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.

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.

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.

[6] 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.

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.

[6] 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The sub-prior and certain others were removed from their charge and forbidden to hold office in future, and certain 'less useful members' of the household expelled; in May of the following year, he deposed the prior, William le Breton, from all pastoral care.

It seems most likely that these depositions were on account of mismanagement rather than for any personal failings; the great necessity and heavy debts of the house called for stringent measures, and William le Breton had shown himself unable to meet the difficulty.

The canons seem to have borne no ill-will to Bishop Sutton for his corrections and were ready on his next visit to their church (which was made not officially but only in passing) to praise him for his excellent sermon.

It will suffice to instance, early in the century, the generous treatment of the two young canons (one only a novice), who escaped by night through a window and went to join the Friars Minor at Oxford.

They were indeed solemnly excommunicated and compelled to return; but after they had done their penance in the chapter house and had been absolved, they were allowed a year to consider the matter, and if after that time they preferred the stricter order, they were granted permission to depart; if not, they might remain at Dunstable.

A good deal later than this, in 1283, the apologetic way in which the chronicler relates how the prior went out to dinner with John Durant is sufficient to show that the ordinary rules and customs of the order were not commonly broken.

Hitherto there had not been enough canons nor enough money to set apart one for special study; but the prior now wished to do so (partly out of the profits of a chantry established by his own family), 'seeing the advantage of learning and the necessity of preaching, the priory being a populous place where a great number of people come together.'

[6] Bishop Grey's injunctions are the only notice that we have of the internal history of the priory during the fifteenth century; they do not indicate any special laxity, and only repeat the usual orders as to silence, singing of the divine office, the unlawfulness of eating and drinking after Compline, going to Dunstable or having visitors without permission.

And so again at the very end, just before the dissolution, the silence of Bishop Longland, and the king's choice of the priory for the solemn announcement of his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, constitute indirect evidence in favor of the house.

[6] Priors of Dunstable were:[6] The seal of the priory used in the fifteenth century (round and large) represents St. Peter seated, holding the keys in the left hand, and the right raised in benediction.