Cathedral - 1500 - 1600

Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries in 1539 included Peterborough Abbey. Fortunately, instead of being destroyed it was designated a cathedral. Peterborough became a city with the right to elect two Members of Parliament.

Although the power of the Church now began to wane, the cathedral's Dean and Chapter still governed the city through the manorial court. Also involved in local affairs were the church wardens, and religious guilds who gave alms to the poor. When Henry VIII confiscated the land from the guilds in 1547, three local citizens carried on the charitable work by buying up the property. Later, the guild property passed to 14 local men, known as the feoffees, who continued to run the charities.

The old monastic abbey school was refounded by Henry VIII in 1541 to educate "twenty poor boys, both destitute for the help of friends and endowed with minds apt for learning" and renamed the King's School. The school still exists today in Peterborough. Most ordinary people worked on the land or were tradespeople such as the butcher, baker or wool-comber.

The power of the wealthier families, who had brought up church lands, grew in the reign of Elizabeth I. Burghley House was built by William Cecil, (later Lord Burghley) the Queen's Secretary of State and her closest adviser. In 1576 Elizabeth passed the control of law and order in the city from the Bishop of Peterborough to Lord Burghley.

A celebrated figure in Tudor Peterborough was Robert Scarlett (left), the cathedral gravedigger, who lived to be 98. He buried both Katharine of Aragon (Henry VIII's first wife) and Mary Queen of Scots (executed at Fotheringhay in 1587) at Peterborough, and also claimed to have buried two members of each Peterborough household during his life.