Battersea Priory is a castellated building reported to have been a Convent for Ursuline Nuns. PRIOR was the Ecclesiastical title formerly given to the head of a small Monastery, to which the designation of Priory was applied. The Prior ranked next in position to the Abbot. Similarly the term Prioress was applied to the head of a female convent. The title of Grand Prior was given to the Commandants of the Grand Military Priories of the Orders of John of Jerusalem, of Malta and of the Templars. Alien Priories were cells of the religious houses in England which belonged to foreign Monasteries. The whole number is not exactly ascertained; the Monasticon has given a list of 100. Weever, p. 338, says 110. The houses belonging to the several religious orders which obtained in England and Wales, were, Cathedrals, Colleges, Abbeys, Priories, Preceptories, Commandries, Hospitals, Friaries, Hermitages, Chantries, and free Chapels. These were under the direction and management of various officers; the dissolution of houses of this kind began as early as 1312, when the Templars were suppressed; and in 1323 their lands, churches, advowsons, and liberties, here in England were given by Ed. II., st. 3, to the prior and brethren of the hospital of St. John at Jerusalem. In the years 1390, 1437, 1441, 1459, 1497, 1505, 1508, and 1515, several other houses were dissolved, and their revenues settled on different Colleges in Oxford and Cambridge. From the year 1312 in the reign of Edward the 2nd to the close of the reign of Henry VIII, 1547, the number of houses and places suppressed from first to last as far as any calculations appear to have been made were 23, 4; besides the friars' houses and those suppressed by Wolsey, and many small houses of which we have no particular account. Henry VIII founded six new bishoprics of which Westminster was one, which was changed by Queen Elizabeth into a Deanery with twelve prebends and a school. Persons desirous of obtaining information respecting Monasteries should consult Dugdale's _Monasticon Anglicanum_, (Lond. 1655, 1661, 1673). Also a new and greatly Enlarged Edition by Bandinel, Caley and Ellis, published in 1817, 1830, and reissued in 1846.