In Chaucer's day
this was a new foundation, Edward III., in 1355, having established
here a convent of Augustinian nuns dedicated in honour of Our Lady and
St Margaret. The house became extremely popular with the great
Kentish families, for it was not only very richly endowed, but always
governed by a prioress of noble birth, Princess Bridget, youngest
daughter of Edward IV., at one time holding the office, as later did
Lady Jane Scrope and Lady Margaret Beaumont: all are buried within. In
the miserable time of Henry VIII., when it was suppressed, its
revenues amounted to nearly four hundred pounds a year. The king
immediately seized the house for his own pleasure, but later gave it
to Anne of Cleves. On her death it came back to the Crown, but James
I. exchanged it with the Cecil family for their mansion of Theobalds.
They in their turn parted with it to Sir Edward Darcy. Little remains
of the old house to-day, a gate-house of the time of Henry VII., and a
wing of the convent, now a farm-house; but considerable parts of the
extensive walls may be seen.
It may well have been when the bell of that convent was ringing the
Angelus that Chaucer and his pilgrims entered Dartford on that April
evening so long ago.
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