[23], None of this process of legislation and visitation had applied to the houses of the friars. List of monastic houses in England - Wikipedia In a few instances, even monastic servants were provided with a year's wages on discharge. For two of these, Bath and Coventry, there was a second secular cathedral church in the same diocese, and both surrendered in 1539; but the other eight would necessarily need to continue in some form. Cromwell had intended that the bulk of this wealth should serve as regular income of government. Only a few monks and nuns lived in conspicuous luxury, but most were very comfortably fed and housed by the standards of the time, and few any longer set standards of ascetic piety or religious observance. Catholics who had been free to worship in private were hunted out, fined, imprisoned or executed. Otherwise, the most marketable fabric in monastic buildings was likely to be the lead on roofs, gutters and plumbing, and buildings were burned down as the easiest way to extract this. All property of the dissolved house would revert to the Crown. What was the dissolution of the monasteries? This list may not reflect recent changes. The deans and prebends of the six new cathedrals were overwhelmingly former heads of religious houses. The dissolution of the monasteries in the late 1530s was one of the most revolutionary events in English history. The landed property of the former monasteries included large numbers of manorial estates, each carrying the right and duty to hold a court for tenants and others. Two houses, Norton Priory in Cheshire and Hexham Abbey in Northumberland, attempted to resist the commissioners by force, actions which Henry interpreted as treason, resulting in his writing personally to demand the summary brutal punishment of those responsible. In this lesson, we will learn about why Henry VIII decided to close the monasteries and how he benefited from this. An Act of Elizabeth's first parliament dissolved the refounded houses. Such estates were a valuable source of income for the Crown in its French wars. The monasteries were next in line. Lists of monasteries cover monasteries, buildings or complexes of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone (hermits). How many monasteries were dissolved in the 16th century? [citation needed], In consequence, almost all official action in respect of the dissolution in England and Wales was directed at the monasteries and monastic property. Muckross Abbey. Once surrender had been accepted, and formally witnessed, Yngworth reported briefly to Cromwell on his actions, noting, for each friary, who was the current tenant of the gardens, what was the general state of the friary buildings, and whether the friary church had valuable lead on roofs and gutters. These property rights were therefore automatically forfeited to the Crown when their English dependencies were dissolved by Act of Parliament but the example created by these events prompted questions as to what action might be taken should houses of English foundation cease for any reason to exist. During Henry's reign, former nuns, like monks, continued to be forbidden to marry, therefore it is more possible that genuine hardship resulted, especially as former nuns had little access to opportunities for gainful employment. [19] By early 1539, the continuation of a selected group of great monasteries as collegiate refoundation had become an established expectation; and when the Second Suppression Act was presented to Parliament in May 1539, it was accompanied by an Act giving the King authority to establish new bishoprics and collegiate cathedral foundations from existing monastic houses. While Thomas Cromwell, vicar-general and vicegerent of England, is often considered the leader of the dissolutions, he merely oversaw the project, one he had hoped to use for reform of monasteries, not closure or seizure. Priest-holes were built in many Catholic homes to provide hiding places. [24], In April 1539, Parliament passed a new law retrospectively legalising acts of voluntary surrender and assuring tenants of their continued rights, but by then the vast majority of monasteries in England and Wales had already been dissolved or marked out for a future as a collegiate foundation. Introduction In the reign of Henry VIII the Pope was the head of all the Christian Church. In the 1530s CE, there were still some 800 monasteries spread across England and Wales, but many were in decline. [citation needed], When Henry VIII's Catholic daughter, Mary I, succeeded to the throne in 1553, her hopes for a revival of English religious life proved a failure. The dissolution of the monasteries, occasionally referred to as the suppression of the monasteries, was the set of administrative and legal processes between 1536-1541, by which Henry VIII disbanded monasteries, priories, convents, and friaries in England, Wales, and Ireland; expropriated their income; disposed of their assets; and provided for their former personnel and functions. Monastery of Panayia Yiatrissa. - - -. All ecclesiastical charges and levies that had previously been payable to Rome, would now go to the King. The 'Dissolution of the Monasteries' by Henry VIII in 1536 However, the former monks and nuns were allowed to reside in the convent buildings for life on state allowance, and many of them consequently survived the Reformation for decades. Dissolution of Monasteries Facts & Worksheets | Background & Impact In marked distinction to the situation in England, in Ireland the houses of friars had flourished in the 15th century, attracting popular support and financial endowments, undertaking many ambitious building schemes, and maintaining a regular conventual and spiritual life. Nevertheless, there was during most of 1537 (possibly conditioned by concern not to re-ignite rebellious impulses) a distinct standstill in official action towards any further round of dissolutions. Wealth and religious Religious motives: Bad behaviour of . While these transactions were going on in England, elsewhere in Europe events were taking place which presaged a storm. Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like background: how many monasteries in 1529, what was the wealth of the mons like? The English and Welsh dissolutions produced a comparatively small amount of new educational endowments compared to the violent closure of monasteries elsewhere in Protestant Europe, but the treatment of former monks and nuns was more benevolent, and there was no analogue to the effective processes established in England to the efficient mechanisms established in England to maintain pension payments over successive decades. When the Pope refused to grant Henry VIII a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, he set up the Church of England. Monastery | religion | Britannica Pensions averaged around 5 per annum before tax for monks, with those for superiors typically assessed at 10% of the net annual income of the house and were not reduced if the pensioner obtained other employment. Even in houses with adequate numbers, the regular obligations of communal eating and shared living had not been fully enforced for centuries, as communities tended to sub-divide into a number of distinct familiae. Nevertheless, much was lost, especially manuscript books of English church music, none of which had then been printed. Many were left to ruin, such as Tintern Abbey. The last surviving monks continued to draw their pensions into the reign of James I (16031625), more than 60 years after the dissolution's end. [citation needed]. Learn what happened inside the monasteries and nunneries founded across Great Britain, . From then on, all dissolutions that were not a consequence of convictions for treason were legally "voluntary" a principle that was taken a stage further with the voluntary surrender of Lewes priory in November 1537 when, as at Furness, the monks and were not accorded the option of transfer to another house, but with the additional motivating consideration that this time (and on all future occasions) ordinary monks were offered life pensions if they co-operated. But whole monastic libraries were destroyed, countless music manuscripts lost and Englandsrural landscape changed forever. Henry appears from the first to have shared these views, never having endowed a religious house and only once[citation needed] having undertaken a religious pilgrimage, to Walsingham in 1511. These Acts sought to demonstrate that establishing royal jurisdiction over the Church would ensure progress in "religious reformation" where papal authority had been insufficient. James Clark claims in The Dissolution of the Monasteries: The Lincolnshire rising lasted less than a week but before its end their cause was carried across the county's northern border. In 1521, Martin Luther had published De votis monasticis (On the monastic vows),[14] a treatise which declared that the monastic life had no scriptural basis, was pointless and also actively immoral in that it was not compatible with the true spirit of Christianity. Many were left to ruin, such as Tintern Abbey. Dissolution of the Monasteries - Historic UK 1. . As it was commonly the case, by the late medieval period, that the abbot's lodging had been expanded to form a substantial independent residence, these properties were frequently converted into country houses by lay purchasers. Consequently, the founder, and their heirs, had a continuing (and legally enforceable) interest in certain aspects of the house's functioning; their nomination was required at the election of an abbot or prior, they could claim hospitality within the house when needed, and they could be buried within the house when they died. 825 religious houses, 500 of these were monasteries. Many monastic outbuildings were turned into granaries, barns and stables. Around 80 houses were exempted, mostly offering a substantial fine. This diminution in lay patronage is an important backdrop to the study, but, even so, lay patrons remained in the majority and Stber identifies about seven hundred monasteries under lay patronage between . [citation needed], The royal transfer of alien monastic estates to educational foundations inspired bishops and, as the 15th century waned, they advocated more such actions, which became common. Start Lesson Back This will include the religious, political and economic factors that led to the decision to break with Rome. Henry wanted to change this, and in November 1529 Parliament passed Acts reforming apparent abuses in the English Church. [citation needed], Those alien priories that had functioning communities were forced to pay large sums to the king, while those that were mere estates were confiscated and run by royal officers, the proceeds going to the king's pocket. dissolved 1521 when the last prioress died and the remaining sisters left; given to St John's College, Cambridge . Mostly he had found poverty, derelict buildings, and leased-out gardens as the only income-bearing asset. The chosen commissioners were mostly secular clergy, and appear to have been Erasmian in their views, doubtful of the value of monastic life and universally dismissive of relics and miraculous tokens. As well as being a financial document, it also serves as a piece of visual propaganda that promoted the royal agenda. The removal of over eight hundred such institutions left great gaps in the social fabric. Some books were destroyed for their precious bindings, others were sold off by the cartload. Cromwell appointed a local commissioner in each case to ensure rapid compliance with the King's wishes, to supervise the orderly sale of monastic goods and buildings, to dispose of monastic endowments, and to ensure that the former monks and nuns were provided with pensions, cash gratuities and clothing. Danish and Norwegian monastic life was to vanish in a way identical to that of Sweden. [citation needed], King Henry's enthusiasm for creating new bishoprics was second to his passion for building fortifications. The verdict of unprejudiced historians at the present day would probably beabstracting from all ideological considerations for or against monasticismthat there were far too many religious houses in existence in view of the widespread decline of the fervent monastic vocation, and that in every country the monks possessed too much of wealth and of the sources of production both for their own well-being and for the material good of the economy. With his king and the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer (in office 1533-55 CE), Cromwell masterminded the English Reformation which saw the Church in England break away from the Pope in Rome and such momentous acts as the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Almost all other friaries have disappeared with few visible traces. and more. When an apparent alliance of France and the Empire against England was agreed at Toledo in January 1539, this precipitated a major invasion scare. S. St. Khach Monastery (Unus) Henry used promises to calm the unrest before swiftly beheading some of the leaders. [citation needed], By early 1538, suppression of the friaries was widely being anticipated; in some houses all friars save the prior had already left, and realisable assets (standing timber, chalices, vestments) were being sold off. However, although the property rights of lay founders and patrons were legally extinguished, the incomes of lay holders of monastic offices, pensions and annuities were generally preserved, as were the rights of tenants of monastic lands. [citation needed], It is inconceivable that these moves went unnoticed by the English government and particularly by Thomas Cromwell, who had been employed by Wolsey in his monastic suppressions, and who was shortly to become Henry VIII's King's Secretary. Although there are those who claim that the monasteries were places of vile corruptionfinancial misdeeds and sexual scandal, for exampleand that what happened to them was deserved . Ultimately around 80 per cent of French abbacies came to be held in commendam, the commendators often being lay courtiers or royal servants; and by this means around half the income of French monasteries was diverted into the hands of the Crown, or of royal supporters; all entirely with the Popes' blessing. In consequence of this, religious houses in the 16th century controlled appointment to about two-fifths of all parish benefices in England,[2] disposed of about half of all ecclesiastical income,[3] and owned around a quarter of the nation's landed wealth. The practice of Catholicism in England was illegal, as was undertaking exile for the sake of religious freedom. [citation needed], The medieval understanding of religious houses as institutions associated monasteries and nunneries with their property, that is to say, their endowments of land and spiritual income, and not with their current personnel of monks and nuns. It was envisaged that some houses might offer immediate surrender, but in practice few did; consequently, a two-stage procedure was applied, the commissions reporting back to Cromwell for a decision as to whether to proceed with dissolution. There were around 400 religious houses in Ireland in 1530many more, relative to population and material wealth, than in England and Wales. The majority of those then remaining chose to continue in the religious life; in some areas, the premises of a suppressed religious house was recycled into a new foundation to accommodate them, and in general, rehousing those seeking a transfer proved much more difficult and time-consuming than appears to have been anticipated. Unless they were notably bad landlords or scandalously neglected those parish churches in their charge, they tended to enjoy widespread local support; particularly as they commonly appointed local notables to fee-bearing offices. The overwhelming majority of the 625 monastic communities dissolved by Henry VIII had developed in the wave of monastic enthusiasm that swept western Christendom in the 11th and 12th centuries. Dissolution of the monasteries 1536-1540 - The National Archives Where nuns came from well-born families, as many did, they seem commonly to have returned to live with their relatives. This argument has been disputed, for example, by G. W. O. Woodward, who summarises: No great host of beggars was suddenly thrown on the roads for monastic charity had had only marginal significance and, even had the abbeys been allowed to remain, could scarcely have coped with the problems of unemployment and poverty created by the population and inflationary pressures of the middle and latter parts of the sixteenth century. The antiquarian John Leland was commissioned by the King to rescue items of particular interest (especially manuscript sources of Old English history),[32] and other collections were made by private individuals, notably Matthew Parker. Many other parishes bought and installed former monastic woodwork, choir stalls and stained-glass windows. The choice of a 200 threshold as the criterion for general dissolution under the legislation has been queried, as this does not appear to correspond to any clear distinction in the quality of religious life reported in the visitation reports, and the preamble to the legislation refers to numbers rather than income. How many monasteries were there in 1540? - Wise-Answer [10], The stories of monastic impropriety, vice, and excess that were to be collected by Thomas Cromwell's visitors to the monasteries may have been biased and exaggerated but the religious houses of England and Waleswith the notable exceptions of those of the Carthusians, the Observant Franciscans, and the Bridgettine nuns and monkshad long ceased to play a leading role in the spiritual life of the country. That same year Cardinal Wolsey dissolved St Frideswide's Priory (now Oxford Cathedral) to form the basis of his Christ Church, Oxford; in 1524, he secured a papal bull to dissolve some twenty other monasteries to provide an endowment for his new college. By establishing additional long-term liabilities, these actions diminished the eventual net return to the Crown from each house's endowments, but they were not officially discouraged; indeed, Cromwell obtained and solicited many such fees in his own personal favour. [13] Only a minority of houses could now support the twelve or thirteen professed religious usually regarded as the minimum necessary to maintain the full canonical hours of the Divine Office. [citation needed], Pensions granted to nuns were notably less generous, averaging around 3 per annum. By the following Reduction of Gustav I of Sweden, Gustav gained large estates, as well as loyal supporters among the nobility who chose to use the permission to retract donations done by their families to the convents. Shortly after his break with Rome, Henry VIII moved on the monastic. Westminster Abbey, which had been retained as a cathedral, reverted to being a monastery; while the communities of the Bridgettine nuns and of the Observant Franciscans, which had gone into exile in the reign of Henry VIII, were able to return to their former houses at Syon and Greenwich respectively. The Act of 1539 also provided for the suppression of religious hospitals, which had constituted in England a distinct class of institution, endowed for the purpose of caring for older people. Dissolution of monasteries (Henry VIII) Flashcards | Quizlet This created a pairing of positive and negative incentives in favour of further dissolution: Abbots and priors came under pressure from their communities to petition for voluntary surrender if they could obtain favourable terms for pensions; they also knew that if they refused to surrender, they might suffer the penalty for treason and their religious house would be dissolved anyway. By the 16th century the sponsors were overwhelmingly religious houses, although monasteries provided no formal parochial training, and the financial 'title' was a legal fiction. Between 1536 and 1540 he took over 800 monasteries, abbeys, nunneries and friaries, some of which had accumulated great wealth and land (through bequests for instance). As the last abbot had been appointed to the see of Norwich, the abbey endowments were transferred alongside him directly into those of the bishops. Most of the larger alien priories were allowed to become naturalised (for instance Castle Acre Priory), on payment of heavy fines and bribes, but for around ninety smaller houses and granges, their fates were sealed when Henry V dissolved them by act of Parliament in 1414. The visitors reported the number of professed religious persons continuing in each house. Many of these were related to the Reformation in Continental Europe. Why did Henry swing back to Catholicism between 1538-1540? [15], In DenmarkNorway, King Frederick I made a similar act in 1528, confiscating 15 of the houses of the wealthiest monasteries and convents. Pastoral care was seen as much more important and vital than the monastic focus on contemplation, prayer and performance of the daily office.[1]. Acquiring such feudal rights was regarded as essential to establish a family in the status and dignity of the late medieval gentry; but for a long period, freehold manorial estates had been very rare in the market; and families of all kinds seized on the opportunity now offered to entrench their position in the social scale. In 1649, Oliver Cromwell led a Parliamentary army to conquer Ireland, and systematically sought out and destroyed former monastic houses. Explore monasticism in the High Middle Ages, the impact of the Crusades, the growth of education, and the birth of the university to understand how universities replaced monasteries as. English convent lives in exile, 1540-1800 | OUPblog From the mid-fourteenth century onwards, the canons had been able to exploit their hybrid status to justify petitions for papal privileges of appropriation, allowing them to fill vicarages in their possession either from among their own number, or from secular stipendiary priests removable at will; these arrangements corresponded to those for their chapels of ease. In 1536, Convocation adopted and Parliament enacted the Ten Articles of which the first half used terminology and ideas drawn from Luther and Melanchthon; but any momentum towards Protestantism stalled when Henry VIII expressed his desire for continued orthodoxy with the Six Articles of 1539, which remained in effect until after his death. The dissolution and destruction of the monasteries and shrines was very unpopular in many areas. Cromwell delegated his visitation authority to hand-picked commissioners, chiefly Richard Layton, Thomas Legh, John ap Rice and John Tregonwell, for the purposes of ascertaining the quality of religious life being maintained in religious houses, of assessing the prevalence of 'superstitious' religious observances such as the veneration of relics, and for inquiring into evidence of moral laxity (especially sexual). Levels of monastic debt were increasing, and average numbers of professed religious were falling,[12] although the monasteries continued to attract recruits right up to the end. In some cases the parish took over the church (e.g. The Dissolution of the Monasteries - History Learning Site Worcester Priory (now Worcester Cathedral) had 600 books at the time of the dissolution. The last of them was Vreta Abbey, where the last nuns died in 1582, and Vadstena Abbey, from which the last nuns emigrated in 1595, about half a century after the introduction of reformation. All the refounded houses were in properties that had remained in Crown possession; but, in spite of much prompting, none of Mary's lay supporters would co-operate in returning their holdings of monastic lands to religious use; while the lay lords in Parliament proved unremittingly hostile, as a revival of the "mitred" abbeys would have returned the House of Lords to having an ecclesiastical majority. [citation needed], The conventional wisdom of the time was that the proper daily observance of the Divine Office of prayer required a minimum of twelve professed religious, but by the 1530s, only a minority of religious houses in England could provide this. [27] By 1535, of 8,838 rectories, 3,307 had thus been appropriated with vicarages;[28] but at this late date, a small sub-set of vicarages in monastic ownership were not being served by beneficed clergy at all. Woodward concludes: There was no general policy of destruction, except in Lincolnshire where the local government agent was so determined that the monasteries should never be restored that he razed as many as he could to the ground. how much land did they hold?, where was the money for mons acquired from? The dissolution of the monasteries, as James Clark explains, brought the most . - caring for the sick - place of catholic worship - sanctuary - education how may monasteries did Wolsey close in the 1520s? [citation needed], However, this apparent consensus often faced strong resistance in practice. However, after Cromwell's fall in 1540, Henry needed money quickly to fund his military ambitions in France and Scotland; and so monastic property was sold off, representing by 1547 an annual value of 90,000 (equivalent to 55,802,000 in 2021). Nevertheless, and particularly in areas far from London, the abbeys, convents and priories were centres of hospitality and learning, and everywhere they remained a main source of charity for the old and infirm. By using this site, you agree we can set and use cookies. and more. [citation needed]. Nearly 500 years after dissolution, English monasteries still - Crux Great abbeys and priories like Glastonbury, Walsingham, Bury St Edmunds, and Shaftesbury, which had flourished as pilgrimage sites for many centuries, were soon reduced to ruins. Cromwell deputed Richard Yngworth, suffragan Bishop of Dover and former Provincial of the Dominicans, to obtain the friars' surrender, which he achieved rapidly by drafting new injunctions that enforced each order's rules and required friars to resume a strict conventual life within their walls. An attempt was also made in 1530 to dissolve the famous Abbey of St. Gall, which was a state of the Holy Roman Empire in its own right, but this failed, and St. Gall survived until 1798. The Dissolution of the Monasteries - Primary Homework Help Monastic successors tended thereafter to prefer to sponsor university graduates as candidates for the priesthood; and, although the government signally failed to respond to the consequent need for expanded educational provision, individual benefactors stepped into the breach, with the refoundation as university colleges of five out of the six former monastic colleges of Oxford and Cambridge; while Jesus College, Oxford and Emmanuel College, Cambridge were newly founded with the express purpose of educating a Protestant parish clergy. In 1538, 5 compared with the annual wages of a skilled workerand although the real value of such a fixed income would suffer through inflationit remained a significant sum; all the more welcome as prompt payment could largely be relied upon. Monastic orders had maintained, for the education of their members, six colleges at the universities of Oxford or Cambridge, of which five survived as refoundations. How many monasteries were left after the dissolution? At that time, quite a few bishops across Europe had come to believe that resources expensively deployed on an unceasing round of services by men and women in theory set apart from the world [would] be better spent on endowing grammar schools and university colleges to train men who would then serve the laity as parish priests, and on reforming the antiquated structures of over-large dioceses such as that of Lincoln. Outside this area, he could only proceed by tactical agreement with clan chiefs and local lords. Men and women who took religious vows were seeking a purity of experience they found lacking as lay people. His intention in destroying the monastic system was both to reap its wealth and to suppress political opposition.
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