The visiting commissioners, now that the Visitation…
1536 CE
The visiting commissioners, now that the Visitation has allowed for an inventory of what the monasteries possess, have claimed to have uncovered sexual immorality and financial impropriety among the monks and nuns, which becomes the ostensible justification for their suppression.
The Church owns between one-fifth and one-third of the land in all England; Cromwell realizes that he can bind the gentry and nobility to Royal Supremacy by selling to them the huge amount of Church lands, and that any reversion to pre-Royal Supremacy will entail upsetting many of the powerful people in the realm.
For these various reasons the Dissolution of the Monasteries begins in 1536 with the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries Act, affecting smaller houses—those valued at less than two hundred pounds a year.
Henry uses the revenue to help build coastal defenses against expected invasion, and all the land is given to the Crown or sold to the aristocracy.
Cromwell, as Henry’s principal minister,supervises the suppression of the monasteries and the confiscation of their wealth.
Whereas the royal supremacy had attracted little notice from the populace, the attack on abbeys and priories affects lay people.
Mobs attack those sent to break up monastic buildings.
Suppression commissioners are attacked by local people in several places.
Locations
Groups
Topics
Subjects
Regions
North Europe
View →Subregions
