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Rh the names of the priors between 1410 and 1492 have as yet been recovered : the history of the house during that period is almost a blank sheet. In 1504, at the resignation of Thomas Wright, the number of monks was insufficient for a canonical election, and the bishop was obliged to collate a prior ; and in 1524 the site of the monastery and its scanty revenues were granted to Cardinal Wolsey for the endowment of his new col- lege.

During the latter half of the fourteenth century, when the priory of Bradwell was evi- dently very poor and its monks few in number, it nevertheless appears to have had a very high character for the strict observance of the rule. For one of those monks who obtained per- mission from the good abbot of St. Albans, Thomas de la Mare, to leave his own monas- tery in search of a more perfect life, made choice of this little house as a place of holy retirement ; perhaps finding its simplicity and very real poverty more attractive than the stately order of the great abbey in which he was professed. The priory seems to have maintained this character for some time. When Bishop Gray visited it between 1431 and 1436 he had no serious fault to find with anything he heard or saw. He encour- aged the monks in spite of the smallness of their numbers still to be regular in rising to mattins ; and if there were not sufficient voices to sing the office they were permitted to recite it without note, yet devoutly and distinctly, observing the pause in every verse. If they were unable to go to the refectory to- gether every day, they should do so at least on Wednesdays and Fridays : in other words, the fact that they were few was not in any way to hinder the regularity of their life. The bishop concluded by bidding them increase their number as soon as possible on pain of con- tempt, but it seems probable that their pov- erty made this almost impossible, for in 1455 they had to petition for the suppression of the vicarage of Padbury and its union with the parish church : and the sum total of their revenue at the time of the dissolution of the monastery was less than 50. The original endowment of the priory comprised only certain lands in Wolverton and Padbury, and the churches of Wolverton, Padbury, Stantonbury, Chalfont St. Giles' and Stoke Hammond. The church of Stan- tonbury was granted at an early date to the Cathedral at Lincoln, and the church of Chalfont St. Giles in the year 1259; the latter was however reckoned among the bene- fices belonging to the monastery in 1527. The temporalities assigned to Bradwell in 1291 amount only to £10 19s. 10d. ; and a survey taken in 1380 gave a total of £32 6s. 2d. At the dissolution the total issues of the house were stated to be £47 4s. 1¼d.

Nigel, occurs 1189 Richard, occurs 1201 John, occurs 1219 Richard, resigned 1237 Simon de Kantia, elected 1237 John, occurs 1253 Bartholomew, occurs 1272 Robert of Ramsey, elected 1280 John, died 1320 Robert of Rowsham, elected 1320 Robert Foliot, died 1331 Simon of Elstow, elected 1331, resigned William of Loughton, elected 1336, died John of Billing, elected 1349 John of Willen, deprived 1361