King's Langley Priory

King's Langley Priory was a Dominican priory in Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, England. It was located adjacent to the Kings Langley Royal Palace, residence of the Plantagenet English kings.

Langley was founded in 1308 by Edward II in fulfilment of a vow made when in peril. On 1 December, the king made the friars a grant of £100 a year until further orders; on 20 December he gave them his garden near the church and land there for building, and the next day assigned to them as a dwelling until the priory could be built a place called 'Little London.' The first prior was John de Warefeld, who had for some time belonged to Edward's household, and in August 1315 became his confessor.

The king in March 1312 gave the brothers 700 marks for building expenses, and in the summer of that year the conventual church was dedicated and a cemetery consecrated. Possibly, however, the church was not yet finished, for the body of Piers Gaveston, who was killed about this time, was not buried there until the end of 1314, when the ceremony took place with much state, the Archbishop of Canterbury and four bishops as well as many other ecclesiastics taking part in the funeral rites.

In October 1311 the king increased the annual income of the house to £150 to provide for fifteen friars added since the foundation, so that his grant in September 1312 of 500 marks during pleasure may have been intended for building purposes. He gave the friars in June 1315 a house with closes in his manor of Langley and leave to take wood for fuel and other necessaries from Chipperfield Wood. During some years of scarcity he also supplied them with corn.

The king, however, felt that this state of dependence on the Exchequer was unsatisfactory, and wished to endow them permanently. To overcome the difficulty that friars-preachers could not own property he proposed to found a house of Dominican nuns, who were to hold lands in trust for the brothers, and in 1318 he sent two friars to the pope for his authorization. Robert de Duffeld, the second Prior of King's Langley and the king's confessor, had been dispatched in October 1316 to the master of the order, apparently on the same errand, but nothing was done in the matter for years.

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