page_title: Shrewsbury Abbey
section_title: Holy Cross Church
hierarchical_section_title: Shrewsbury Abbey / History / Holy Cross Church
caption_attribution_description: English: Medieval seal of the Abbey Foregate parish, then separate from the town of Shrewsbury, England.
context_page_description: The Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Shrewsbury is an ancient foundation in Shrewsbury, the county town of Shropshire, England.
  The Abbey was founded in 1083 as a Benedictine monastery by the Norman Earl of Shrewsbury, Roger de Montgomery. It grew to be one of the most important and influential abbeys in England, and an important centre of pilgrimage. Although much of the Abbey was destroyed in the 16th century, the nave survived as a parish church, and today serves as the mother church for the Parish of Holy Cross.
  The Abbey is a Grade I listed building and is a member of the Greater Churches Group. It is located to the east of Shrewsbury town centre, near the English Bridge, and is surrounded by a triangular area which is today referred to as Abbey Foregate.
context_section_description: The abbey's church had always doubled as the church for the Abbey Foregate parish, as it owed its origins to the church, founded by Siward the Fat. It was a vicarage controlled by the abbey community. Its title varied slightly through time. One William, is known to have served as clericus de Cruce, clerk of the Cross, in the early 13th century. Around mid-century, Henry was the vicar of the altar of the Holy Cross. A late medieval reference in the records of the Diocese of Hereford calls it Vicaria altaris Sancte Crucis, ecclesia paochialis de Foriete Monachorum: Vicarage of the altar of Holy Cross, parish church of the Monk's Foregate. From the brief reign of Edward V (1483) comes a document that appends Sancti Egidii or Saint Giles' to the name of the parish.
  The parish had its own bailiffs, burgesses and seal, distinct from those of Shrewsbury itself. However, Shrewsbury's renewed municipal charter of 1586 brought Holy Cross parish under its civic authority. Until the Dissolution, the right to present to the vicarage, or advowson, belonged to the Abbot and convent of Shrewsbury Abbey. Then it passed to the Crown. However, in 1797, legislation was passed to transfer the advowson to Thomas Noel Hill, 2nd Baron Berwick of Attingham Park, in exchange for the patronage of some parishes he held in Suffolk.
  The vicarage was fairly generously endowed with land and other income sources under an agreement made apparently by Abbot John Drayton in the 13th century. After the Dissolution of the Abbey, the parish church continued to be housed in the remains of the abbey church.
  The church seems to have been damaged as a result of measures taken to fortify Shrewsbury after the Parliamentarians took the town in 1645. On 2 December 1646 the Parliamentarian County Committee instigated a survey and set aside timber for repairs. In 1649 the churchwardens paid Thomas Landford £10 1s. to repair breaches on the north side and east end, using stones from the old abbey buildings, and were able to offset against this 3s. they made by selling materials recovered from the damaged part of the church. In this period the church was generally called Abbey Foregate Church, as Puritans rejected the veneration of saints and relics. Under the ultimately abortive proposals for a Presbyterian polity in Shropshire, dated 29 April 1647, Abbey Foregate parish was part of the county's first classis, along with most of the churches in Shrewsbury and the surrounding area. However, the minister was not appointed an elder of the classis and the parishioners remained uncooperative with Puritan church governance even after the collapse of the Presbyterian scheme.
caption: Medieval seal of the Abbey Foregate parish.
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