Henry VIII, monasteries and Bible ï¿½ Although the population of England was increasing during the 16th century, the number of monks and nuns was in decline. (The number of monks fell from about twelve to ten thousand, and of nuns from 2,000 to 1,600). Monastic houses varied greatly both in the number of monks and in their revenues. The vast land holdings of the monasteries, however, meant that in total they controlled about one half of the church's annual income. Biland Monastery Rievaulx Abbey Polemical literature accused monks of many scandalous faults - Protestant tracts were particularly keen on accusing nuns of murdering the infants that resulted from their promiscuous lives. In fact, most religious were guilty of little more than lacking any vocation and so living as comfortably as they could. Only the three small orders of Bridgettines, Franciscan Observants, and Carthusians were noted for high standards. The monasteries were major landlords and were no better (but no worse) than their lay counterparts in the way they treated their tenants.

Waltham Abbey ï¿½ Thomas Cromwell began to conceive of dissolving the monasteries in about 1534, but the plan was not put into practice until 1536. Henry's government needed money, but knew it would be unpopular to demand new taxes from Parliament. First, Thomas Cromwell orchestrated a publicity campaign to make monasteries seem corrupt. Then, in 1536 Parliament passed an Act dissolving all monasteries with an income of less than ï¿½200 per annum. The members of minor monasteries were allowed to move to the larger ones. The Initial Impact of the 1536 Dissolution Because initially only the lesser religious houses were dissolved (and even a few of these were able to obtain licenses to continue), the impact of the 1536 Dissolution varied in different parts of England. The impact on the South West, for example, was far less than on the North. In 1539, another Act was passed dissolving the larger monasteries also. The last English monastery - Waltham Abbey - was closed in 1540.

Some provision in the form of pensions was made for the monks and nuns, especially for abbots. The Court of Augmentations was created to administer the monastic land, and it paid pensions even after most of this land had been sold by crown; but by 1552 about half of pensions were in arrears. Consequences of the Dissolution The immediate effect of the Dissolution was to transfer vast tracts of land to the Crown. Monastic land was worth at least three times as much as existing royal landholdings. Henry also acquired vast amounts of gold and silver plate, worth as much as one million pounds. The Crown also acquired the monasteries' right to collect tithes (support from the parish to its priest) which had been taken over by the monasteries in exchange for them paying the priest a wage instead. Many monasteries had also held the right to choose which person should become priest of a parish. This right of presenting to a church living was known as an advowson, and about two in five English advowsons were controlled by monasteries. All these fell to the Crown making it an overwhelmingly powerful patron.

Mount Grace Priory Before the Reformation, 25 abbots had sat in the House of Lords ; - all of them lost their places leaving the secular lords in a majority over the Bishops (who continued to sit). The Dissolution of the monasteries involved a certain amount of physical destruction: buildings decayed because the lead was seized from the roofs; libraries were broken up and sold off. Moreover, traditional charitable functions of feeding and housing travelers ceased. Henry VIII promised to found thirteen new bishoprics on the proceeds from the dissolution, but only nine (Peterborough, Gloucester, Chester, Oxford, Bristol and Westminster; the last of these was suppressed by Edward VI in 1550) were actually created. Great Gate Trinity College, Cambridge Henry VIII did found a number of schools and Trinity College, Cambridge, but on balance charity and education suffered. Not only the Crown gained by the Dissolution - many royal administrators and clients lined their pockets with monastic money. Little Jack Horner He put in his thumb, And pulled out a plum, And said, What a good boy am I! Jack Horner was the steward of the last Abbot of Glastonbury, Richard Whiting.

In 1543, as part of an attempt to obtain Henry VIII's favor, Whiting sent Jack Horner to the king with title deeds of a number of valuable properties. To foil thieves, these deeds were concealed in a large pie. On the journey, Jack Horner surreptitiously opened the pie and extracted the deed of Mells Manor, Somerset. Shortly after the Dissolution, the Horner family moved into Mells Manor, and live there to this day. BUT, The steward's name was Thomas, not Jack (although it is true that 'Jack' is a common English nickname for any amusing rogue). There is no written source for this story before the 18th century. The Horner family has always insisted that the manor was perfectly legitimately purchased (along with some other properties). The seizure of monastic land gave the Crown the possibility of complete financial independence. Had Henry VIII exploited it prudently, he and his successors might never have needed to call Parliament again. But from the very beginning, and particularly between 1543 and 1547, Henry sold most of the land to pay for extravagant wars with France and Scotland.

Fountains Abbey The land was bought by merchants, by yeomen syndicates, by noblemen, and - overwhelmingly - by neighboring gentry families. Nobles and gentlemen also bought the impropriated tithes and advowsons, and so strengthened their hand in parish affairs. The enrichment of the gentry increased their power and independence relative to both Church and Crown. It also created a powerful pressure group with a vested interest in ensuring that the old Roman Catholic church was never fully restored. The English Bible William Tyndale's New Testament was published in part in Cologne in 1525, and in full at Worms in 1526; it was soon banned in England as heretical. Tyndale produced a revised version in 1534. But Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer did persuade Henry VIII to allow the publication in England of a vernacular Bible.

This project came to fruition in Matthew's Bible of 1537 (a version combining Tynadle's New Testament with Miles Coverdale's Old Testament, revised, annotated, and edited by John Rogers (who worked under the assumed name of Thomas Matthew.) In 1539, it was revised and reissued as the Great Bible, In May 1541, a Royal Proclamation ordered every parish to comply Cromwell's instructions and have a copy for public use before Ash Wednesday, 1541. (The first Welsh translation of the Bible was not printed until 1567). Henry grew increasingly concerned about the social and political consequences of allowing the lower orders to read the Bible, but his attempts to limit access were ineffectual. In his speech to Parliament of December 1545, Henry complained that he was "sorry to know and hear how unreverently that most precious jewel, the word of God is disputed, rhymed, sung and jangled in every alehouse and tavern". Luminarium Encyclopedia: Dissolution of the Monasteries in England. Search The dissolution or suppression of the monasteries in England was carried out during the reign of King Henry VIII .

It was a process started by Thomas Wolsey and completed by Thomas Cromwell . Ostensibly, the monasteries were eliminated due to prevalent corruption and indolence; in reality, it was to secure the King's absolute power and to fill the dwindling royal coffers. The Condition of the Monasteries on the Eve of their Dissolution. — Having made himself supreme head of Church as well as State, Henry's next step was to secure resources to maintain his absolutism, and by a judicious distribution of bribes to guard against a return of the old order. A way was disovered in the dissolution of the monasteries, which offered the further attraction of crushing a class which contained the most determined opponents of the royal policy. These were the real reasons for the step, suggested, no doubt, by the resourceful Cromwell , who boasted that he would make his King the richest prince in Christendom. On 21 January, 1535, he received a commission as Vicar-General and Viceregent to hold a general visitation of all the churches and monastic and collegiate bodies in the realm.

The King and his supporters represented to Parliament that they were proceeding against the monasteries because of the "slothful and ungodly lives" led by the inmates. This, however, was largely a pretext, and the charges brought forward to support it were doubtless greatly exaggerated; moreover, the manner in which the work was carried out cannot be justified. On the other hand, the condition of the monasteries was such as to lend at least a color of justice to the movement against them. Formerly they had been the pioneers in husbandry, felling the forests, draining the marshes, and cultivating the waste places, or, in the case of the Cistercians, in sheep raising. They had served as inns for travelers, as depositories for articles of value; they had cared for the poor, and had fostered learning and education. But they no longer filled the place which they had in the past. Their agricultural methods were antiquated, and they no longer drew from the capital in their possession the returns which might be expected from efficient management. Their method of promiscuous giving tended to nourish poverty rather than to check it, while their scholastic and educational methods were quite out of date.

As their influence declined, the merchant and agricultural classes began more and more to hunger after their vast wealth. All through the fifteenth century their numbers had fallen off steadily. From 1399 to 1509 only eight houses of religion and seventy houses of learning and charity (i.e., colleges, schools, and hospitals) had been founded. Of twelve hundred monasteries established since the introduction of Roman Catholicism into England hardly more than half had survived into the reign of Henry VIII. Further, religious orders had been subject to intermittent attacks on the part of the temporal power from a period as early as the reign of Edward II, when twenty-three preceptories of the Knights Templars were destroyed. The pious Henry V , as a blow against France, suppressed the alien priories. In 1506, when Bishop Foxe of Winchester was thinking of making monastic endowments, a brother bishop declared that "the monks have already more than they are like to keep," and Wolsey's dissolution of some of the smaller monasteries followed not many years after. The extent of the monastic wealth was doubtless exaggerated.

According to some accounts the monks owned at least a quarter of the realm, but more sober and reliable estimates put it at about one tenth.1 Cromwell's Monastic Visitors, 1535-1536. — In July, 1535, visitors appointed by Cromwell began their rounds. Armed with articles of inquiry, they hurried from house to house, asking all sorts of questions about revenues and debts, about relics, pilgrimages, superstitions, and immoralities. They were an ambitious, greedy, and unscrupulous set, chiefly concerned with securing the sort of information that would suit their purpose. The letters and reports or "comperts" which they sent to the Viceregent seem to have been based upon the scantiest as well as the most partial investigation; for they feared to lose any time lest the monks might seize the opportunity to dispose of their plate and jewels. By no means all the houses were visited; but enough to frame a case for the Parliament. Besides the articles of inquiry the visitors carried with them a series of injunctions which they were authorized to impose upon the monasteries which they visited. Some were obviously designed to destroy the communities against which they should be enforced.

Monks were not only to accept, but to teach royal supremacy and repudiation of papal claims; they were forbidden to leave their grounds and buildings, which made the management of their distant estates impossible; and they were ordered to spy on and report their disobedient superiors, thus subverting all discipline. Some of the injunctions, however, provided for salutary reforms. Victuals were not to be distributed to sturdy and idle beggars; tables were to be "not over sumptuous, and full of delicate and strange dishes, but honestly furnished with common meats"; reading and study of the Scriptures was enjoined; and each house was to maintain a monk or two at the universities to better prepare him to teach and preach the word of God. The Act Suppressing the Smaller Monasteries, 1536. — When Parliament met, 4 February, 1536, popular feeling in the City was inflamed by means of sermons, caricatures, and pamphlets. Cranmer declared at Paul's Cross that the destruction of the monasteries would relieve the people of a great burden of taxation.

It is stated that "when the enormities were first read in Parliament House they were so great and abominable that there was nothing but 'down with them'" and an act was carried suppressing all monastic houses with an income under £200 a year or with less than twelve inmates.2 Commissions composed of local gentry, appointed to wind up the affairs of the houses denounced by Cromwell's agents, testified to the fair character of many. Nevertheless, aside from biased reports of the visitors and the charges in contemporary satires and ballads, the correspondence of men high in the Church testifies that there was much need of reform. It might have been well, too, for economic reasons, to suppress or consolidate the smaller and poorer houses, but it seems very strange to have drawn the line between virtue and vice at £200 a year or at groups of twelve. There is a story that Henry resorted to great pressure to carry the measure, that he summoned the Commons before him and announced that he would have the passage of the bill or some of their heads.

In the Upper House one speaker referring to the smaller houses said: "These were the thorns, but the great abbots were the petrified old oaks and they must follow." This prophecy was soon realized. In accordance with the Act some 376 monasteries were dissolved. A portion of their inmates went into larger houses, others were provided with pensions. By paying large sums of money a few houses were allowed to continue for a time. As near as can be estimated, about 2000 monks and nuns were dispossessed, and of servants, farm laborers, and others dependent upon them, perhaps four times as many more were affected. Aside from lands and buildings, money, plate, and jewels, as well as the proceeds of the sale of lead, bells, cattle, and furniture, passed into the King's hands. For dealing with all this property a special court known as the Court of Augmentation was created. The smaller monasteries having been disposed of, Oxford and Cambridge were next visited, measures were framed against the old learning, and others were adopted to encourage the study of Greek and Hebrew. 1.

The total ecclesiastical revenue has been computed at £320,000; of this about £150,000 was monastic. 2. Besides the comperts, later writers speak of a famous "Black Book," containing the results of the visitors' findings, which was laid before Parliament. According to the Protestant writers of Elizabeth 's reign it was destroyed during the Catholic reaction under Queen Mary , while historians of the opposite party have insisted that it was disposed of earlier, because it contained charges that could not be substantiated. There is no good evidence that such a book ever existed. Source: The Dissolution of the Monasteries - History Learning Site Home » Tudor England » The Dissolution of the Monasteries The Dissolution of the Monasteries Citation: C N Trueman "The Dissolution of the Monasteries" historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, 16 Mar 2015. 16 Aug 2016. The dissolution of the monasteries was one of the key features of the reign of Henry VIII. The monasteries were seen as being a cornerstone of Papal authority in England and Wales.

After various pieces of legislation were introduced into England that ended the Pope’s authority during the early 1530’s, the monasteries became the focal point of the king’s attack as it was assumed that they would remain loyal to the Pope. However, whether the attack on the monasteries – known as the dissolution of the monasteries – was for spiritual or financial reasons is open to debate. Henry VIII had inherited a considerable amount of money from his father Henry VII. By the mid-1530’s Henry had spent a great deal of this inheritance. However, he would have known that the monasteries were the wealthiest institutions in England and Wales. His advisors, like Thomas Cromwell, had spun the story that a great deal of their annual wealth went to the Vatican. This was an effort to drum up support among the people for the king’s campaign against the Pope. However, it was known by the government that little of the monasteries wealth left England and Wales for the Vatican and that they were, in fact, very wealthy. When Henry had become king in 1509 there were more than 850 religious houses in England and Wales.

While what happened to them is termed the ‘Dissolution of the Monasteries’, this is, in fact, a misleading term as few of these establishments were known as monasteries. Those larger rural religious houses, such as at Tintern in Gloucester, were referred to as abbeys. Medium sized religious houses were usually called priories (or nunneries) and a friary was usually used to describe the smallest of houses. The most usual division between the two was that some were open while some were closed. Closed religious houses were essentially this – closed to all those outside of those who lived in that religious house. Open houses meant that the occupants worked with the local sick and provided, for example, teachers for boys in the local community. It was common for open religious houses to be poor as what money they raised was spent on the local community. However, closed orders could be (and many were) very wealthy. Though they kept themselves away from the ‘common man’, many of these religious houses relied on the local population to work for them for free. In this way, some religious orders grew spectacularly rich.

It was these institutions that are frequently referred to as ‘monasteries’ and they owned, it is thought, about one-third of all the land in England and Wales. The thirty richest monasteries were as rich or richer than the wealthiest nobles in the land. This wealth had been acquired over the centuries – people who hoped to ‘buy’ their way into Heaven had bequeathed much of the land that the monasteries owned to them. For many the work of monks and nuns was an accepted and normal part of life – few knew any different. The closing down of monasteries was not new. Cardinal Wolsey shut down a number of religious houses years before the attack by Cromwell and Henry. He had done this with the full blessing of the Pope as some of the religious houses in England had ‘decayed’ – the lack of people in them had stopped them being effective. When he closed them, Wolsey used the money raised from them for charitable purposes, including the building of a new grammar school in Ipswich. The man who did the legal work for this was Thomas Cromwell and the records indicate that what was done did not concern anyone of importance at the time.

The whole approach to religious houses changed in 1535. Cromwell, now Henry’s vicegerent responsible for the day-to-day running of the Church, ordered that all religious houses should be visited by one of his representatives. Traditionally either a local bishop or a senior member of the order concerned had done these visits. Their task was to check on standards etc. Now Cromwell ordered that his men should do them. In the same year, the ‘Valor Ecclesiasticus’ was introduced. This was a full-scale undertaking to examine just how much property was owned by the Church in England and Wales. The findings proved to be of great importance to Cromwell even though questions have to be asked as to the accuracy of the reports that were fed back to Cromwell. Those who did the investigating were unpaid local gentry who would have been in a prime position to make out of any attack on religious houses in their locality. The ‘Valor Ecclesiasticus’ combined with the visits ordered by Cromwell proved to be a difficult problem for the religious houses. The visits were orchestrated mainly carried out by Thomas Legh and Richard Layton – both trusted employees of Cromwell.

Both men were ambitious and would have known about the final outcome desired by Cromwell. It is assumed that they suitably adjusted their reports to fit in with Cromwell’s game plan. Though the lack of evidence means that it cannot be proved, it is generally thought that both provided Cromwell with a list of each house’s shortcomings as opposed to any strong points that a house might have had. Their list of ‘comperta’ was certainly much greater than any positives each house had. Many houses complained about the bullying tactics of Legh and Layton but it seems that Cromwell ignored these complaints. Such was their reputation that the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536 specifically called on the “evil councillors” to receive “special punishment”. In March 1536 Parliament passed an act that many in the monasteries had feared. The act stated that any monastery with an income of less than £200 a year (as assessed by the Valor Ecclesiasticus) was to be dissolved and their property passed to the Crown.

The heads of the houses were to be offered a pension while those who lived in each religious house were given the choice of transferring to a larger one or going to live in society free of any vows of poverty and obedience but still having to respect their vow of chastity. Three hundred religious houses fell within this category of having an income of less than £200 a year. The majority were closed down but at least 67 were given royal permission to remain open as the act gave Henry the right to do this. However, those religious houses that were ‘saved’ had to pay for their survival. This was usually a year’s income. So this would have earned the king about £13,500 – though it is thought that another 10 religious houses fell into this category but their records have been lost. If this is so, the 77 houses involved would have meant that Henry received about £15,500 from them. What was required to gain the king’s exemption? It seems that it was nothing more than having government connections in the right places who could put in the right word to Henry. Those houses that did not have such contacts were effectively doomed. Either way, Henry’s income increased quite markedly.

Once the act was passed, government commissioners moved with speed to shut down the religious houses. They feared that any delay in their actions would allow the moveable treasure and wealth of these houses to ‘disappear’. These small monasteries were easy targets and could do little against the government. Their valuable metal – gold, silver, bronze and lead – was taken by the government to be melted down. The land was swiftly rented out while all other items not required by the government were auctioned off locally. What the government did not require was taken by the local population. Well-cut bricks, fences etc were all well received by the locals. Hence why so many monasteries became classic ruins very quickly – they were all but dismantled by either the government or by the locals (with the government’s support). The one area where this did not happen speedily was in the North, where the local population did not support what was going on. The attempted actions of the commissioners in the North were one of the causes of the Pilgrimage of Grace (October 1536). Some religious houses were charged with helping the rebels in the Pilgrimage of Grace. Once order was restored, Henry showed no mercy.

The head of each religious house thought to be involved was declared a traitor in an act of attainder and executed. In an act of dubious legality, it was declared that the houses of the executed religious leaders were their property. Therefore, after their execution all this ‘private’ property transferred to the Crown – as was required by an act of attainder. Any monks left from these houses were forced out. However, even after the Pilgrimage of Grace had ended, many powerful and rich monasteries remained – those that had an income of more than £200 and therefore did not come under the 1536 Act and were south of the area affected by the Pilgrimage of Grace. Action against these houses was piecemeal as no equivalent of the 1536 act was passed. Cromwell sent out commissioners to each of the houses. Those that seemed prepared to fight were noted but Cromwell had told the commissioners to leave these houses once they had spread some degree of fear in them. The method used by the commissioners to persuade each head of a religious house was to make a threat couched in ‘if you love the king’.

With the example of what had happened to abbots in the north for their ‘disloyal’ behaviour to the king during the Pilgrimage, many abbots succumbed to royal pressure. In 1539 an act was passed in Parliament that stated that any religious house that had surrendered its property voluntarily to the Crown was part of a legal act – as would be any future surrender of property. The act also included a rider that there could be no challenges to the validity of the king’s title of ownership once a monastery had voluntarily dissolved. If the king then transferred ownership of titles, these too could not be contested in a court. The government’s commissioners went about their task with great energy. There is little doubt that the threat posed by the government led to many heads of religious houses handing over their land and wealth – just as Henry and Cromwell would have wished. However, there were some abbots and religious house leaders who would not be bullied. They had to face the full force of the law, as it was perceived then. The Abbot of Glastonbury led what was a very wealthy monastery, one of the wealthiest in England. He was executed and the buildings in the monastery were all but destroyed. The land passed to the king.

The abbot himself was charged with secretly hoarding gold and “other parcels of plate, which the abbot had hid secretly from all such commissioners”. dissolution of the monasteries | Tumblr dissolution of the monasteries Grid View List View The ruins of Rievaulx Abbey in North Yorkshire. Established in 1132 and dissolved in 1538 by the orders of Henry the 8th during the period of the dissolution of the English Monasteries. It was one of the largest and wealthiest abbeys in England. Reblog Images shine light on ancient Aberdeen Bestiary High definition images of an 800-year-old manuscript that once belonged to Henry VIII have revealed previously unknown details about its purpose. Known as the Aberdeen Bestiary, the book was created in England around 1200 and features tales of animals to illustrate what were essential beliefs. Researchers had thought it was commissioned for a high status client. However, newly discovered marks suggest it was a learning tool seized during the dissolution of the monasteries.

The lavishly decorated book was first documented in the Royal Library at Westminster Palace in 1542 and is one of the finest surviving examples of a medieval illuminated manuscript, according to the experts. Read more . I had a thought about the Hogwarts house ghosts: The Grey Lady and the Bloody Baron are both canonically Founders-era ghosts. Hufflepuff’s friar’s age is never specified in canon, and he could be of any era from the mid 12th century, when the first mendicant orders were founded, up to Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s. I am inclined to believe he was earlier rather than later. Nearly Headless Nick canonically lived in the late 1400s, based on the date of his 500th deathday party in 1992. When Harry asks Nick in OotP about why some people become ghosts when they die, Nick tells him that only people who are afraid of death become ghosts. It took 500 years after the founding of Hogwarts for Gryffindor to acquire a house ghost, because bravery is a Gryffindor trait.

Reblog 10 ♔ The D O W N F A L L of A N N E B O L E Y N. January 29th 1536 - Anne Boleyn suffered a tragic miscarriage, losing a baby boy, which she is believed to have carried for but fifteen weeks. March 1536 - Anne Boleyn argued with Thomas Cromwell, stating that monastic assets should be redistributed to charitable and educational causes. April 1st 1536 - Henry VIII sent Jane Seymour a letter and purse of gold, which she asked to be given to her only when she made an honourable match. April 2nd 1536 - Anne Boleyn’s almoner, John Skip, preached a sermon that attacked Cromwell’s ideas about the dissolution of the monasteries. April 24th 1536 - Thomas Cromwell and Sir Thomas Audley set up two commissions of oyer and terminer to investigate alleged acts of treason. April 26th 1536 - Anne Boleyn entrusted her chaplain, Matthew Parker, with the spiritual care of her little daughter, should anything happen to her.

April 29th 1536 - Anne Boleyn quarrelled with Sir Henry Norris, accusing him of being in love with her, and thus looking for “dead men’s shoes”. April 30th 1536 - Carrying her infant daughter in her arms, Anne Boleyn made her final, most desperate appeal to her estranged husband. May 1st 1536 - Henry VIII received a letter at the May Day joust, which led him to abruptly leave Anne Boleyn at the joust, and interrogate Sir Henry Norris. May 2nd 1536 - Accused of committing adultery with at least three different men, Anne Boleyn was arrested, and thus imprisoned in the Tower of London. Loading... Show more notes Reblog St Michael’s Tower on top of Glastonbury Tor. The current tower was built along with a monastery in the 14th century after the previous church was destroyed by an earthquake in 1275. The earthquake of 1275 was felt from London to Wales,and was reported to have destroyed many houses and churches in England.

The adjacent monastery was destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 with the last Abbot being hung drawn and quartered at the tower along with two of his monks. There is evidence of Dark Age occupation of the site during the 5th to 7th centuries. Reblog Fountains Abbey study reveals scale of monks' burial site More than 500 graves of Cistercian monks and lay brothers have been discovered at one of the largest monastic ruins in the country. Experts used ground-penetrating radar to make the find at Fountains Abbey near Ripon, North Yorkshire. The abbey, which is now a world heritage site, existed from the early 12th century until its closure in 1539 during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The National Trust, which looks after the site, has been working for more than two years on the project with experts from the University of Bradford, Geoscan Research and Mala Geoscience. Their work has identified not only the location of the cemetery but also the formation of the graves, which suggest the monastic community believed in literal or corporeal resurrection. Read more .

3 Tintern Abbey, Monmouthshire, Wales, 1136- 1536 This beautiful Gothic ruin is a hollow shell nestled within the Wye valley. It is extremely isolated and surrounded by a vast forest, seeming strangely untouched and forgotten, since its abandonment and ruin, following the dissolution during the reign of King Henry VIII. It is an interesting record of Cistercian monastic life, and includes many touching remains of human life, including toilets and a kitchen cabinet. Despite this it retains it’s romance and an undeniably peaceful atmosphere which has the power to stir up feelings of contemplation and spirituality. It is easy to see why artists like Turner and poets like Keats found such inspiration in its majestic presence. Boughton House, Northamptonshire by Baz Richardson Via Flickr: Boughton House is just to the north of Kettering in Northamptonshire, and the estate, which is owned by the Duke of Buccleuch, extends to cover several local villages. The original house was a monastic building but Sir Edward Montagu, Lord Chief Justice to King Henry VIII, purchased it in 1528 just prior to the Dissolution of the Monasteries and began to convert it into a mansion.

Most of the present building is the work of Ralph Montagu, 1st Duke of Montagu (d.1709) who inherited the house in 1683. Boughton is one of Britain’s grandest and best-preserved stately homes, and is said to be Britain’s version of Versailles. Following the death of George, 3rd Duke of Montagu in 1790 the house passed, through the marriage of his daughter, Elizabeth, to Henry Scott, 3rd Duke of Buccleuch (and 5th Duke of Queensberry). Boughton House has been little used or altered since the mid-18th century, but has been well cared for. Because of this it has some of the best preserved baroque state rooms in the British Isles. Reblog 6 “The early sixteenth century was a time when prophecies were popular and prophets were confident: men and women puzzled over ancient rhymes which might (or might not) be held to have predicted such mighty topics such as the fall of Cardinal Wolsey, the split from Rome, and the dissolution of the monasteries.

But no one ever predicted the King would marry six times and, if they had, he would not have believed it. Nor for that matter would any of his six queens have believed the various densities which lay in store for them, if predicted at birth: not one but two princesses were to die cast off; equally surprising, four women of modest enough birth were to become royal consorts; most astonishingly of all…two of these apparently unexceptional women were to die a traitor’s death.” Antonia Fraser, The Wives of Henry VIII. Pictured in order: Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Parr Loading... Show more notes Reblog I hate when people present the ruins of churches and monasteries destroyed during the reformation as elegant decay or something poetic like that, something gentle and almost natural, just part of the passage of time. Because the reformation was a time of tremendous upheaval, of societal destruction, of violence against a culture and against God. There was nothing beautiful or gentle about the dissolution of the monasteries. Those institutions were not gradually abandoned due to any organic societal shift, but abruptly shut down by the mandate of a single monarch.

The people did not drift away from them; they were forcibly removed. Those ruins are scars. Old scars, to be sure, from violence that happened a long time ago. Pale, faded scars, not as raw or ugly as new ones. But scars nonetheless. Let’s not romanticize how they got there. Loading... Show more notes Reblog Mel bullshitting about the gap in that celtic knot like any undergrad history essay I’ve ever written! Reblog 10 The star-spangled rood screen in St Andrew’s Church in Aysgarth is an extraordinary architectural element for a church in a small village of the Yorkshire Dales. Carved and gilded animals run along the top in a frieze incorporating foxes, elephants and castles, deer and mythical creatures. The screen wasn’t original to the church, but was removed from Jervaulx Abbey at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries under King Henry VIII and installed in the side of the chancel of St Andrew’s, which was owned by the abbey. Although just a fragment it gives a snapshot of the extraordinary artistic richness of England’s medieval abbeys which we now know mainly as ruins. Loading...

Show more notes Reblog Lately my Cromwell feels have been really obvious in school and I’ve been getting lots of asks as to why I like him so much, so I’m posting my answer here -in a 6-paragraph essay format- so I can return to it and so I can track my thought properly. Feel free to read if you’re interested. Reblog March 6, 1536: “Act for the Suppression/Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries” Introduced On March 6th, in 1536, the “Act for the Suppression or the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries” was introduced into Parliament. This act would affect the smaller or lesser monasteries, i.e. those with less than twelve members and those worth less than £200 per year.

They would be dissolved, with the heads of the monasteries being pensioned off, and their members becoming secularized or moved to larger monasteries “where they may be compelled to live religiously for reformation of their lives.” The monasteries’ possessions would then be given to the King and his heirs “to do and use therewith his and their own wills, to the pleasure of Almighty God, and to the honour and profit of this realm.” Background of this Act When King Henry broke with the Roman Catholic Church and became the Supreme Head of the Church in England in 1534 via the Act of Supremacy, it started a sort of domino effect. During this same year, the Act in Absolut Restraint of Annates was instituted, which abolished the collection and payment of annates (the first year’s profits of a benefice) to Rome. Following on the heels of this Act was the establishment of a commission by Thomas Cromwell to conduct a survey of the income, endowments, and liabilities of ecclesiastical properties in England and Wales in January of 1535.

This commission was known as the Valor Ecclesisticus and those under its employ were to: “Examyn, serche, and enquyre, by all the wayes and meanes that they can by their dyscrecions, of and for the true and just, hole and entyere yerely values of all the manors, londes, tenements, hereditaments, rents, tythes, offerings, emoluments, and all other profittes as well spirituall as temporall apperteyninge or belonginge to any Archbushopricke, &c. within the lymyttes of their Commyssion.” The commissioners would collect all of this information and produce a financial statement for every religious community, which would then be given to the King’s Exchequer by May of 1535. And while these local commissioners where making their rounds, King Henry was having Parliament give Cromwell the authority to make a further series of visits to the religious institutions, including ones like the Cistercians which were previously exempted from episcopal oversight by Papal dispensation, which would start in the summer of 1535 and would last until early 1536.

These visit, unlike those from the Valor, which were simply financial audits for tax purposes, were intended to ascertain the quality of religious life being maintained in the religious houses. Since Cromwell could not visit all of the religious institutions himself, he delegated his visitation authority to a few hand-picked commissioners, chief among them: Richard Layton , Thomas Legh , John ap Rice and John Tregonwell . The men chosen were also mostly secular* clergy and appear to have been skeptical of the value of monastic life and universally dismissive of miraculous tokens and holy relics, meaning that they would have been very biased in their assessment of the quality of religious life being maintained. These commissioners were given a series of questions to ask each monk, and were also instructed to purify the monks and nuns in their religious lives, and to instruct them in their duty to obey their King and reject the Pope’s authority. The question they were to ask would cover everything from their daily life to their qualifications, whether they were staying true to their vocations and vows, assess the prevalence of “superstitious” religious observances (like the veneration of relics), and inquiring for evidence of moral/sexual laxity.

However, unlike with the commission that was to assess the religious houses’ financial statuses, the commission that was investigating monastic life was on a much tighter schedule, and as such, several religious houses were missed, and the inquiries seem to have been focused on moral laxity and other misbehavior. In fact, when these reports on the misbehavior of the religious houses by the commissioners have been checked against other contemporary sources, they usually appear to have been greatly embellished and rushed, sometimes using scandals and events that occurred many years or even decades before. The commissioner’s investigative tactics involved interviewing each member of the religious house individually, including the servants; prompting the individuals to make both individual confessions of misbehavior, as well as to inform on other’s misdeeds. In the commissioner’s correspondence with Cromwell, it is clear that they knew that findings of impropriety were both desired and expected, but it is equally clear that if no faults were found, none were to be reported.

By the autumn of 1535, Cromwell was receiving written reports from the commissioners detailing all of the scandalous deeds they allegedly discovered; enclosed within them were bundles of purported miraculous girdles, wimples, and mantles that the nuns and monks had been lending out to the sick, or mothers in labor, for money. The commissioners consistently instructed the religious houses to re-introduce the strict practices of cloistered living and common dining, while urging that those who were unable to comply should be encouraged to leave the religious house; and it appears that a significant number of people took the opportunity to be released from their monastic vows when it was offered to them, and went to make a life elsewhere. The commissioners did report that there were still a good number of professed religious persons that chose to stay and live in the religious houses. Only in the case of seven religious houses had impropriety or irreligion been so extreme, or the remaining numbers of inhabitants so few, that the commissioners had been compelled to suppress (close) it on the spot.

In some others, there were reports of an abbot, a prior, or a noble patron petitioning the King for a house to be dissolved; now that the authority no longer resided with the Pope to do so, the King needed to establish a legal basis for dissolution in statutory law. There was also the added fact that it was not clear if the property of the surrendered religious house would automatically be at the Crown’s disposal, since a good case could be made for the property to revert to the heirs and descendants of the founder or patron of the house. And this is was led Parliament to enact the “Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries Act,” which relied largely on the reports of “impropriety” that Cromwell had received, making it possible to establish the right of the King to dissolve religious houses that were failing to maintain a religious life. This consequently gave the King the ability to obligatorily dissolve monasteries with annual incomes as declared in the Valor Ecclesiasticus of less than £200 (of which there were potentially 419). However, it also gave Henry the discretion to exempt any of these religious houses from dissolution at his pleasure.

And it answered the question of what would happen to the property of the dissolved houses: it would all revert to the Crown, making Henry a much wealthier man. Many of the religious houses fell below the £200 threshold, and they asked for a case for continuation, while offering to pay a substantial fine in compensation. Many of the cases were accepted, so out of the 419 houses that were to be dissolved, around 330 were referred to a suppression commission, and only 243 houses were actually dissolved at this time. Accordingly, many monasteries falling below the threshold forward a case for continuation, offering to pay substantial fines in recompense. Many of these cases were accepted, so that only around 330 were referred to suppression commissions, and only 243 houses were actually dissolved at this time, although by 1540, all the religious houses in England would be closed. Sources: Erickson, C. (1984). Mistress Anne. New York: Summit Books. Fox, J. (2009). Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford. New York: Ballantine Books.

Ridgeway, C. (2012). The Fall of Anne Boleyn: A Countdown. MadeGlobal Publishing. Ridgway, C. (2012). On This Day in Tudor History. MadeGlobal Publishing. Starkey, D. (2003). Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII. New York City: HarperCollins Publishers. Weir, A. (2001). Henry VIII. United States: Random House, Inc. Weir, A. (n.d.). Six Wives of Henry VIII. Wikipedia Reblog Graves discovered in King Henry I dig Graves have been discovered during an archaeological project attempting to map the resting place of King Henry I. Radar technology used around the Reading Abbey Quarter has located graves behind the high altar of the monastery. The discovery has been described as a “significant next step” to discovering the remains of the son of William the Conqueror. The abbey was sacked during King Henry VIII’s dissolution of monasteries. The ruler’s tomb is thought to be behind the high altar of the abbey, which is where the most recent grave discovery has occurred using ground-penetrating radar (GPR). Read more.

The Dissolution Of The Monasteries - British Monarchy Family History British Monarchy Family History The Dissolution Of The Monasteries Today the stereotypical image of a monastery is a building which contains a group of religious men who spend their days at prayer and tending their land in order to create a lifestyle of self sufficiency for their brotherhood. In Tudor Britain however a monastery was a completely different type of establishment which played a much larger role in society. Monasteries were indeed the homes of religious orders but they were also the original old people's home, hospital, school, a place of refuge for the ill or disabled and a pilgrims rest. Monasteries had large gardens where food was grown in order to feed both the monks, their charges and any visitors. Herbs were also grown in their gardens which were used extensively in herbal medicine, one of the few medical aids in Tudor times. Monasteries were also the places of mass employment for local people, as the monks employed many servants in the larger establishments. Therefore monasteries, abbeys, priories and convents became big business which garnered their wealth from benefactor's donations, the selling of home grown produce and herbal medicines and the letting of rooms to visitors.

The heads of these establishments were held in very high regard by the general populace due to the many services that they provided throughout the local community. In 1530 the King and Queen Consort of England were the Catholic King Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon. They had by all accounts a very strong relationship but after twenty four years of marriage and no male heir, King Henry was becoming ever more frustrated with his wife. Catherine had actually produced six babies during their marriage but only one of these babies had grown into adulthood, their daughter Mary. In that day and age the country had never witnessed a female on the throne so King Henry felt duty bound to produce a male heir. He therefore decided to divorce Catherine in order to marry Anne Boleyn, one of the queen's ladies in waiting, but things did not turn out the way he planned with his request to Pope Clement VII to be given permission to divorce denied. In his anger and frustration, the king ordered an act of supremacy that would make him supreme head of the church in England and all authority in matters of the church falling unto him, the king, which resulted in the beginnings of a new Protestant state religion, the Church of England, the state religion of England which remains to this day.

In order to implement his new church Henry revoked all ties with the the Papacy and Rome and in turn brought about the Dissolution of the Monasteries Act in 1536. From 1536 until 1540, under the command of the king's regents in charge of the dissolution Thomas Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell, England and Wales' monasteries were raised to the ground, shown above, and everything of value stripped from them and taken to the royal treasury. By 1547 Henry had amassed what would be in today's terms around £481 million, most of which was used in order to fund his military campaigns in France and Scotland. However what Henry had unwittingly caused was a social disaster of massive proportions which rendered thousands of elderly and vulnerable people without a home, denied the entire country of what small vestiges of medical aid there was on offer, denied hundreds of men, women and children an education and denied pilgrims a retreat.

Of the five thousand monks, one thousand, six hundred friars and two thousand nuns from the 376 monasteries affected, all were given a pension and some went into church office, but the servants of the monasteries and the businesses situated along pilgrimage routes and at pilgrimage sites were left without custom. Although pilgrims are not considered an important group of people in that day and age, because they were habitual travellers who conveyed news to the masses as they made their way around the country, they were in short the social media of their day. Culturally Henry had also denied future generations of hundreds of the country's finest monastic buildings, caused the loss of thousands of volumes of monastic books and scriptures from their libraries as well as thousands of precious and semi - precious religious artifacts which he had melted down and thousands of statues of saints and holy people which are now lost and gone forever. All this culminated in social instability and the need for a complete social reform, which came by way of the Poor Laws, which were implemented in 1587 during the reign of Henry's daughter Queen Elisabeth.

However until then, hundreds of the country's most vulnerable and needy people endured the misery of having nowhere to live, little to eat, no medical care and hundreds of people were left destitute by having no work. There became a great need for buildings such as Alms Houses, pictured above, for the elderly, workhouses for the sick and poor and foundling hospitals for the unwanted babies of women unable to support themselves, most of which were funded by well meaning benefactors. English cities witnessed transition on a massive scale, causing vast slum areas to spring up in all the country's major urban areas, resulting in higher pollution, an increase in disease and a higher crime rate. The Catholic religion was rendered illegal, although Catholics were not treated badly, a new Archbishop of Canterbury was ordained and a new English book of common prayer compiled, both courtesy of Thomas Cranmer. Cranmer, along with statesman Thomas Cromwell, also supported the principle of the Royal Supremacy, in which the king was overall leader of both the church and country.

During the remainder of Henry's reign and the reign of his son King Edward VI the reformed church was slow to take off and with the accession of Henry’s oldest daughter Queen Mary, known as Bloody Mary due to her intolerance of Protestants, the country reverted back to Catholicism for five years. But in 1558 when Henry’s younger daughter Queen Elisabeth took the crown, the country reverted back to the wishes of her father and the Church of England saw a revival. This new period rendered Catholics vulnerable to attack and cases of church vandalism was on the rise, which caused Catholicism to remain illegal in England right up until the early nineteenth century. The Dissolution of the Monasteries The Dissolution of the Monasteries Introduction In the reign of Henry VIII the Pope was the head of all the Christian Church. When the Pope refused to grant Henry VIII a divorce from Catherine of Aragon , he set up the Church of England. (The Roman Catholic faith believed in marriage for life. It did not recognise, let alone support, divorce.) What is the Reformation? The Reformation is the process by which the English Church is split off from the Roman church. Rather than the pope, the king would be the spiritual head of the English church.

The word reformation is made from two Latin words: re = "again" and formare = "to form or make" It means that the people who left the Roman Church again formed or made the Church. The English Reformation started in the reign of Henry VIII when he wanted to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. However, the idea of reformation was started earlier by Martin Luther (1483-1546), a german monk. Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation, which lead to the birth of the Protestant faith. Martin Luther was a Catholic monk who didn't believe that you could just buy your way into heaven. In 1517 he protested against the Catholic practice of granting indulgences. An indulgence was a pardon instead of punishment for a sin. To gain an indulgence, a person had to perform a good deed. This was often giving money to the church, so it looked like the Church was selling pardons. Luther protested that this was wrong. He believed that a man could only be saved by the grace of God.

1534 Act of Supremacy The Act of Supremacy (1534) confirmed the break from Rome, declaring Henry to be the Supreme Head of the Church of England. The Dissolution of the Monasteries The conflict between Henry VIII and the Roman Catholic Church eventually led to the seizure of Church properties by the state. Over 800 monasteries were dissolved, demolished for building materials, sold off or reclaimed as Anglican Churches. Why? After his divorce (on 23 May, 1533), Henry VIII needed to reduce the power of the Church's power in England, as well as find money to fund his fruitless and expensive wars against France and Scotland. When? The year 1536 saw Henry order the closing down of the wealthy Roman Catholic Abbeys, monasteries and convents across England, Wales and Ireland. This act became known as the 'Dissolution of the Monasteries'. The Dissolution of the Monasteries lasted four years to 1540. The last monastery to be dissolved was Waltham Abbey in March 1540. What happened? Henry put Thomas Cromwell in charge of getting rid of the monasteries.

Cromwell started by sending royal commissioners to all the monasteries in 1535 - 1536 to find out what they own, how much money they have coming in, and to report on what is happening inside the monasteries. The royal commissioners report stated that the monks and nuns are seriously breaking the rules they should be living by. Titchfield Abbey was given to Thomas Wriothesley, one of Henry's closest friends in 1537. The Act of Suppression (1536) Small monasteries, those with an income of less than £200 a year, are closed. Henry Vlll took ownership of all the buildings, land, money and everything else. Some of the small monasteries stay open because they paid some money to the king. The Act of Suppression (1539) Another Act of Suppression sanctioned the transfer of further monastic possessions to the state. Dissolution of the monasteries timeline 1509 Henry VIII becomes king. September 1527 Henry VIII asks the Pope if he can divorce Catherine of Aragon. The Pope will not let him.

25th January 1533 Henry VIII marries Anne Boleyn while he is still married to Catherine of Aragon. July 1533 The Pope says Henry cannot carry on being a Catholic and excommunicates him. November 1534 Act of Supremacy Henry VIII puts himself charge of all the churches and monasteries in England. February 1536 Thomas Cromwell starts the Dissolution of most of the small monasteries in England. October 1536 The Pilgrimage of Grace - a rebellion against the dissolution of the monasteries led by lawyer Robert Aske. November 1537 Thomas Cromwell starts the Dissolution of all the monasteries left in England. March 1540 The end of the Dissolution. All the monasteries in England have been closed. 28th July 1540 Only a few months after the last monastery had been closed down, Thomas Cromwell was beheaded without trial for high treason. He arranged the unsuccessful marriage between Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves.

28th January 1547 BBC - Religion and Ethics - Reformation and dissolution Reformation and dissolution top The foundation of the Tudor dynasty. Under Henry VIII Wales and England left the Roman Catholic Church, and one consequence was the translation of the Bible into Welsh. The Battle of Bosworth in 1485 effectively marked the end of the dynastic conflict in England, popularly known as the Wars of the Roses. Following his victory, Pembroke-born Henry Tudor became King Henry VII. Some Welsh individuals gained from this change, and Welsh clergy were promoted to positions previously closed to them. Henry VIII succeeded his father, and his quarrel with the Pope over his wish to divorce in order to marry Anne Boleyn eventually led to England and Wales leaving the Roman Catholic Church. The dispute took place during the birth of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. While Henry did not become a Protestant, in asserting his authority over the Pope in his kingdom, some of the measures taken were influenced by these new ideas. The monasteries were the first victims of this change. They had been in decline for many years, and their closure by government order caused little or no protest.

The land and contents were sold off, with the profit going to the king. The buildings were stripped and left to the mercy of the elements. This freeing up of land formerly owned by the monasteries gave new opportunities for ambitious members of the Welsh gentry to increase their estates. Owning land could be a complicated business for a Welshman due to old Welsh property law dating back to the tenth century king, Hywel Dda . Many Welsh nobles petitioned for the right to literally become 'English' and be governed by English law. Such tendencies coincided with the wider Tudor concerns of enforcing administrative uniformity throughout the kingdom in the face of possible threats from anti Reformation forces on the continent. These were the underlying currents leading to the Acts of Union of 1536 and 1542 which abolished the remaining Marcher Lordships and incorporated Wales into England. Wales was given representation in Parliament, with the Welsh granted equal rights with the English, and what was left of original Welsh law was abolished. One side effect was that English was made the sole 'official' language throughout Wales. Many of the gentry who gained from the dissolution of the monasteries remained Catholics.

As the Protestant Reformation progressed in Wales and England under the Tudor dynasty, except during Mary's reign, Catholics began to face persecution. In Wales one poet's response was to label the new order 'ffydd Saeson' - 'faith of Saxons', and there was a strong feeling that the Welsh were being forced to abandon the old religion due to English demands. A number of Welsh Catholics were to be martyred, although many embraced their fate joyfully. At Tyburn the Welsh priest Edward Morgan was reproved by a minister on the scaffold for being too cheerful at the prospect of going to heaven. There were Catholics who passively resisted the changes by staying away from the new church services. Legislation was passed which punished these non-attenders, and they were called 'Recusants', a term which also was applied to some of the early Protestant dissenters. They faced substantial fines for non-attendance as well as incurring the suspicion of the authorities. Most Welsh people seemed to have accepted these changes, although they probably mourned the banning of colourful religious events like pilgrimages under the new regime. But it was the translating of the Bible into Welsh during Elizabeth I's reign which enabled their eventual transformation into a Protestant people.

Making the Word of God understandable to the people was a very important part of the Protestant Reformation. A result of this was the emergence of differing opinions on the role of a monarch in a Christian society. As Charles I was to find out, the consequence in his case was to be quite literally fatal. thestruggleforsupremacy - C - THE DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES, 1536-1539 C - THE DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES, 1536-1539 SECTION C: The Dissolution of the Monasteries, 1536-1539 “The dissolution destroyed the last possible refuge of Papalism, enriched the crown and anchored the new order firmly in the self-interest of the land owning classes who purchased the estates.

It did all this with the thoroughness and amazing ease which characterised all Cromwell’s achievements.” Geoffrey Elton England under the Tudors (1956) The Dissolution of the Monasteries is seen as a defining moment in the reign of Henry VIII - but the important questions that you need to have answers to are: - What were the motives for why they were dissolved?- What were the effects of the dissolutions?When answering these sorts of questions, you should remember that most reasons can be broken down into one or more of the synoptic elements: Religion, Politics, Economics and Societybut don't forget that they are all linked closely together and any one of them can not occur in isolation. Shilling / AKA Testoon, the discolouring on his nose is the exposed cheaper copper below the silver surface. Earlier coins were pure silver or gold. This debasing reduced the value of the coins to 25% of their earlier value, leading to inflation and to Henry being given the nickname ‘Old Coppernose’.

Click on the Image to take you to this Podcast SYNOPSIS OF DISCUSSION Melvyn Bragg and guests (Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University; Diane Purkiss, Fellow and Tutor at Keble College, Oxford; George Bernard, Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Southampton) discuss Henry VIII and the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Was Henry’s decision to destroy monastic culture in this country a tyrannical act of grand larceny or the pious destruction of a corrupt institution? When he was an old man, Michael Sherbrook remembered the momentous events of his youth: “All things of price were either spoiled, plucked away or defaced to the uttermost…it seemed that every person bent himself to filch and spoil what he could. Nothing was spared but the ox-houses and swincotes…” He was talking about the destruction of Roche Abbey, but it could have been Lewes or Fountains, Glastonbury, Tintern or Walsingham, names that haunt the religious past as their ruins haunt the landscape. These were the monasteries, suddenly and for many shockingly, destroyed during the reign of Henry VIII.

The conflict was played out with a mix of violence, heroism, political manoeuvring and genuine theological disputation. But what was lost in terms of architecture, painting, treasure and in the religious habits of the monasteries themselves and of the common people who lived with them? What about the effects of the Dissolution on English Society and Culture? Click on the links below to explore the views of English Heritage Henry VIII's Enforcer The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell BBC Documentary The Lincolnshire Uprising and the Pilgrimage of Grace After the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries in 1536, there was a general concern for the well being of the common people of England by the King. Groups of potential rebels met up to discuss how they would be able to prevent the closure of all the monasteries, and as the rumours that they heard, even the possibility of the closure of churches altogether. This was the time to react. What followed was an organised movement of some 30'000 rebels in the Lincolnshire Uprising and the Pilgrimage of Grace. But how would the King respond to the greatest threat that could have rocked his kingdom?

Click on the image to open the archive How serious were the Uprisings of 1536?Read through some of the responses between various people in October 1536 at the time of the uprising. What was being "officially" said about the rebels and how should they be dealt with? Remember that these are written by people at the time when the events are going on - they will have been feeling the hopes and fears of such an event. The emotions that would have been there might have clouded their judgement, can we trust what they are saying? This video has been made to deliberately leave out the words used by the "pilgrims", using the information from the Lincolnshire Articles, the Proclamation of Robert Aske and the Oath taken by the Pilgrims, can you work out the true motives behind the rebellions and are you able to judge the methods used to tackle the dissolution by Robert Aske? Henry VIII: Reign Henry VIII Reign Wolsey and Foreign Policy As king, Henry inherited from his father a budget surplus and a precedent for autocratic rule.

In 1511, Henry joined Pope Julius II, King Ferdinand II of Aragón, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, and the Venetians in their Holy League against France. The campaign, organized by Henry's talented minister Thomas (later cardinal) Wolsey , had little success. A more popular conflict, which occurred during Henry's absence, was the victory (1513) of Thomas Howard, 2d duke of Norfolk, at Flodden over the invading Scottish forces under James IV . Rapid changes in the diplomatic situation following the death of Ferdinand (1516) enabled Wolsey, now chancellor, to conclude a new alliance with France, soon expanded to include all the major European powers in a pledge of universal peace (1518). However, with the election of Ferdinand's grandson, already king of Spain, as Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1519, England's status as a secondary power was soon revealed. Henry joined Charles in war against France in 1522, but when Charles won a decisive victory over Francis at Pavia (1525), England was denied any of the spoils.

Henry and Wolsey tried to curb the alarming rise of imperial power by an unpopular alliance (1527) with France, which led to diplomatic and economic reprisals against England. Domestically, Henry had become less popular due to a series of new taxes aimed at providing revenue to bolster the depleted treasury. Despite the early advice of Sir Thomas More , one of Henry's councillors, Wolsey had remained the country's top minister, and by 1527 Wolsey had been forced to accept much of the blame for England's failures. Divorce and the Reformation Henry, determined to provide a male heir to the throne, decided to divorce Katharine and marry Anne Boleyn . English diplomacy became a series of maneuvers to win the approval of Pope Clement VII , who was in the power of emperor Charles V, Katharine's nephew. The king wished to invalidate the marriage on the grounds that the papal dispensation under which he and Katharine had been permitted to marry was illegal. The pope reluctantly authorized a commission consisting of cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio to decide the issue in England.

Katharine denied the jurisdiction of the court, and before a decision could be reached, Clement had the hearing adjourned (1529) to Rome. The failure of the commission, followed by a reconciliation between Charles and Francis I, led to the fall of Wolsey and to the initiation by Henry of an anti-ecclesiastical policy intended to force the pope's assent to the divorce. Under the guidance of the king's new minister, Thomas Cromwell , the anticlerical Parliament drew up (1532) the Supplication Against the Ordinaries, a long list of grievances against the church. In a document known as the Submission of the Clergy, the convocation of the English church accepted Henry's claim that all ecclesiastical legislation was subject to royal approval. Acts stopping the payment of annates to Rome and forbidding appeals to the pope followed. The pope still refused to give way on the divorce issue, but he did agree to the appointment (1533) of the king's nominee, Thomas Cranmer , as archbishop of Canterbury.

Cranmer immediately pronounced Henry's marriage with Katharine invalid and crowned Anne (already secretly married to Henry) queen, and the pope excommunicated Henry. In 1534 the breach with Rome was completed by the Act of Supremacy, which made the king head of the Church of England (see England, Church of ). Any effective opposition was suppressed by the Act of Succession entailing the crown on Henry's heirs by Anne, by an extensive and severe Act of Treason, and by the strict administration of the oath of supremacy. A number of prominent churchmen and laymen, including former chancellor Sir Thomas More, were executed, thus changing Henry's legacy from one of enlightenment to one of bloody suppression. Under Cromwell's supervision, a visitation of the monasteries in 1535 led to an act of Parliament in 1536 by which smaller monasteries reverted to the crown, and the others were confiscated within the next few years. By distributing some of this property among the landed gentry, Henry acquired the loyalty of a large and influential group.

Later Years In 1536, Anne Boleyn, who had given birth to Elizabeth (later Elizabeth I ) but failed to have a male heir, was convicted of adultery and incest and beheaded. Soon afterward, Henry married Jane Seymour , who in 1537 bore a son (later Edward VI ) and died. Meanwhile in 1536–37 Henry had dealt brutally but effectively with rebellions in the north by subjects protesting economic hardships and the dissolution of the monasteries (see Pilgrimage of Grace ). In 1536, Henry authorized the Ten Articles, which included some Protestant doctrinal points, and he approved (1537) publication of the Bible in English. However, the Six Articles passed by Parliament in 1539 reverted to the fundamental principles of Roman Catholic doctrine. Another temporary peace (1538) between France and the empire seemed to pose the threat of Catholic intervention in England and helped Cromwell persuade the king to ally himself with the German Protestant princes by marrying (1540) Anne of Cleves . However, Henry disliked Anne and divorced her almost immediately. Cromwell, now completely discredited, was beheaded.

The king then married Catherine Howard , but in 1542 she met the fate of Anne Boleyn. He married his sixth wife, Catherine Parr , in 1543. In 1542 war had begun again with Scotland, still controlled through James V by French and Catholic interests. The fighting culminated in the rout of the Scots at Solway Moss and the death of James. Henry forced the Scots to agree to a treaty (1543) of marriage between Mary Queen of Scots and his own son, Edward, but this was to come to nothing. In 1543, Henry once more joined Charles in war against France and was able to take Boulogne (1544). The expensive war dragged on until 1546, when Henry secured a payment of indemnity for the city. When he died in 1547 he was succeeded, as he had hoped, by a son, but it was his daughter Elizabeth I who ruled over one of the greatest periods in England's history. Sections in this article:

Question: In England, the "dissolution of the monasteries" occurred under the reign of which king?
Answer: Henry VIII