In 1480 the Knights Hospitallers, who had a commandery in the parish, founded by the De Multons about 1230, purchased the advowson from St. Mary’s Abbey, and made the parish church their collegiate church. They also obtained an appropriation of the rectory, and a vicarage was ordained. The Knights maintained a college of ten priests, living in a house in Wormgate (_i.e._ Withamgate). The old church of the Knights was deserted, and was eventually pulled down in 1626, the material being used to repair St. Botulf’s. After the sale of the advowson the priory became of small importance, and was dissolved in 1536. The Order of the Knights was dissolved in 1540, and its possessions confiscated by King Henry VIII., who, in 1545, sold the endowment of the rectory and the patronage of the vicarage to the newly-created corporation of Boston, subject, however, to the payment of the vicar’s stipend, and to the duty of repairing the chancel. At the Reformation the screens were broken away, and the church despoiled of its furniture and decoration. During the great rebellion it was used as a cavalry stable, the horses being tethered to iron rings fixed in the pillars. The Antipædobaptists then had a congregation in Boston (which was revived and endowed in 1756, and is still flourishing), and were influential in the neighbourhood; this led to the destruction of the mediæval fonts in Boston and many of the neighbouring churches. The brasses also were torn up, and what remained of the stained glass and stone imagery was broken, and the chapels and other buildings encircling the church were gradually removed during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.