By the 15th century Bath Abbey was badly dilapidated. Oliver King, Bishop of Bath and Wells, decided in 1500 to rebuild it on a smaller scale. The new abbey-church was completed just a few years before Bath Priory was dissolved in 1539. Then Henry VIII considered this new church redundant, and it was offered to the people of Bath to form their parish church; but they did not buy it, and it was stripped of its glass and lead. The last bishop in communion with Rome was deprived in 1559 but the succession of bishops has continued to the present day.