Ashridge Priory

Ashridge Priory was a medieval college of Austin canons[1] called variously the "Brothers of Penitence" or the "Boni Homines".

In 1283 Edmund, son of Richard, Earl of Cornwall holders of Berkhamsted Castle (two and half miles away) founded a monastery at Ashridge, Hertfordshire.

[2] The monastery was built for a rector and twenty canons who formed, according to the sixteenth-century historian Polydore Vergil, "a new order not before seen in England, and called the Boni homines".

[2] At the foundation of the abbey Edmund, 2nd Earl of Cornwall donated, among other things, a phial of Christ's blood.

[3] At the Dissolution of the Monasteries the priory was surrendered to the crown and King Henry VIII used it to house his children, namely Prince Edward and the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth.

[3][9] Edmund's mother had been married by proxy to Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse, a protector of the heretical sect.