Its ancient abbey is a venerable building, founded in 715, by two brothers, Odo and Dodo, who endowed it with the manor of Stanway in Gloucestershire, &c. &c. sufficient to maintain a prior and four monks of the order of Benedictines: this priory was afterwards, about the year 980, subjected to the priory of Cranbourne, in Dorsetshire, but being subsequently rebuilt in 1102, by Robert Fitz-Hamon, and its endowments greatly enlarged, Girald, the Abbot of Cranbourne, on account of the fruitfulness of the soil, and superiority of its situation, removed his establishment to it, leaving only a prior and two monks at Cranbourne. From this period it appears to have risen in consequence as a town. The ashes of many noble characters are here deposited; and amongst the rest, amidst the mingled heap of slain and murdered at and after the battle of Tewkesbury, those of the accomplished and lamented Edward, Prince of Wales, son of King Henry the Sixth; Edmund, Duke of Somerset; his brother John de Somerset, the Earl of Devonshire; Lord Wenlock, Master of the Horse to the Prince, with numerous others. Here likewise rest in peace, where all animosities are forgotten, the remains of _false_, _fleeting_, _perjured Clarence_; as also those of Isabel his wife, who was buried with great pomp and solemnity. Further particulars of this ancient town the reader will obtain by reference to a small but interesting historical work, on the Antiquities of Tewkesbury, by W. Dyde of that place; who, after giving a very full and explicit account of the contest betwixt the houses of York and Lancaster, concludes by saying, “The local memorials of this very decisive battle are but few. The principal scenes of the action are the meadow, which has received the appellation of Bloody Meadow, and the Vineyard. The former lies between two gently descending banks, about half a mile south-west of the town, and was the spot where the slaughter was the greatest. The latter was the place where Queen Margaret lay, and where some intrenchments are still to be traced.” Stebbing says, “to the monastery and convent of Tewkesbury, King Henry the Seventh granted the parochial church of Towton to pray for the soul of Edmund, Duke of Somerset, his brother John, and others, who lost their lives in the quarrel of the house of Lancaster.”