The Dissolution of the Monasteries

Joyce Youings

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032038506
• eBook ISBN: 9781000409550
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Originally published in 1971 this book begins with the assumption that the Dissolution of the Monasteries was neither an integral nor an essential part of the English reformation. This book pursues the story chronologically and thus helps students re-discover what contemporaries knew was happening at each successive stage. An important part of this process consists in watching - with the help of a selection of surviving records - how the Court of Augmentation went to work not only centrally but in the field. The part played by Thomas Cromwell, in both the devising and the carrying out of the Dissolution is reassessed and particular attention is paid to the chronological relation between his career and the early stages of the dispersal of the crown's new resources among the King's subjects.

INTRODUCTION

1
Problems and Documents

THE Dissolution of the Monasteries in England and Wales in the reign of Henry VIII was an act of resumption, a restoration to secular uses of land and other endowments provided over many centuries, very largely by laymen, for the support of houses of regular clergy and nuns. What was achieved in the 1530s was the reversal of a series of acts of donation, but with the important proviso that all the property passed in the first instance not to the original donors or their heirs and assigns but to the Crown. By various means, by statute, by legal process, and by simple deed of gift, the monastic lands became vested in the king, to be at his absolute disposal. The communities of men and women religious were never, in so many words, actually dissolved. Nowhere in the formal instruments were they forbidden to pursue their corporate existence, to follow their liturgical routine, or indeed to adhere to their Rule. Much, of course, was implied in the statutory forfeiture of all their ornaments and church furnishings, and in the provisions made not only for the maintenance but also for the legal status of the dispossessed who were regarded as having returned to the secular world. Some of the monks and nuns, though in no case as far as we know whole communities, did actually stay together. But the general assumption of all concerned was that shorn of their lands the religious communities would disappear. And this is what in fact happened. Institutions which for the most part traced their foundation to gifts of landed property came to an end with the surrender of that property.

To approach the Dissolution thus may be thought to be to take too legal and materialistic a view of an event, or series of events, which was a landmark in the ecclesiastical history of England and Wales. It is true that the Dissolution had very substantial religious, as well as social and economic, consequences, but its inspiration and execution owed little to religious considerations. There was not even any sustained effort to convict the religious of harbouring Roman loyalties, which indeed very few of them did. It is arguable that the Dissolution formed neither an integral nor an essential part of the Reformation in England and Wales. Might not some quite considerable diversion of monastic resources have taken place even if there had been no breach with Rome? Or, once accomplished, might not the Dissolution have remained final even if there had been a healing of that breach in his later years by Henry VIII? It is even conceivable that had they not been great landed proprietors all but a few of the English and Welsh monasteries might have remained, slightly changed though not necessarily reformed, within the Anglican system. It can hardly be argued that they formed, or were seriously thought by Henry VIII and his ministers to form, a challenge to the royal supremacy. It is indeed difficult to claim of any single religious house in the middle and late 1530s that its members stood united against any encroachment on its affairs by the secular world.

Historians of widely different religious persuasions are today in remarkable agreement that the monasteries of early Tudor England and Wales were no longer playing an indispensable role in the spiritual life of the country, certainly not one to justify their continued enjoyment of so large a part of the landed wealth of the kingdom. Those who are most critical of Henry VIII condemn him not so much for dissolving the monasteries as for failing to apply the proceeds of the Dissolution towards the educational, social, and religious betterment of his subjects.¹ Both sides, in fact, find considerable common ground in the writings of Thomas Starkey (Doc. 14). Even those who seek to defend the continuance of monasticism succeed only in demonstrating the extent to which the religious were involved in the more mundane aspects of contemporary life, playing a part in the public life of town and countryside more or less commensurate with their status as local landed proprietors. Of very few communities is it now seriously argued that they either shunned the world and its temptations, or, in their contacts with it, set an example to laymen or to their secular clerical brethren. On the other hand we now discount official pronouncements about the moral shortcomings of the monks and nuns, and have learned to view the evidence placed on record by bishops and other ‘visitors’ in its true perspective.²

¹ J. J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, 1968, p. 511.

² For a realistic assessment based on a wide range of evidence see A. G. Dickens, The English Reformations 1964, pp. 52–4.

But the attitude of ordinary early Tudor laymen, and the extent to which they regarded the monasteries as a necessary part of their present and future life, still very largely eludes the historian. Perhaps it is as well to remember that in general people gossip when it suits them. The scurrilous stories in circulation about monastic morality were only what contemporaries chose to believe: they were not derived, like so much present-day historical data, from the highly confidential records of episcopal visitations. May it not be the case that the concern of most laymen, when it came to the point, was less with the more venial sins which were the business of bishops, and more with the degree of devotion shown by the religious in the discharge of pastoral responsibilities, particularly when such responsibilities seemed to be of the monks’ own seeking? Partisan statements are not the best kind of historical evidence, but the submissions of the parishioners of Wembury in Devon (Doc. 3) have about them the ring of authenticity, and may well reflect a state of affairs not uncommon up and down the country. The neglect of which they complained arose on account of the widespread late-medieval practice, which had gained both episcopal and royal sanction, of monastic appropriation of parish churches, with all the revenue appertaining thereto, saving only the obligation to provide a parish priest. The object, of course, was not to provide pastoral experience for members of the community concerned but rather to augment its regular income, and it was on such grounds that it had been sanctioned. The ultimate effect of the Dissolution was to place such resources and responsibilities in the hands of laymen, or, in the particular case of Wembury, of a corporation of secular clergy. This may or may not have been a change for the better, but clearly any change stood a good chance of winning the parishioners of Wembury to the king’s side. Such relief as came their way, however, came not as part of a movement for religious reform, but simply as the result of a great redistribution of rights of property.

The Dissolution of the Monasteries has taken its place in historical studies primarily as a revolution in landownership, second only to that which followed the Norman Conquest. In making the first attempt to analyse the Dissolution on a national scale the Russian scholar, Alexander Savine, seized upon the Valor Ecclesiasticus, the survey of the income of the church in England and Wales carried out in 1535.³ His findings have stood the test of time. Work on narrower fronts, especially at county level, has very largely confirmed his confidence in the Valor as a remarkably reliable, if conservative, survey of monastic resources. The Valor has indeed become, for historians of the monastic estates, and especially of their disposal by the Crown, almost as indispensable a work of reference as it rapidly became for contemporaries. What Savine was unable adequately to do, and what few historians since his time have even attempted, is to use such late monastic records as are available, together with the great mass of post-Dissolution material relating to the years immediately preceding, to add momentum to the somewhat static picture of the monastic economy afforded by the Valor. There is still a great deal we do not understand about what was happening in those vital years from 1535 to 1539, and a good deal may yet be revealed from a thorough study of the use made of conventual seals during those years.

³ A. Savine, English Monasteries on the Eve of the Dissolution, Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History I, 1909.

The next major aspect of the Dissolution to be tackled by twentieth-century scholars was, appropriately enough, the provision made for the dispossessed religious. Most of the essential material relating to the initial awarding of pensions had long been available in print, and this, together with the still largely unpublished records of later Government inquiries, enabled Mr Baskerville to upset the older impression that the religious were left to the mercy of their friends and relations.⁴ In his pursuit of the subsequent careers of the religious Mr Baskerville is now thought by many historians to have painted rather too rosy a picture. It is generally acknowledged that in terms of the current value of money the pensions awarded were reasonable, and in the case of the governors even generous, and that such obligations towards the religious as it accepted the government to a large degree honoured.⁵ But there is still considerable doubt whether the names which appear on the pension lists provide anything approaching an adequate estimate of the total number of professed monks and nuns who left the cloister at, or not long before, the Dissolution. One recent estimate has put the total number of unpensioned religious as high as 10 per cent.⁶ As for the later careers, about which we seem to know so much, those who figure in the written records are only too likely to be those, possibly no more than a minority, who were either more fortunate, or better fitted to cope with life in the secular world. There is even less certainty about what happened to the very considerable number of monastic servants, both indoor and outdoor, to say nothing of the elderly and infirm lay persons who depended on monastic charity. It is arguable, but far from easy to demonstrate, that the outdoor servants were re-employed by the monks* successors. What assistance, if any, was provided by the government no one seems to know for certain. Moreover, apart from the treatment meted out to the relatively destitute, there still needs to be calculated the total liability assumed by the early Tudor Government in fees and other annual payments to laymen, to those, in fact, to whom the monks bequeathed to their successors a legal rather than a moral obligation, and for how long all such burdens formed a substantial drain on the new royal resources.

⁴ G. Baskerville, The English Monks and the Suppression of the Monasteries^ 1937, is a general and somewhat popularized summing up of the author’s more scholarly work in the counties of Gloucester, Surrey, and Norfolk, publication of which marked the first substantial corrective to the work of Gasquet. For a recent addition to the source material available concerning the later history of the religious see G. A. J. Hodgett, The State of the ex-Religious in the Diocese of Lincolns Lincoln Record Society lii (1959).

⁵ A. G. Dickens, ‘The Edwardian Arrears in Augmentations Payments’, EHR LV (1940).

⁶ G. A. J. Hodgett, ‘The unpensioned religious in Tudor England’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History XIII, ii (1962), but cf. the cautionary note struck in D. S. Chambers, Faculty Office Registersy 1534–49 1966, pp. xlii-xlix. The most up-to-date survey is in G. W. O. Woodward, The Dissolution of the Monasteries, 1966, pp. 139–57.

It has long been recognized that the Dissolution did not lead to the permanent augmentation of the annual income of the Crown, and indeed that the former monastic lands were ‘dissipated’ to a very great extent by Henry VIII during the later years of his reign. This failure to achieve what most historians see as the main object of the exercise is usually ascribed to the disappearance from the scene, in 1540, of Thomas Cromwell. But this is to ignore the fact that by the time of Cromwell’s fall four years had passed since the first assault in 1536, years during which not only very substantial but very many grants had been made, and that in December 1539 Cromwell himself was named as one of the first commissioners to sell monastic and other Crown lands. We are indeed still very far from knowing just how great an immediate increase in annual spending power the Dissolution afforded to the government. The treatment given to the subject in the only general work on early Tudor government finance is, by present-day standards, quite inadequate.⁷ Enrolled accounts, very few of them available in print, exist in abundance, though it must be admitted that it was never the intention of their compilers that they should illuminate the financial position of the Crown. However, it should be possible, now that the principles underlying the new-style government accountancy are fairly well understood, to draw up an overall balance sheet. It will not be enough to discover in any given year how much cash reached Westminster. The new resources could be tapped not only at times convenient to government needs but could also be made available for use on the Crown’s behalf very much nearer the source of supply. Only after all the accounts, spreading over more than a decade, have been analysed, right down to the level of local bailiffs, will it be possible to compile a really satisfactory balance sheet of the whole operation. Meanwhile, however, such evidence as is available about the administration of the new Crown lands suggests that, quite apart from the disposal of its capital assets, the Crown extracted nothing like the maximum possible retur...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Author’s Note
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Documents
• Bibliography
• Index