You would hardly expect to find any remains of the effigies of the Dominican saints in England today, after the great clearance made at the time of the Reformation, From 1221, the year St Dominic died, until the end of Mary's reign in 1558, or for three hundred years, there had been a continuous Dominican life throughout the kingdom.

It is amazing how quickly it spread and took root in most of the principal towns of England and Wales. In no other country were so many priories founded in so short a space of time. At the suppression, there were over a hundred, with an estimated number of nearly two thousand friars.

The eastern counties seem to have been the stronghold, and it is here that relics—strange as it may seem—have survived to the present day, in stone, alabaster, wood and glass.