The house of the Black Friars of Bristol was founded in the parish of the priory of St. James in 1227 or 1228, by Maurice de Gaunt, great-grandson of Robert Fitzharding, and Matthew de Gurnay. In 1230, at the request of the friars, William of Blois, bishop of Worcester, came to dedicate their altar and burial-ground. In 1232 Henry III granted a licence to the friars to enlarge their burial-ground, and many of the Bristol citizens in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries willed their bodies to be buried in the cemetery of the Black Friars. In 1532/ 1533 Hugh Latimer preached against purgatory and other hitherto accepted doctrines in the church of the Black Friars, and the prior, John Hilsey, preached in reply. In 1534, Hilsey became provincial of the order in England, and was appointed by Henry VIII together with George Brown, prior of a house of Augustinians, to visit the houses of the orders of friars throughout England. The object was to force the acceptance of the royal supremacy upon them, and to compel them to preach it to the people. On 9 June Hilsey secured the submission of the Black Friars at Bristol. The greater part of them abandoned the convent and fled from England. The houses of the friars were not included under the Act of 1536 for the suppression of the lesser monasteries. However, in 1537 the dissolution of the friaries was clearly contemplated. On 9 December Richard Ingworth, formerly prior of the Dominican house of King's Langley, was consecrated suffragan bishop of Dover, and soon afterwards he received two commissions to visit the friars. He was ordered to depose or suspend heads of houses against whom any charge was brought and to appoint others, and also to visit the convents, take possession of the keys, sequestrate goods, and make indentures and inventories. He took the surrender, which was signed by the prior and four others on 10 September. The land and buildings were eventually granted to William Chester and the church was dismantled. In 1747-1749 The friends meeting house was built on the location by George Tully with detailing by Thomas Paty, as a Quaker meeting house and was recently used as a register office. It has been renovated as part of the Cabot Circus development. In 1956, those persons buried in the the Quaker Burial Ground were re-interred in Avon View Cemetery.