Suppression of English Monasteries under Henry VIII
From any point of view the destruction of the English monasteries
by Henry VIII must be regarded as one of the great events of the
sixteenth century. They were looked upon in England, at the time
of Henry's breach with Rome, as one of the great bulwarks of the
papal system. The monks had been called "the great standing army
of Rome." One of the first practical results of the assumption of
the highest spiritual powers by the king was the supervision by
royal decree of the ordinary episcopal visitations, and the
appointment of a layman -- Thomas Cromwell -- as the king's vicar-
general in spirituals, with special authority to visit the
monastic houses, and to bring them into line with the new order of
things. This was in 1534; and, some time prior to the December of
that year, arrangements were already being made for a systematic
visitation. A document, dated 21 January, 1535, allows Cromwell to
conduct the visit through "commissaries" -- rather than personally
-- as the minister is said to be at that time too busy with "the
affairs of the whole kingdom." It is now practically admitted
that, even prior to the issue of these commissions of visitation,
the project of suppressing some, if indeed not all, of the
monastic establishments in the country, had not only been
broached, but had become part of Henry's practical politics. It is
well to remember this, as it throws an interesting and somewhat
unexpected light upon the first dissolutions: the monasteries were
doomed prior to these visitations, and not in consequence of them,
as we have been asked to believe according to the traditional
story. Parliament was to meey early in the following year, 1536,
and, with the twofold object of replenishing an exhausted
exchequer and of anticipating opposition on the part of the
religious to the proposed ecclesiastical changes, according to the
royal design, the Commons were to be asked to grant Henry the
possessions of at least the smaller monasteries. It must have been
felt, however, by the astute Cromwell, who is credited with the
first conception of the design, that to succeed, a project such as
this must be sustained by strong yet simple reasons calculated to
appeal to the popular mind. Some decent pretext had to be found
for presenting the proposed measure of suppression and
confiscation to the nation, and it can hardly now be doubted that
the device of blackening the characters of the monks and nuns was
deliberately resorted to.
The visitation opened apparently in the summer of 1535, although
the visitatorial powers of the bishops were not suspended until
the eighteenth of the following September. Preachers were moreover
commissioned to go over the country in the early autumn, in order,
by their invectives, to educate public opinion against the monks.
These pulpit orators were of three sorts:
* "railers", who declaimed against the religious as "hypocrites,
sorcerers, and idle drones, etc.";
* "preachers", who said the monks "made the land unprofitable";
and
* those who told the people that, "if the abbeys went down, the
king would never want any taxes again."
This last was a favourite argument of Cranmer, in his sermons at
St. Paul's Cross. The men employed by Cromwell -- the agents
entrusted with the task of getting up the required evidence --
were chiefly four, Layton, Leigh, Aprice, and London. They were
well fitted for their work; and the charges brought against the
good name of some at least of the monasteries, by these chosen
emissaries of Cromwell are, it must be confessed, sufficiently
dreadful, although even their reports certainly do not bear out
the modern notion of wholesale corruption.
The visitation seems to have been conducted systematically, and to
have passed through three clearly defined stages. During the
summer the houses in the West of England were subjected to
examination; and this portion of the work came to an end in
September, when Layton and Leigh arrived at Oxford and Cambridge
respectively. In October and November the visitors changed the
field of their labours to the eastern and southeastern districts;
and in December we find Layton advancing through the midland
counties to Lichfield, where he met Leigh, who had finished his
work in the religious houses of Huntingdon and Lincolnshire.
Thence they proceeded together to the north, and the city of York
was reached on 11 January, 1536. But with all their haste, to
which they were urged by Cromwell, they had not proceeded very far
in the work of their northern inspection before the meeting of
Parliament.
From time to time, whilst on their work of inspection, the
visitors, and principally London and Leigh, sent brief reports to
their employers. Practically all the accusations made against the
good name of the monks and nuns are contained in the letters sent
in this way by the visitors, and in the document, or documents,
known as the "Comperta Monastica", which were drawn up at the time
by the same visitors and forwarded to their chief, Cromwell. No
other evidence as to the state of the monasteries at this time is
forthcoming, and the inquirer into the truth of these accusations
is driven back ultmately upon the worth of these visitors' words.
It is easy, of course, to dismiss inconvenient witnesses as being
unworthy of credit, but in this case a mere study of these letters
and documents is quite sufficient to cast considerable doubt upon
their testimony as wholly unworthy of belief.
It is of course impossible to enter into the details of the
visitation. We must, therefore, pass to the second step in the
dissolution. Parliament met on 4 February, 1536, and the chief
business it was called upon to transact was the consideration and
passing of the act suppressing the smaller religious houses. It
may be well to state exactly what is known about this matter. We
know for certain that the king's proposal to suppress the smaller
religious houses gave rise to a long debate in the Lower House,
and that Parliament passed the measure with great reluctance. It
is more than remarkable, moreover, that in the preamble of the Act
itself Parliament is careful to throw the entire responsibility
for the measure upon the king, and to declare, if words mean
anything at all, that they took the truth of the charges against
the good name of the religious, solely upon the king's
"declaration" that he knew the charges to be true. It must be
remembered, too, that one simple fact proves that the actual
accusations or "comperta" -- whether in the form of the visitors'
notes, or of the mythical "Black-book" -- could never have been
placed before Parliament for its consideration in detail, still
less for its critical examination and judgment. We have the
"Comperta" documents -- the findings of the visitors, whatever
they may be worth, whilst on their rounds, among the state papers
-- and it may be easily seen that no distinction whatever is made
in them between the greater and lesser houses. All are, to use a
common expression, "tarred with the same brush"; all, that is, are
equally smirched by the filthy suggestions of Layton and Leigh, of
London and Aprice. "The idea that the smaller monasteries rather
than the larger were particular abodes of vice", writes Dr.
Gairdner, the editor of the State papers of this period, "is not
borne out by the 'Comperta'." Yet the preamble of the very Act,
which suppressed the smaller monasteries because of their vicious
living, declares positively that "in the great and solemn
Monasteries of the realm" religion was well observed and God well
served. Can it be imagined for a moment that this assertion could
have found its way into the Act of Parliament, had the reports, or
"Comperta", of the visitors been laid upon the table of the House
of Commons for the inspection of the members? We are consequently
compelled by this fact to accept as history the account of the
matter given in the preamble of the first Act of dissolution:
namely that the measure was passed on the strength of the king's
"declaration" that the charges against the smaller houses were
true, and on that alone.
In its final shape the first measure of suppression merely enacted
that all the religious houses not possessed of an income of more
than 200 pounds a year should be given to the Crown. The heads of
such houses were to receive pensions, and the religious, despite
the alleged depravity of some, were to be admitted to the larger
and more observant monasteries, or to be licensed to act as
secular priests. The measure of turpitude fixed by the Act was
thus a pecuniary one. All monastic establishments which fell below
the 200 pounds a year standard of "good living" were to be given
to the king to be dealt with at his "pleasure, to the honour of
God and the wealth of the realm."
This money limit at once rendered it necessary, as a first step in
the direction of dissolution, to ascertain which houses came
within the operation of the Act. As early as April, 1536 (less
than a month from the passing of the measure), we find mixed
commissions of officials and country gentlemen appointed in
consequence to make surveys of the religious houses, and
instructions issued for their guidance. The returns made by these
commissioners are of the highest importance in determining the
moral state of the religious houses at the time of their
dissolution. It is now beyond dispute that the accusations of
Cromwell's visitors were made prior to, not after (as most writers
have erroneously supposed), the constitution of these mixed
commissions of gentry and officials. The main purpose for which
the commissioners were nominated was of course to find out what
houses possessed an income of less than 200 pounds a year; and to
take over such in the king's name, as now by the late Act legally
belonging to His Majesty. The gentry and officials were however
instructed to find out and report upon "the conversation of the
lives" of the religious; or in other words they were specially
directed to examine into the moral state of the houses visited.
Unfortunately, comparatively few of the returns of these mixed
commissions are now known to exist; although some have been
discovered, which were unknown to Dr. Gairdner when he made his
"Calendar" of the documents of 1536. Fortunately, however, the
extant reports deal expressly with some of the very houses against
which Layton and Leigh had made their pestilential suggestions.
Now that the suppression was resolved upon and made legal, it did
not matter to Henry or Cromwell that the inmates should be
described as "evil livers"; and so the new commissioners returned
the religious of the same houses as being really "of good virtuous
conversation", and this, not in the case of one house or district
only, but, as Gairdner says, "the characters of the inmates are
almost uniformly good."
To prepare for the reception of the expected spoils, what was
known as the Augmentation Office was established, and Sir Thomas
Pope was made its first treasurer, 24 April, 1536. On this same
day instructions were issued for the guidance of the mixed
commissions in the work of dissolving the monasteries. According
to these directions, the commissioners, having interviewed the
superior and shown him the "Act of Dissolution", were to make all
the officials of the house swear to answer truthfully any
questions put to them. They were then to exmine into the moral and
financial state of the establishment, and to report upon it, as
well as upon the number of the religious and "the conversation of
their lives." After that, an inventory of all the goods, chattels,
and plate was to be taken, and an "indenture" or counterpart of
the same was to be left with the superior, dating from 1 March,
1536, because from that date all had passed into the possession of
the king. Thenceforward the superior was to be held responsible
for the safe custody of the king's property. At the same time the
commissioners were to issue their commands to the heads of the
houses not to receive any more rents in the name of the convent,
nor to spend any money, except for necessary expenses, until the
king's pleasure should be known. They were, however, to be
strictly enjoined to continue their care over the lands, and "to
sow and cultivate" as before, until such tme as some king's farmer
should be appointed and relieve them of this duty. As for the
monks, the officer was told "to send those that will remain in
religion to other houses with letters to the governors, and those
that wish to go to the world to my lord of Canterbury and the lord
chancellor for" their letters to receive some benefices or livings
when such could be found for them.
One curious fact about the dissolution of the smaller monasteries
deserves special notice. No sooner had the king obtained
possession of these houses under the money value of 200 pounds a
year, than he commenced to refound some "in perpetuity" under a
new charter. In this way no fewer than fifty-two religious houses
in various parts of England gained a temporary respite from
extinction. The cost, however, was considerable, not alone to the
religious, but to their friends. The property was again
confiscated and the religious were finally swept away, before they
had been able to repay the sums borrowed in order to purchase this
very slender favour at the hands of the royal legal possessor. In
hard cash the treasurer of the Court of Augmentation acknowledges
to have received, as merely "part payment of the various sums of
money due to the king for fines or compositions for the toleration
and continuance" of only thirty-one of these refounded
monasteries, some 5948 pounds, 6s. 8d. or hardly less, probably,
than 60,000 pounds of 1910 money. Sir Thomas Pope, he treasurer of
the Court of Augmentation, ingenuously added that he has not
counted the arrears due to the office under this head, "since all
and each of the said monasteries, before the close of the account,
have come into the King's hands by surrender, or by the authority
of Parliament have been added to the augmentation of the royal
revenues." "For this reason", he adds, "the King has remitted all
sums of money still due to him, as the residue of their fines for
his royal toleration." The sums paid for the fresh foundations "in
perpetuity", which in reality as the event showed meant only the
respite of a couple of years or so, varied considerably. As a rule
they represented about three times the annual revenue of the
house; but sometimes, as in the case of St. Mary's, Winchester,
which was fined 333 pounds 6s. 8d., for leave to continue, it was
reestablished with the loss of some of its richest possessions.
It is somewhat difficult to estimate correctly the number of
religious houses which passed into the king's possession in virtue
of the Act of Parliament of 1536. Stowe's estimate is generally
deemed sufficiently near the mark, and he says: "the number of the
houses then suppressed was 376." In respect to the value of the
property, Stowe's estimate would also appear to be substantially
correct when he gives 30,000 pounds, or some 300,000 pounds of
1910 money, as the yearly income derived from the confiscated
lands. There can be no doubt, however, that subsequently the
promises of large annual receipts from the old religious estates
proved illusory, and that, in spite of the rack-renting of the
Crown farmers, the monastic acres furnished less money for the
royal purse than they had previously done under the thrifty
management and personal supervision of their former owners.
As to the value of the spoils which came from the wrecked and
dismantled houses, where the waste was everywhere so great, it is
naturally difficult to appraise the value of the money plate, and
jewels which were sent in kind into the king's treasury, and the
proceeds from the sale of the lead, bells, stock, furniture, and
even the conventual buildings. It is, however, reasonably certain
that Lord Herbert, following Stowe, has placed the amount actually
received at too high a figure. Not, of course, that these goods
were not worth vastly more than the round 100,000 pounds, at which
he estimates them; but nothing like that sum was actually received
or acknowledged by Sir Thomas Pope, as treasurer of the Court of
Augmentation. Corruption, without a doubt, existed everywhere,
from the lowest attendant of the visiting commissioner to the
highest court official. But allowing for the numberless ways in
which the monastic possessions could be plundered in the process
of transference to their new possessor, it may not be much beyond
the mark to put these "Robin Hood's pennyworths", as Stowe calls
them, at about 1,000,000 pounds of 1910 money.
Something must necessarily be said of the actual process which was
followed by the Crown agents in dissolving these lesser
monasteries. It was much the same in every case, and it was a
somewhat long process, since the work was not all done in a day.
The rolls of account, sent into the Augmentation Office by the
commissioners, show that it was frequently a matter of six to
seven weks before any house was finally dismantled and its inmates
had all been turned out of doors. The chief commissioners paid two
official visits to the scene of operations during the progress of
the work. On the first day they assembled the superior and his
subjects in the Chapter House, announced to the community and its
dependents their impending doom; called for and defaced the
convent seal, the symbol of corporate existence, without which no
business could be transacted; desecrated the church; took
possession of the best plate and vestments "unto the King's use";
measured the lead upon the roof and calculated its value when
melted; counted the bells; and appraised the goods and chattels of
the community. Then they passed on to the scene of their next
operations, leaving behind them certain subordinate officers and
workmen to carry out the designed destruction by stripping the
roofs and pulling down the gutters and rain pipes; melting the
lead into pigs and fodders, throwing down the bells, breaking them
with sledge-hammers and packing the metal into barrels ready for
the visit of the speculator and his bid for the spoils. This was
followed by the work of collecting the furniture and selling it,
together with the window frames, shutters, and doors by public
auction or private tender. When all this had been done, the
commissioners returned to audit the accounts and to satisfy
themselves generally that the work of devastation had been
accomplished to the king's contentment -- that the nest had been
destroyed and the birds scattered -- that what had been a monument
of architectural beauty in the past was now a "bare roofless
choir, where late the sweet birds sang."
No sooner had the process of destruction begun simultaneously all
over the country than the people began at last to realize that the
benefits likely to accrue to them out of the plunder were most
illusory. When this was understood, it was first proposed to
present a petition to the king from the Lords and Commons,
pointing out the evident damage which must be done to the country
at large if the measure was carried out fully; and asking that the
process of suppression should be at once stopped, and that the
lesser houses, which had not yet been dissolved under the
authority of the Act of 1536, should be allowed to stand. Nothing,
of course, came of this attempt. Henry's appetite was but whetted
by what had come to him, and he only hungered for more of the
spoils of the Church and the poor. The action of the Parliament in
1536 in permitting the first measure to become law made it in
reality much more difficult for Henry to draw back; and in more
senses than one it paved the way for the general dissolution. Here
and there in the country active resistance to the work of
destruction was organized, and in the case of Lincolnshire,
Yorkshire, and the North generally, the popular rising of the
"pilgrimage of grace" was caused in the main, or at least in great
measure, by the desire of the people at large to save the
religious houses from ruthless destruction. The failure of the
insurrection of the "Pilgrimage of Grace" was celebrated by the
execution of twelve abbots, and, to use Henry's own words, by a
wholesale "tying-up" of monks. By a new and ingenious process,
appropriately called "Dissolution by Attainder", an abbey was
considered by the royal advisers to fall into the king's hands by
the supposed or constructive treason of its superior. In this way
several of the larger abbeys, with all their revenues and
possessions, came into Henry's hands as a consequence of the
"Pilgrimage of Grace."
The Parliament of 1536, it will be remembered, had granted Henry
the possession only of the houses the annual value of which was
less than 200 pounds. What happened in the three years that
followed the passing of the At was briefly this: the king was ill
satisfied with the actual results of what he had thought would
prove a veritable gold mine. Personally, perhaps, he had not
gained as much as he had hoped for from the dissolutions which had
taken place. The property of the monks somehow seemed cursed by
its origin; it passed from his control by a thousand-and-one
channels, and he was soon thirsting for a greater prize, which, as
the event showed, he was equally unable to guard for his own uses.
By his instructions, visitors were once more set in motion against
the larger abbeys, in which, according to the Act of 1536,
religion was "right well kept and observed." Not having received
any mandate from Parliament to authorize the extension of their
proceedings, the royal agents, eager to win a place in his favour,
were busy up and down the country, cajoling, coercing, commanding,
and threatening the members of the religious houses in order to
force them to give up their monasteries unto the King's Majesty.
As Dr. Gairdner puts it: "by various arts and means the heads of
these establishments were induced to surrender, and occasionally
when an abbot was found, as in the case of Woburn, to have
committed treason in the sense of the recent statutes, the house
(by a stretch of the tyrannical laws) was forfeited to the king by
his attainder. But attainders were certainly the exception,
surrenders being the general rule."
The autumn of 1537 saw the beginning of the fall of the friaries
in England. For some reason, possibly because of their poverty,
they had not been brought under the Act of 1536. For a year after
the "Pilgrimage of Grace" few dissolutions of houses, other than
those which came to the king by the attainder of their superiors,
are recorded. With the feast of St. Michael, 1537, however,
besides the convents of friars the work of securing of securing,
by some means or other, the surrender of the greater houses went
on rapidly. The instructions given to the royal agents are clear.
They were, by all methods known to them, to get the religious
"willingly to consent and agree" to their own extinction. It was
only when they found "any of the said heads and convents, so
appointed to be dissolved, so wilful and obstinate that they would
in no wise" agree to sign and seal their own death-warrant, that
the commissioners were authorized by Henry's instructions to "take
possession of the house" and property by force. And whilst thus
engaged, the royal agents were ordered to declare that the king
had no design whatsoever upon the monastic property or system as
such, or any desire to secure the total suppression of the
religious houses. They were instructed at all costs to put a stop
to such rumours, which were naturally rife all over the country at
this time. This they did; and the unscrupulous Dr. Layton declared
that he had told the people everywhere that "in this they utterly
slandered the King their natural lord." He bade them not to
believe such reports; and he "commanded the abbots and priors to
set in the stocks" such as related such untrue things. It was,
however, as may be imagined, hard enough to suppress the rumour
whilst the actual thing was going on. In 1538 and 1539 some 150
monasteries of men appear to have signed away their corporate
existence and their property, and by a formal deed handed over all
rights to the king.
When the work had progressed sufficiently the new Parliament,
which met in April, 1539, after observing that divers abbots and
others had yielded up their houses to the king, "without
constraint, coercion, or compulsion", confirmed these surrenders
and vested all monastic property thus obtained in the Crown.
Finally in the autumn of that year, Henry's triumph over the
monastic orders was completed by the horrible deaths for
constructive treason of the three great abbots of Glastonbury,
Colchester, and Reading. And so, as one writer has said, "before
the winter of 1540 had set in, the last of the abbeys had been
added to the ruins with which the land was strewn from one end to
the other."
It is difficult, of course, to estimate the exact number of
religious and religious houses suppressed at this time in England.
Putting all sources of information together, it seems that the
monks and regular canons expelled from the greater monasteries
were about 3200 in number; the friars, 1800; and the nuns, 1560.
If to these should be added the number of those affected by the
first Act of Parliament, it is probably not far from the truth to
say that the number of religious men and women expelled from their
homes by the suppression were, in round numbers, about 8000.
Besides these, of course, there were probably more than ten times
that number of people turned adrift who were their dependents, or
otherwise obtained a living in their service.
If it is difficult to determine, with any certainty, the number of
the religious in monastic England at the time of the dissolution
of the monasteries, it is still more so to give any accurate
estimate of the property involved. Speed calculated the annual
value of the entire property, which passed into Henry's hands at
some 171,312 pounds. Other valuations have placed it at a higher
figure, so that a modern calculation of the annual value at
200,000 pounds, or some 2,000,000 pounds of 1910 money, is
probably not excessive. Hence, as a rough calculation, it may be
taken that at the fall of the monasteries an income of about two
million pounds sterling a year, of the 1910 money value, was taken
from the Church and the poor and transferred to the royal purse.
It may, however, be at once stated that Henry evidently never
derived anything like such a sum from the transaction. The capital
value was so diminished by gratuitous grants, sales of lands at
nominal values, and in numerous other ways, that in fact, for the
eleven years from 1536 to 1547, the Augmentation Office accounts
show that the king only drew an average yearly income of 37,000
pounds, or 370,000 pounds of 1910 money, from property which, in
the hands of the monks, had probably produced five times the
amount. As far as can be gathered from the accounts still extant,
the total receipts of the king from the monastic confiscations
from April, 1536, to Michaelmas, 1547, was about thirteen million
and a half of 1910 money, to which must be added about a million
sterling, the melting value of the monastic plate. Of this sum,
leaving out of calculation the plate and jewels, not quite three
millions were spent by the king personally; 600,000 pounds was
spent upon the royal palaces, and nearly half a million on the
household of the Prince of Wales. More than five millions sterling
are accounted for under the head of war expenses, and nearly
700,000 pounds were spent on coast defence. Pensions to religious
persons account for 330,000 pounds; and one curious item of 6000
pounds is entered as spent "to secure the surrender of the Abbey
of Abingdon."
FRANCIS AIDAN GASQUET
Transcribed by Marie Jutras
From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright � 1996 by
New Advent, Inc., P.O. Box 281096, Denver, Colorado, USA, 80228.
(
[email protected]) Taken from the New Advent Web Page
(www.knight.org/advent).
This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an
effort aimed at placing the entire Catholic Encyclopedia 1913
edition on the World Wide Web. The coordinator is Kevin Knight,
editor of the New Advent Catholic Website. If you would like to
contribute to this worthwhile project, you can contact him by e-
mail at (knight.org/advent). For more information please download
the file cathen.txt/.zip.
-------------------------------------------------------
Provided courtesy of:
Eternal Word Television Network
PO Box 3610
Manassas, VA 22110
Voice: 703-791-2576
Fax: 703-791-4250
Data: 703-791-4336
Web:
http://www.ewtn.com
FTP: ewtn.com
Telnet: ewtn.com
Email address: sysop@ ewtn.com
EWTN provides a Catholic online
information and service system.
-------------------------------------------------------
