"In the charter of endowment, dated March 2nd, 1349, he gave the abbot and monks all those messuages, with the appurtenances at Tower Hill, which he had of John Corey, in pure and perpetual alms, ordering the house to be called 'The Royal Free Chapel of St. Mary of Graces.'"
In another charter it is said, "The king founded this house in remembrance and acknowledgement of the goodness of Almighty God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whom he had often called upon and found helpful to him by sea and by land; in wars and other perils, and therefore ordered this house to be called 'The King's Free Chapel of the Blessed Virgin of Graces, in memoriam Gratiarum.'"
He imported some monks from Beaulieu to occupy the house, and appointed Walter de Sta Cruce first president of the chapel, "whom he enjoined kindly to receive and treat the said religious who were to profess religion in the said chapel."
The house was a stately building of the new decorated Gothic, with its floriated windows, crocketted pinacles, flying buttresses, and clustered pillars, presenting a fair aspect to passers by on the river, as it stood a little way back from the bank, glowing in its pristine freshness and beauty. And the boatmen would rest on their oars and listen to the matins or vespers chanted by the brethren within its walls.
In the 50th year of his reign, the King further augmented the endowment by placing the Manors of Poplar, of Gravesend, and other manors in Kent, in trust for the abbey.
Of the Abbots, the names of but few have survived. William de Santa Cruce, formerly Abbot of Geronden, was the first, to whom the king made an allowance of £20 per annum for the maintenance of the household.
William Warden, probably his successor, was Abbot in 1360. Paschalis occurs in a record of the eighth Henry V., 1418. John Langton is named, in 1495, in a bequest from Jane Hall, of a tenement for her soul's health. In 1494 he was presented to the vicarage of Gedington, and in 1498, by Sir T. Lovelace, to that of Stokedanbey in the diocese of Lincoln. John, probably the same, occurs in 1503. Henry More made his profession as Abbot in 1516.
The house was surrendered in 1539, when the revenues were estimated at £602 12s. 6d. gross, and £546 10s. net per annum.
Dugdale says: "Of the manner of the surrender we find no account which gives occasion to guess that it was done by such as were in no authority, and therefore it was thought fit to conceal the knowledge thereof. It was granted by Henry VIII., 34th, to Sir Arthur D'Arcy; was clean pulled down, and of late times, in place thereof, is built a large storehouse for victuals, and convenient ovens are built there for baking biskets for the Royal Navy, and it is the victualling office for the same to this day. The grounds adjoyning, and belonging formerley to the said abbey, have small tenements built thereon."
Maitland, 1772, in his History of London, says that a portion of the original building was then standing, "now converted into a bisket bake-house," which is probably an error, as Dugdale states that it was "clean pulled down."