Dr Francis Cave was the commissioner who negotiated the surrender and took control of the Abbey. Commissioners were supposed to pull down churches and claustral buildings as their first priority. In practice, however, the speed of destruction was dependant on the local demand for stone costs. Where demand for stone was high demolition was rapid but where demand for stone was low it was often never completed. In the case of Leicester Abbey there would have been a demand for stone in the town.
The Abbey then passed rapidly through several hands. In 1539 Cave obtained a 21-year lease on the site, but Cave’s tenancy came to an early end in 1551 when Edward VI granted the site to William Parr, the brother of Catherine Parr, Henry VIII’s last wife. But when Mary I came to the throne in 1553 Parr was detained and had all his estates confiscated. He made the mistake of being one of the protestant nobles who had supported the bid to make Lady Jane Grey queen rather than Mary.
Mary I granted the Abbey to Sir Edward Hastings, a catholic aristocrat and later Earl of Loughborough. However, Sir Edward fell out of favour under Elizabeth I, so in 1572 the site was sold to Henry Earl of Huntington. Henry in turn sold the Abbey to his younger brother, another Sir Edward Hastings, in 1590. It was the second Sir Edward Hastings who appears to have been was the first of the post Dissolution owners to have lived at the Abbey on a permanent basis. He occupied the lodgings above the gatehouse, whilst supervising the Earl’s business in Leicester, but whilst he was living there he began to develop the site as his private residence centred on the gatehouse lodgings.
Sir Edward died in 1603 and was succeeded by his son, Henry, who lived at the Abbey until he sold the site to William Cavendish, first Earl of Devonshire in 1613. It would appear that during their tenure at Leicester Abbey, Edward and Henry transformed the gatehouse into a residence by making several alterations, including the addition of a range of rooms to the north.
