Event detail for site: Llanbadarn Fawr

c. 1135: Dissolution

When the Welsh re-conquered Ceredigan / Cardigan they drove the Gloucester monks away. As Gerald of Wales writes,

'In the reign of King Henry I, when the English were still in control of Wales, St Peter's monastery in Gloucester administered this church in peace and tranquillity. After Henry's death the English were driven out and the monks expelled. As I have explained laymen took forcible possession of the church and brought in their own clergy.'
[Gerald of Wales, Journey through Wales, pp. 179-80]

By 1136 the house was no longer in Gloucester's possession and later became a college.
The monks of Gloucester continued to seek redress - in 1175 they appealed to the pope, but were unsuccessful; they appealed again in 1251.
Burton ('Foundation, transition and transformation', p. 26) has recently argued that the foundation of a Benedictine monastery at Llanbadarn Fawr represents an attempt, albeit unsuccessful, 'to transform and modernize and ancient and major clas church'.

Bibliographical sources

Printed sources

Medieval Religious Houses, England and Wales, ed. R. Neville Hadcock and David Knowles (Harlow, 1971) pp. 55, 69

Historia et Cartularium Monasterii Sancti Petri Gloucestria, Rolls Series, 33, 3 vols, ed. W. H. Hart (London, 1863-1867) vol. 2, pp. 76-77, 79

Burton, Janet, 'Transition and transformation: the Benedictine houses', in Monastic Wales: New Approaches, ed. Janet Burton and Karen Stöber (University of Wales: Cardiff, 2013) p. 26

Heale, Martin, The Dependent Priories of Medieval English Monasteries, Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, 22 (Boydell and Brewer: Woodbridge, 2004) p. 51

Other events in the history of this site