolution, the buildings were pulled down. The dissolution commissioners had instructions to "pull down to the ground all the walls of the churches, stepulls, cloysters, fraterys, dorters, chapter howsys"David Knowles and R. Neville Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses, England and Wales, Longmans Green, London, 1953, p. 267 and all the rest. The materials were then to be sold for the profit of the Crown.
Nothing of the priory remains above ground; the last remaining structure, a gateway, was demolished in the late 18th century. A plaque marks the site.
Priors + Priors Name Dates Martin resigned 1132Herbert occurs 1159 to 1173Geoffrey occurs 1200 to 1204William occurs 1206 to 1210Roger occurs 1218 to 1223William occurs 1224Reginald elected 1226Hugh de Fagernum occurs 1236, resigned 1248Henry de Messeville resigned 1258William de Bonesbor elected 1258Elias de Ponte Episcopi, monk of Bec elected 1262, resigned 1262Henry of St Neots elected 1264Walter de Bernay Not knownThomas de Bensend elected 1275John de Bosco Reynoldi elected 1285, resigned 1292John de Secheville elected 1292, died 1302William de Bec elected 1302Geoffrey de Bec elected 1317Clement of St Stephen elected 1322, occurs till 1331Peter de Falk elected 1341William de Beaumont elected 1349Geoffrey de Branville elected 1352Peter de Villaribus elected 1353Christian de Troarn elected 1364, died 1372Robert de Glanville, monk of Bec elected 1372, claimed to be prior 1373, resigned 1377William of St Vedast had custody 1377 to 1399Edward Salisbury elected 1405William occurs 1422John Turvey resigned before 1439John Eton occurs 1447Henry occurs 1459 to 1461William Eynesbury occurs 1464 to 1486Thomas Raundes resigned 1508John Raundes last prior, elected 1508
Burials Richard fitz Gilbert, 1st Lord of Clare
See also Annals of St Neots
External links St Neots Museum St Neots Town Council
References