Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2012
It is much to be regretted that the Surveys of the Religious Houses dissolved in the reign of King Henry the Eighth, preserved in the Augmentation Office and Chapter-House at Westminster, do not, in general, describe the state of the edifices themselves at that period with any degree of exactness. I have, however, found in the latter Repository, a survey of the Priory of Bridlington, in the East Riding of the County of York, which is not liable to this objection, and which, on that account, you may perhaps think deserving of being read to the Society of Antiquaries; for this purpose I beg leave to enclose a Transcript of it. The Survey is without date, but from its having the signature of Richard Pollard, who was one of the King's General Surveyors, the time of its being written may be fixed at about the thirty-second year of Henry VIIIth, immediately after the Dissolution. I will merely add, that the Priory of Bridlington was a Priory of Black Canons, of the Order of St. Austin, and that it was founded by Waiter de Gant, early in the reign of King Henry the First.