One of the earlier recorded grants of recently seized monastic property - the buildings, site and associated properties being described as "suppressed and dissolved by the authority of Parliament" - this grant requires Culpeper, who had
previously paid £42 per annum, "to pay one fourth of a knight's fee and £8.3s.4d which is a tenth part of the value of the property".
The document shows one small area of discolouration and has a slight weakness to one fold, but is otherwise in remarkably fine and fresh condition and has a virtually intact seal suspended from the original green and white cord.
Henry VIII hands over a confiscated priory
FEATURING a fine portrait initial of Henry VIII and other devices associated with the Tudor monarchs, a vellum document of November 24, 1537, in which the Priory of Combewell [near Goudhurst in Kent] is granted by the king to Thomas Culpeper, was sold for £4400 in an August 26 sale of autographs, historical documents and ephemera held by Mullock Madeley of Ludlow.