THE PRIORY DISSOLVED AND DESTROYED.
The Priory of Repton was dissolved in the year 1538. By the advice of Thomas Cromwell—malleus monachorum—the hammer of the monks—Henry VIII. issued a commission of inquiry into the condition, &c., of the monasteries in England. A visitation was made in 1535, the results were laid before the House of Commons, in a report commonly known as the “Black Book.” In 1536 an Act was passed for the suppression of all monasteries possessing an income of less than £200. a year. By this Act 376 monasteries were dissolved, and their revenues, £32,000. per annum, were granted to the King, by Divine permission Head of the Church! Repton Priory was among them. In the Valor Ecclesiasticus (27 Henry VIII.) the gross annual value of the temporalities and spiritualities is given as £167. 18s. 2½d. In 1535, Dr. Thomas Leigh and Dr. Richard Layton, visited Repton and gave the amount as £180. Also they reported, as they were expected, that the Canons were not living up to their vows, &c., &c., and “Thomas Thacker was put in possession of the scite of the seid priory and all the demaynes to yᵗ apperteynying to oʳ sov’aigne lorde the Kynges use the xxvj day of October in the xxx yere of oʳ seid sov’aigne lorde Kyng henry the viijᵗʰ.” There is a very full inventory of the goods and possessions in the Public Record Office, Augmentation Office Book, 172. A transcript of this inventory is given by Bigsby in his History of Repton, also by W. H. St. John Hope, in Vol. VI. of the Derbyshire Archæological Journal. From this inventory, and Mr. St. John Hope’s articles in the journal, a very good account and description can be given of the Priory as it was at the time of its dissolution.
The dissolved Priory was granted to Thomas Thacker in 1539, he died in 1548, leaving his property to his son Gilbert. He, according to Fuller (Church History, bk. vi., p. 358), “being alarmed with the news that Queen Mary had set up abbeys again (and fearing how large a reach such a precedent might have), upon a Sunday (belike the better day, the better deed) called together the carpenters and masons of that county, and plucked down in one day (churchwork is a cripple in going up, but rides post in coming down) a most beautiful church belonging thereto, saying “he would destroy the nest, for fear the birds should build therein again”.” The destruction took place in the year 1553. How well he accomplished the work is proved by the ruins uncovered during the years 1883-4.
This Gilbert died in 1563, as set forth on the mural tablet in the south aisle of Repton Church, a copy of which I have made, so that my readers may see what sort of a person he was who “wrought such a deed of shame.” Gilbert sold the remains of the Priory to the executors of Sir John Port in 1557, he and his descendants lived at the Hall till the year 1728, when Mary Thacker, heiress of the Manor of Repton Priory, left it, and other estates, to Sir Robert Burdett, of Foremark, Bart. Since that time the Hall has been occupied by the Headmasters of Repton School.