The methods of dissolution (HOW?)
Essentially, the dissolution was put into effect in three stages.
1. Crown began by justifying the closure of smaller monasteries by means of religious, moral and
financial critique that resulted in the statute Act for the Dissolution of the Smaller Monasteries. A
Court of Augmentations was established in 1536 to receive the property and also to regulate the
collection of the First Fruits and Tenths.
2. Following the Pilgrimage of Grace, the crown proceeded to close monasteries by attainting
abbots implicated in the rebellion and confiscating the monasteries as if it had been their personal
property.
3. Finally, it moved against the remaining monasteries by means of persuasion – inducement
(offers of pensions and alternative positions) and threat (resistance would ultimately result in
attainder). Campaigns were conducted on a strictly local level so that widespread resistance
could be avoided. The crown took careful steps to suppress rumours before finally securing an
Act for the Dissolution of the Larger Monasteries, which recognized the legality of what had
already been done.
The process of events was as follows:
Jan 1535 - Cromwell appointed the K's vicar - general and viceregent in spirituals.
1535 - Visitation
All monasteries were visited in a) the first half of 1535 by commissioners who examined the
wealth of the monasteries and b) from Sept by visitations led by four main individuals - Richard
Leyton, Thomas Legh, John ap Rice and John Tregonwell.)
THUS
a) the first established the wealth of the order - the returns of these were gathered together in the
Valor Ecclesiasticus (July 1535)
The Valor Ecclesiasticus (The value of the Church)
The VE demonstrated that the regular clergy received a net income of £136,000 pa. This directed
attention to the monasteries.
b) The second was to gather information about the moral health of the monasteries. Six men set
out in September 1535. The information they collected was compiled in the Compendium
Compertorum. 'It was undertaken largely for effect and to gather damaging evidence of the state
of monasticism' - Hoyle, p. 72.
The findings of Leyton and Legh provided CROMWELL with sufficient evidence to show that many
things were amiss with English monasticism. Indeed the preamble to the 1536 Act begins by
speaking of the 'manifest sin, vicious, carnal and abominable living [which] is daily used and
committed among the little and small abbeys'.
1536 - Act for the Dissolution of the Smaller Monasteries
The 1536 Act removed the estates of the monasteries 'unto the king's majesty and to his heirs and
assigns forever, to do and use therewith his and their own wills, to the pleasure of Almighty God
and to the honour and profit of his realm'.
- smaller houses - those with less than £200 (- there are various estimates from 300 to 419) in
income per annum
- monks could either transfer to larger monasteries or be dispensed to hold benefices
- heads of the houses were offered pensions.
Court of Augmentations - this was set up in 1536 to receive the wealth of the monasteries.
1537-8
Following the Pilgrimage of Grace, it is arguable that the crown moved by stealth. Instead of
announcing a policy of dissolution, it approached the problem monastery-by-monastery.
This had at least two advantages. Firstly, it would reduce the possibility of a general rebellion like
the Pilgrimage from occurring again; secondly, it would not be opposed in parliament.
Two methods in particular were adopted. The first was to acquire monastic property by means of
attainder. The second was by means of Persuasion towards ‘voluntary’ surrender (which is in fact
the method most used after 1536 leading to the complete suppression of monasticism in England
by 1540).
Acts of Attainder
Crown lawyers developed the doctrine that not only was a community as a corporation subject to
the feudal law and so liable to the law of escheat (the return of lands to the king), but that the
treason of the head of the corporation, the abbot, constituted valid grounds for seizure.
Immediately following the Pilgrimage of Grace, the heads of five abbeys and one priory were
attainted of treason and executed because of the support they had given the Pilgrimage. Their
houses were declared foregut to the King – as if they had been their private estates and
immediately suppressed.
The 6 abbots were: Adam Sedbar, Abbot of Jervaulx, William Trafford, Abbot of Sawley, Matthew
Mackarel, Abbot of Barlings and Bishop of Chalcedon, William Thirsk, Abbot of Fountains and the
Prior of Bridlington),
Persuasion towards voluntary surrender by threat and inducement
Their example provided the backdrop of the second method – persuasion, by inducement and
threat.
Inducement included pensions not just for abbots this time but for all the monks.
Thomas Legh announced a new course of visitations in January 1538 – and this time the outcome
was different. Where a house had not been found to have mended its ways since the visitations
of 1536, it was immediately closed down.
• ‘In the king’s mind, the association between papal power and superstition was well
established.’ (Bernard)
BUT there was no national campaign of preaching against monastic pilgrimage shrines, yet where
‘superstition’ was found, it was denounced.
This policy involved the dismantling, and often the ridiculing and destroying of pilgrimage shrines.
For example, the Rood of Grace at Maidstone was taken down and denounced as fraud on
market day, and similar things happened at bury St Edmunds, Bermonddsey Abbey, the images of
Our Lady at Ipswich and from Walsingham to name but a few.
1539
There was a brief interlude in 1539 when the government secured an act that declared the
surrender of abbeys by their abbots and convents was legal.
From early 1538 and steady stream of surrender is recorded. Readily identifiable groups of
commissioners were touring the country throughout 1538 and 1539, ‘persuading’ the abbots and
priors to give up their houses.
Obstacles
Some houses attempted to bribe their way to survival. Some reluctance was also voiced,
privately, by nobleman and gentleman. Some heads of houses who were far from keen on
surrender did what they could short of outright defiance of the royal will. Some required a period
in prison to be persuaded.
Three abbots were executed – Hugh Cooke, abbot of Reading (14 November 1539), Richard
Whiting, abbot of Glastonbury (15 November, 1539) and Thomas Beche, abbot of Colchester (1 st
Decmeber 1539).
Their reluctance offered obstacles to the government but it was not difficult to find them guilty of
denying the supremacy, which offered a different kind of opportunity.
The executions of monks and friars who had refused to accept the royal supremacy in 1534-35
and those of abbots and monks who had been caught up in the rebellion of 1536-7 made the price
that those who resisted would have to pay all too plain.
Ultimately the monasteries were vulnerable to the withdrawal of royal support. Rebellion had
failed in 1536-7 to preserve them.
By early 1540 – except in the special case of the monastic cathedrals – not a single monastery
remained in the kingdom.
Why was there little resistance?
The there was no coordinated resistance is explained by a combination of the following points–
• The methods employed by the crown enabled the ‘voluntary’ surrenders to appear
just that – voluntary.
• The king’s offensive moved slowly making it difficult to know when to make a stand.
• The crowns methods of moving against individual monasteries disguised the fact
that a general dissolution was taking place. Monks and abbots noticed the trend in
events. In a bid to stop the rumours that the king would suppress all the
monasteries, Richard Layton put abbots and priors into the stocks at Barnwell. The
government continued to deny that there was any policy of general supression.
• In 1536 all monks had to swear the oath of succession and to obey the king as the
head of the Church (Royal Supremacy), making opposition a treasonable offence.
• Monks who co-operated received pensions. Priors and abbots received very large
pensions, ensuring that – in many cases – they continued to live like the gentry.
Some monks and friars positively welcomed the developments. Some accepted that
the status quo was no longer an option, but sought reincarnation as religious
foundations of another kind – e.g parish churches, colleges.
• There were justified and widespread fears of reprisals on the scale of that directed
against the Carthusian monks in 1535.
• Local gentry often failed to support monastic opposition both because the
consequences were plain (the Pilgrimage had failed and its leaders violently and
brutally dealt with) and because they stood to benefit.
• It occurred just at the time when Henry had the country on alert for a potential
invasion from the princes of Christendom, stirred by the ‘cankered and venomous
serpent, Paul, bishop of Rome’ – this was not a time when dissent could flourish.
• What was happening could still be presented as the work of reform – a point
suggested by the creation of six new bishoprics from the rump of the monasteries in
Oxford, Chester, Bristol, Gloucester, Peterborough and Westminster. Notably,
abbots and monks signed declarations not only making the abbeys and monasteries
over to the king but also denouncing their previous lives.