Foundation St Peter's Abbey had been founded in
Gloucester about 679 by
Osric, ruler of the
Hwicce, and at the end of the ninth century
Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians and his wife
Æthelflæd, daughter of King
Alfred the Great, founded a new minster at a different location in Gloucester, also initially dedicated to St Peter. In 909 a combined West Saxon and Mercian raid into Danish territory resulted in the translation of some of the bones of
St Oswald to the new church from
Bardney Abbey in Lincolnshire, and the priory was renamed St Oswald's in his honour.
Royal favour St Oswald's, founded when Gloucester was an important new
burh, at first enjoyed royal favour, and both Æthelflæd and Æthelred were buried there. Æthelflæd's nephew, the future King
Æthelstan, was brought up at their court, and according to a charter only preserved in a transcript dating from 1304, in 925 Æthelstan granted privileges to St Oswald's "according to a pact of paternal piety which formerly he pledged with Æthelred". Æthelstan was a major benefactor of St Oswald's, and he may have commissioned grave covers for the tombs of Æthelflæd and Æthelred. Prior to the building of the new St Peter's Abbey in 1089, St Oswald's was the major destination of pilgrims journeying to Gloucester.
Decline The priory soon declined into obscurity. Late in the reign of
King Cnut its estates were used as an endowment for a royal clerk. In 1089
Serlo, the Norman
abbot of the original St Peter's, began an ambitious new church (later
Gloucester Cathedral) to replace the old minster, and St Oswald's, its emoluments much reduced, became a minor house of
Augustinian canons. The monastery was suppressed in 1536, and became the parish church of St Catherine, but this was destroyed in a
Civil War siege in 1643. ==Legacy==