Dissolution of the Monasteries

In 1534, Cromwell initiated a Visitation of the Monasteries ostensibly to examine their character, in fact, to value their assets with a view to expropriation. The Crown was undergoing financial difficulties, and the wealth of the church, in contrast to its political weakness, made appropriation of church property both tempting and feasible. Suppression of monasteries in order to raise funds was not unknown previously. Cromwell had done the same thing on the instructions of Cardinal Wolsey to raise funds for two proposed colleges at Ipswich and Oxford years before. Now the Visitation allowed for an inventory of what the monasteries possessed, and the visiting commissioners claimed to have uncovered sexual immorality and financial impropriety amongst the monks and nuns, which became the ostensible justification for their suppression. The Church owned between one-fifth and one-third of the land in all England; Cromwell realised that he could bind the gentry and nobility to Royal Supremacy by selling to them the huge amount of Church lands, and that any reversion back to pre-Royal Supremacy would entail upsetting many of the powerful people in the realm. For these various reasons the Dissolution of the Monasteries was begun in 1536 with the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries Act, affecting smaller houses, those valued at less than £200 a year; the revenue was used by Henry to help build coastal defences against expected invasion, and all their land was given to the Crown or sold to the aristocracy. Whereas the royal supremacy had raised few eyebrows, the attack on abbeys and priories affected lay people. Mobs attacked those sent to break up monastic buildings; the suppression commissioners were attacked by local people in several places. In Northern England there were a series of uprisings by Catholics against the dissolutions in late 1536 and early 1537. In the autumn of 1536 there was a great muster, reckoned to be up to 40,000 in number, at Horncastle in Lincolnshire which was, with difficulty, dispersed by the nervous gentry. They had attempted without success to negotiate with the king by petition. The Pilgrimage of Grace was a more serious matter. Revolt spread through Yorkshire, and the rebels gathered at York. Robert Aske, their leader, negotiated the restoration of sixteen of the twenty-six northern monasteries, which had actually been dissolved. However, the promises made to them by the Duke of Norfolk were ignored on the king's orders. Norfolk was instructed to put the rebellion down. Forty-seven of the Lincolnshire rebels were executed and 132 from the northern pilgrimage. Further rebellions took place in Cornwall in early 1537, and in Walsingham (in Norfolk) which received similar treatment.

It took Cromwell four years to complete the process. In 1539 he moved to the dissolution of the larger monasteries which had escaped earlier. Many houses gave up voluntarily, though some sought exemption by payment. When their houses were closed down some monks sought transfer to larger houses. Many became secular priests. A few, including eighteen Carthusians, refused and were killed to the last man.

Henry VIII personally devised a plan to form at least thirteen new dioceses so that most counties had one based on a former monastery (or more than one); this was only partly carried out. New dioceses were established at Bristol, Gloucester, Oxford, Peterborough, Westminster, and Chester, but not for instance at Shrewsbury, Leicester, or Waltham.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 665