The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1850-07-23 00:00:00

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LIVERPOOL AND BIRKENITEAD AT THE REFORMATION.
—The twenty-sixth of Henry the Eighth, 153-1-5, was the
memorable year in which the king end parliament de-
clared the connexion with the Church of Rome, which
had existed for so many ages, to be at an end, end in
which they committed the monarchy and people of Eng-
land to that great movement which had already agitated
the continent for upwards of twenty years ; which conti-
nued to agitete the continent and these islands, with
constant and increasing violence, during the whole of the
reigns of the Tudor princes, and whose consequences will
be felt to the most remote ages. The effeet of this great
change was at once felt in Liverpool, in the revolu' ion of
religious opinion, and the change in the forms of religious
worship. The change in the property of the church was
less felt in Liverpool than in many other places; the en-
dowments, for purposes proscribed by the reformers of
religion, being very small. The patronage of Walton,
which was then the parish church of Liverpool, had been
sold (as I have already mentioned) some years before to
the Molyneux family, by the monastery of St. Peter and
St. Paul, at Shrewsbury : hence it escaped the general
plunder of monastic property. The priory of Birkenhead,
immediately opposite to Liverpool, but not possessing
much property in the town, was at once suppressed, along
with the smaller monastic houses. In the year 1545, all
the property and rights which the priors had held for
about four hundred years passed, by grant, into the hands
of Ralph Worsley, of Worsley, Lancashire, page of the
wardrobe and groom of the chamber " of the:,mconquered
chief," Henry the Eighth, and afterwards keener of the •
xtl%;,oon
acres
dove-house, o v e
0-
fh o
meadowu se , one
,
lions, lionesses, and leopards in the Tower. This grant
included the site of the late priory of b'irkenhead, with all
the church, belfry, and churchyard of the same; all the
, and Bidston,
mills,arab laid, and one parcel of land where
barns,a amnedsssutaabgleeso,
rwitteliilienmoernt, nighin
sev house,ntyedifices,a racres
of
; to ether with
Ilmttli:lieexl l pl:wroaeasiess' eidis'usensitieosi :It ohotfefo Rt:bspeehb-segyala.rmttr) di%en''l:l,°ll; with two
ferry,
the boat called the " Ferribot." and the profit of the
priory, in the
nalri dlaKmiirsli
ably)
dWrigh
ha ltlsc yb,elootilligeirnwgi set
0A \triallel a segain
townships, parishes, or hamlets of Birkenhead. Claugh-
ptsoaa
Istiis),
passing
Welton,
itilutrooantue,gdhTvr anda ir:bueersi
At the time when the priory was granted to Ralph Wors-
ley it produced a clear rental of 4:115 13s. sd. After
enl:iallnindidss,Bt:iit:heata'nhsdecaoK(m) ierkilnYto \tiCh?lealloesyl
session of Francis Richard Price, Esq ,
in whom the
manor of Birkenhead, and the rights Esq.,
formerly
belonged to the priory, are now vested. The monks of
.Birkenhead had a granary in Water-street, Liverpool,
which produced
a rent of 4s. 2d. at the time when the
priory was suppressed. That was the only property
which they. fOtisesEeil in Liverpool.—Bainee Hi4/ory of
Licerpeot.