Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 2.djvu/130

108 and zeal were in advance of his age, and to whose spirited labours the present generation are indebted for much variable information. That there was a church on this site of St. Mary's before the Conquest is placed beyond a doubt by the mention of it in the Domesday Survey:—"its rise into importance, however, took place in the reign of Henry I., when Roger de Newburgh, earl of Warwick, made it collegiate, and incorporated it with the collegiate church of All Saints, at that time standing within the precincts of the castle." He then rebuilt the church, and the piers and vaulting of the crypt are of that date.

By a decree of the bishop of Worcester, dated at Hartlebury, Dec. 24, 1367, (41 Ed. III.,) it appeared "that the churches of St. John, St. Michael, St. Laurence, St. Peter, and St. James, all standing within the precincts of this town, the most wanted churchyards, and the rest were grown ruinous, and that the collegiate church had room enough to contain the inhabitants, and a churchyard spacious enough to bury their dead—and it was therefore