With this change new privileges and grants were made. Riches flowed in on every side. Not only were the Redvers benefactors, but the Courtenays, and Wests, and Salisburys, into whose hands the manor of Christchurch came.[167]
Like most other ecclesiastical buildings, we hear but little of it till its dissolution. From its state we may be able to judge of the general condition of the monasteries, and how imperative was the change.
Leland[168] tells us that the Priory possessed but one volume—a small work on the Old-English laws. Their own accounts show us that the rules of St. Augustine had long been forgotten. Drunkenness had taken the place of fasting; and instead of giving they now owed.[169] Tradition, too, adds that the brethren were known in the town as the “Priory Lubbers.” To this had the Austin Canons sank. So it was throughout England. Abbot and poorest brother were alike steeped in sensuality, and benighted in ignorance.
Of the last prior, John Draper, we catch some faint glimpse in a letter from Robert Southwell and four other commissioners to Cromwell, dated from Christchurch, the 2nd of December. He appears to have been a man who trimmed his course with the breath of authority, utterly selfish, utterly despicable. Not one word does he appear to have raised on behalf of his priory. Not one sigh did he utter for the old, nor one aspiration after the new religion. Thus the commissioners write:—“Our humble dewties observyd unto y^r gudde Lordeschippe. It may lyke the same to be advertised that we have taken the surrender of the late priorye of Christ Churche twynhm̄, wher we founde the prior a very honest, conformable p̄son, And the howse well furnysshede w^t Jewellys and plate, whereof som be mete for the King^s majestie is use as A litill chalys of golde, a gudly lardge crosse doble gylt, w^t the foote garnyshyd w^t stone and perle, two gudly basuns doble gylt having the Kings armys well inamyld, a gudly great pyxe for the sacramēt doble gylt, And ther be also other things of sylv̄, right honest and of gudde valewe as well for the churche use as for the table resyvyd, and kept to the Kings use.”[170] Before the Dissolution came, whilst matters still trembled in the balance—whilst still there was hope that Protection would, for a little time longer, be given to hypocrisy, and Authority to sloth, he pleaded with Henry.[171] Now, when all hope was lost, when the end had arrived, the commissioners compliment him as the “very honest, conformable person.” Had he previously been in earnest they must have written very differently. By his conformity he purchased his peace. And so, after giving up his priory, he was allowed to depart with a pension, to finish his life as he pleased, at the Prior’s Lodgings at Sumerford Grange. There he died; and was buried in front of what had been his own choir; and his chantry still remains in the south choir aisle. Of the conventual buildings, which stood on the south side of the church, nothing remains except the fragments of the outer wall and the entrance lodge, built by Draper, with his initials still carved on the window label. A modern house stands on the site of the Refectory; and in digging its foundations, some tombs of the fourth century were found.[172] Other traces remain only in the names of the places, as Paradise Walk, by the side of the mill stream, and the Convent meadows, where, in an adjoining field, are the sites of the fishponds of the brethren.