The Catholic Church has had a very long and close connection with St. Ives. In the year 986AD, the Saxon Lord of the Manor of Slepe gave his manor to Ramsey Abbey, and the Abbot remained the Lord of the Manor for more than five hundred years. He established a Priory here in 1017, and this is described in the official town handbook as the most important building in mediaeval St Ives and the foundation of the town's fortunes. The Prior was the Abbot's representative and supervised the market and the building of bridges and the reconstruction of the parish church of All Saints. The Pope of those days, Pope Urban the 11, wrote a letter to the Prior confirming the establishment of the Priory. There was nothing very exceptional in this. Benedictine monasteries were very widespread in mediaeval times: Canterbury, York, Ely, and Peterborough as well as Ramsey, to mention but a few in England, had their counterparts in all the West European countries, where it is estimated they totalled 40,000 monasteries. Each day the bells would ring out the seven hours of prayer: Matins, Lauds, Prime, ….Vespers, and the monks would leave their work at once and assemble in the church in order to chant the praises of God. It was this regular daily worship which gradually led to the conversion and civilisation of Europe after all the violence and lawlessness of the Dark Ages, when the barbarians overran the Roman Empire. The Rule of St Benedict combined the Christian Way of life with the ancient Roman ideal of law and order. One can imagine how the Priory bells rang out over St Ives and the fenlands day after day for more than half a millennium. Quite suddenly, in the middle of the 16th century, the monasteries were dissolved, the bells fell silent, and the Catholic Church disappeared. As Cardinal Newman wrote: “The presence of Catholicism was at length simply removed - its grace disowned - its power despised - its name, except as a matter of history, at length almost unknown.” So fierce was the persecution in Cambridge and the Fen towns that Catholicism was indeed, for a time, almost extinguished.