Page:Archaeologia volume 38 part 1.djvu/64

48 mar School was built on part of the site of the Prior of Lewes's house, and under the school is a crypt, which was probably under the chapel of the priors. But in fact there were two crypts, the one which formed the subject of Mr. Gage Rokewood's paper, and the other which was described by Mr. Charles E. Gwilt.

Mr. Wilkinson, in his Londina Illustrata, in which he gives an account of this crypt with an interior view and ground-plan, and all subsequent writers, seem to have taken for granted the identity of the crypt mentioned (I believe for the first time in print) by Mr. Bray, and the house of the Prior of Lewes, mentioned by Stow. It is, however, sufficiently evident from the letters patent of 12th Henry VIII., that the house which was afterwards used for the vestry hall and schoolhouse was the property of Richard Panell and others, in the 12th of King Henry VIII., seventeen years prior to the date of the Prior of Lewes' surrender, which was by fine levied in Michaelmas term 29th Henry VIII.; and the letters patent also describe the premises in question as having the house of the Prior of Lewes on the east and south.

In the surrender from the Prior of Lewes to King Henry VIII., and in the