The abbey was founded in 1140 as the last of the seventeen Savigniac houses in England.
Queen Matilda had inherited the land on which the abbey would be built from her father, Count
Eustace III of Boulogne. From 1152 to 1160 the abbey was embroiled in a lawsuit arising from its attempts to remove a settlement from one of its estates. By 1370, however, the monastery was reported to be very poor, partly due to excessive spending and other mismanagement. Furthermore, during the so-called
Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, the abbey was broken into and raided. The abbey's financial woes were compounded by the royal imposition of
corrodians, favoured subjects who received pensions and lived in some style in the abbey precinct. The will of
John Sharpe (courtier), dated 1518, indicates that he held a lease of "mansion and lodgings at Coggeshall Abbey". A similar later lease survives for Clement Harleston, granted in 1528, and shows that these buildings were next to the infirmary. On the eve of the suppression of the monastery many, possibly false, charges were made against the abbot, William Love. In 1536 he was relieved of his duties and replaced by the more amenable Henry More, who offered little resistance to the impending
Dissolution. The abbey was heavily in debt by the time of its closure in 1538, following which the site was sold to
Sir Thomas Seymour. The abbey church was rapidly ransacked and demolished – it had gone by 1541, when Seymour exchanged the site for other lands. A house was built in 1581 on part of the monastery site by Anne Paycocke and her husband Richard Benton, and still stands. The surviving monastic buildings were converted for agricultural use, with the gate chapel and guest house serving as barns. == Remains ==