Thomas Docwra Docwra in 1519. Another transaction was the leasing of land in Hampton, Middlesex to Thomas Wolsey, the Archbishop of York. This is where Wolsey built Hampton Court of which Henry VIII of England took possession when Wolsey fell from favour. Overall the Order had over 40 preceptories spread out from Cornwall to Northumberland, the majority of which retained their consensual status. Docwra would have had to visit them all once a year. As the Lord of St John, Docwra was a senior lay baron with a seat in the House of Lords. He was one of the peers who tried
Ford Palace which are of early Tudor date. Gough wrote that Archbishop Thomas Cranmer (1533 – 1555) "seems to have been particularly attached to [Ford Palace], ... [involving it] inextricably with the progress of the English Reformation." He was at the palace in 1535 when he wrote to King Henry VIII concerning the prior of Blackfriars, Canterbury, who had objected to his preaching against the Pope, and in 1536, when he wrote to Thomas Cromwell regarding a question of consanguinity. The year after, Cranmer left Lambeth Palace for Ford to escape an instance of plague, having concluded a meeting of bishops that