In 1410, Henry IV. annexed both of these churches to his college at Battlefield; and being thus deprived of its property, St. Julian’s became no better than a curacy.
The Church of St. Peter, called “The Parish of the City,” was a small structure of wood, built about Edward the Confessor’s time, by Siward, a Saxon nobleman, and stood on the site where Earl Roger de Montgomery founded a large Benedictine Abbey in 1083, which was re-dedicated to St. Peter, and endowed with a small portion of the vast possessions granted by the Conqueror to the first Earl of Shrewsbury.
This venerable warrior being seized with illness while residing in the castle he had lately built here,—apprehensive, too, that his dissolution might not be far distant,—and “to be sure of paradise,”—determined, with the consent of his countess Adelissa, to retire from the world, and become a monk within the confines of his own monastery.
This resolution he acted upon July 14th, 1094: and dying three days afterwards, obtained honourable interment in the “Lady Chapel” of that pile he had zealously commenced, and,
“By skill of earthly architect,”
nearly completed, to the service and honour of his Maker.
Hugh, his second son, surnamed Probus for his courage, and Goch (or the Red) by the Welshmen from his complexion, succeeded to the earldom, and in filial affection came with his barons to the abbey, to visit his father’s tomb; when he confirmed all former endowments, and gave many additional privileges, to which several of his barons added estates. [26]
Scarcely a century had elapsed from its foundation, before the monastery possessed “seventy-one distinct grants of manors or lands, twenty-four churches, the tithes of thirty-seven parishes or vills,” besides many extensive immunities of various descriptions, and an almost matchless collection of unique relics, in addition to the remains of that popular “martyr,” St. Wenefreda, which the monks procured, after many tedious negociations, from the priests and inhabitants of Gwytherin, in the county of Denbigh, in order to increase the celebrity of their house. After their translation hither, they were enshrined with much pomp near the high altar, and attracted multitudes of pilgrims, whose benefactions greatly contributed to the emolument of the church.
The abbot of this monastery had the honour of a seat in Parliament, and the authority of a bishop within his house. Of the 608 monasteries that existed in this kingdom at the time of the dissolution, it is recorded “the Abbey of Shrewsbury was 34th in opulence.”
According to the valor of 26th Henry VIII. the annual income was £572. 15s. 5d. a revenue considered equal to about £4750 of modern currency.