PhD – Part-time
"The suppression of several of Kent’s monastic houses during Cardinal Wolsey’s asset-stripping ‘Little Dissolution’ (1520s). A critical study of three religious houses: ‘Tonbridge, Bayham, and Lesnes."
Jane has received funding for studies from the Ian Coulson Memorial Postgraduate Fund
Dr Sheila Sweetinburgh - first supervisor | Dr Claire Bartram - second supervisor/chair
Tonbridge Priory, Lesnes Abbey in Kent, with Bayham Abbey straddling the Kent/Sussex border were the only religious houses in the county that Cardinal Wolsey suppressed for the purpose of founding his college at Oxford. My research traces the three houses from foundation in the late twelfth century to their suppression in the ‘Little Dissolution’ in the 1520s. It considers thematically foundation, early and continuing patronage; benefaction including relationships between religious and local communities; pilgrimage; spiritual economy and material economy; and implications of the ‘Little Dissolution’ in terms of religious, political, and social conditions of the early sixteenth century.
As a mature student, having gained an MA in Medieval & Early Modern Studies in 2014, I began researching religious houses in the vicinity of my home, which led to the discovery of a large volume of barely used documents of Tonbridge Priory, and its links to Wolsey’s Little Dissolution.
I am working with the Wills Group of the Lossenham Priory Project which links with my own project on religious houses and also has a significant link with the families that patronised Tonbridge Priory and Bayham Abbey.