The seal of the Priory is curious. In the lower portion of the usual vesica-shaped device is an allusion to the dedication to St. Thomas of Canterbury, in the form of a representation of his martyrdom: Becket being shown falling by the altar, on which stands a chalice, at the moment of his skull being cleft by Richard le Bret’s sword, which protrudes, immensely large in proportion to the figure of the Archbishop, from the border. [Illustration: WOODSPRING PRIORY.] After more than three hundred and twenty years of an almost unruffled existence, this obscure religious house was suppressed in common with others, and its fabric and possessions confiscated. It was surrendered on September 27th, 1536, and the monks turned adrift upon the world, perhaps too late in life to set about the performance of any honest work; but by no means with that utter indifference as to whether they were clothed and fed, or went in rags and starved, that the apologists for monkery and critics of Henry the Eighth and his Ministers of State would have us believe. No: unless they had proved contumacious, the rulers and the brethren of the disestablished religious houses were pensioned. The last Prior of Woodspring, Roger Tormenton, who was appointed in 1525, received a pension of £12 per annum upon his surrendering the Priory in 1536—a sum equal to nearly £100 at present values. The Priory itself was then leased for twenty-one years to Edward Fettiplace, of Donington, Berkshire: one of the formerly numerous family of that name once settled chiefly in that county and in Oxfordshire, but now utterly extinct. Passing through many hands, it is now among the properties of the Smyth-Pigott family, owners of much land hereabouts, including the site of Weston-super-Mare.