The dissolution of the monasteries

Why and When?

Key motives: useful for 12 mark questions• Religious - a combination of corruption within the monasteries and new religious ideas outside them

drove reform. In particular the humanist devotion moderna which emphasised interior spirituality rather than outward ritual and was therefore critical of pilgrimage, relic and saint veneration, and protestant ideas which rejected the whole idea of salvation through works. The Compendium Compertorum listed the faults found by the Visitation conducted by Thomas Legh, John Tregonwell, John ap Rice and Richard Layton, that included breeches of vow of chastity and superstitious practices. Was this the key motivation or was it merely a pretext for financial and political motives (link)?

• Financial - the failure of the Amicable Grant (1525) left the crown cash poor; the crown needed money to fend of a potential invasion from a papal-imperial alliance to restore papal authority in England; the financial reward for the crown - of approximately £136,000 a year - would in turn have enormous political advantages (link) because it would mean less dependency upon the nobility, less need for taxation and therefore less need to call parliament. It would enable the king to ‘live of his own’.

• Political – The reform of religion was both the right and duty of the Supreme Head of the Church, and so the ‘reforming motive’ had important political consequences. The dissolution of the monasteries would make the break with Rome decisive and more permanent. Monasteries provided the most prominent voice of resistance before the dissolution and the oaths taken by monks and nuns 1535-6 were of dubious sincerity. Obedience to the pope was inscribed in some of the rules; and most of the houses owed allegiance to mother houses outside of England. They provided a ‘foothold’ for a future restoration of papal supremacy. The destruction of monasticism was therefore an important step in creating the nation state. Dissolving the monasteries would also remove abbots as potential opponents from the house of Lords. Another set of political motives were to do with the survival of the Tudor dynasty itself (link).

• Personal - Henry had secured the support of the nobility for the break with Rome, and by 1537 had even secured a male heir (on 12 October 1537, Jane Seymour bore Henry a son, Edward), but he had not yet secured the future of the dynasty since he was faced with the possibility of dying whilst Edward was still in his minority. This problem was intensified by the existence of rival claimants to the throne in the form of the Pole family, one of whom, Reginald, was made a Cardinal in 1537, and charged by the pope with co-ordinating the Pilgrimage of Grace.

24 mark questions require more in-depth knowledge

1. Essential Background

2. The Debate - concerning the timing of the policy

3. Dissolution was the intention all along

4. Dissolution emerged only gradually

5. Conclusion

Essential Background: Different forms of monastic life during the 10th-13th centuries - the Golden Age of monasticism• Monastic houses - Pre- 11th century - principal monastic orders included

Benedictines, Cluniacs By the 12th century - and in pursuit of a purer, monasticism, more observant of the vow of poverty in particular, there emerged the Carthusians and the Cistercians.

• Canons - Again the 12th century saw the emergence of the Canons following the rule of St Augustine - dedicated to teaching and missionary work - sometimes cathedral chapters took on the rule and thereby continued to function as secular clergy but under vows of chastity, poverty and obedience.

• Mendicants - 13th century - Franciscans (Grey Friars), Dominicans (Black Friars), Carmelites (White Friars), Augustinians.

• Again, represented a reaction against the wealth of the monasteries and sought to live up to the ideal of poverty by living directly from alms without owning property.

• Inevitably, the popularity of the Mendicants attracted support and once again the Franciscans and Dominicans would become very powerful within the church.

• The central irony of medieval monasticism was that the more successful an order became at observing its vow of poverty, the wealthier it tended to become (because it attracted the support of patrons who wanted to benefit from the spiritual work of the order).

Essential background:the spiritual, political and educational functions of monasteries in the

Middle Ages• Spiritually, monks were employed to pray for patrons - so they were

directly linked to medieval ideas of spirituality (the idea of spiritual works) and to purgatory; Monks prayed for souls of patrons in return for endowments - and the main patron was of course the king.

• Politically, the king’s monasteries represented a physical manifestation of the idea that the king ruled ‘by the grace of god’ and thus played the key role in sublimating and legitimating royal power throughout the country. The king’s support for monasticism demonstrated his worthiness. Orders like the Observant Franciscans provided kings and queens with spiritual advisers, confessors and preachers, reflecting the crown’s fashionable piety and its awareness of all the best practices in Christendom.

• In addition, the big advantage to the king in giving lands to monasteries and to bishops was that such land was not inherited or kept within a family (celibacy/chastity was therefore politically and economically expedient). The king could reward families with offices and lands without alienating the offices and land permanently and therefore without creating over-powerful vassals.

• Educationally, monasteries provided the main schools before the 13th century and the centres of book production before the age of printing in the 15th.

Economic Functions• In addition, the greatest monasteries were powerful engines of

agricultural production, and therefore played a key role in local, regional and national economies.

• The Cistercians in particular, were pioneers in agriculture. Their dedication to poverty led them to establish houses in remote areas that were difficult to farm. By draining the swamps and clearing the forests of the roughest areas they became expert farmers and as a result of this work they became remarkably successful - undercutting the very ideal that they sought to pursue.

• Cistercian wool was the chief export of English trade and was an important source of tax revenue for the crown. It is no coincidence that some of the greatest and richest monastic houses in England - e.g. Rievaulx and Fountains - were Cistercian.

• Pilgrims seeking protection of saints stayed at monasteries (which of course were also the repositories of relics) at times dictated by the monasteries - so in a sense monastic houses controlled a vast ‘tourist’ trade;

• Finally, they played a vital welfare role - effectively providing annuities to the elderly in return for one-off endowments, tended the sick and took in orphans and even provided employment.

The economic success of monasteries was ultimately linked to their decline…• The wealth of monasteries made them easy targets for laymen calling for

reform:

• In 1530 there were about 825 monasteries - 502 monasteries, 136 nunneries and 187 friaries (mendicant houses). There were roughly 9300 monks - about 0.4% of population (roughly 2.5 million at the time) - but monasteries controlled about 25% of the best farmland in England;

• The total income from monastic estates amounted to about £136000 Sterling annually. Therefore a great deal of England’s landed wealth was concentrated in few hands… and, given the vow, of poverty, this was seen as hypocritical.

• The 25 richest abbots constituted a kind of religious aristocracy and their lifestyles were indistinguishable from that of the secular aristocracy - hunting/hawking/ serving as justices of peace; and the greatest serving in house of Lords. They pursued legal disputes over land with no less - often more - vigilance than secular lords.

• The five largest abbeys (Glastonbury, Canterbury, St Albans, Fountains and Westminster) were worth more than £2000 per year each. (The Earl of Northumberland drew about £1000/year from his estates).

• It was this kind of wealth that lay behind the criticisms of Simon Fish’s ironically-entitled Supplication for the Beggars of 1528.

• Yet Fish was saying nothing new in his Supplication of the Beggars of 1528. The monasteries had always been wealthy - and monastic corruption had been the object of satire in the works of 14th century humanists like Chaucer in England and Boccaccio in Italy.

• However, by the 16th century, Humanism came to challenge the very idea of spirituality that underpinned monasticism.This stemmed in part from an emphasis upon the authority of original sources (which must be read in their original language and not in old and inaccurate translations), reflected in Erasmus’s creation of a new edition of the New Testament in the original Greek, in which he could find no justification for pilgrimage, relics or for monastic life.

• The quest for authenticity in texts was matched by a quest for authenticity in spirituality. The ‘devotio moderna’ rejected the idea that personal salvation could somehow be influenced or affected by the work of another. Hence, in this view, the trade in indulgences, relics, pilgrimage and other outward rituals, were at best distractions from true Christian living.

• In fact, Erasmus went further, arguing that monastic assumptions bred the corruption that was obvious in monastic houses. In a dialogue known as the ‘The Funeral’, Erasmus compared the monks gathering around the dying to ‘vultures’ waiting to pick the carcass, by blackmailing the poor soul into leaving all of his worldly possessions to the monastery, leaving his own family destitute.

• Erasmus said that monasteries of his time, ‘far from preserving religious discipline, are mere breeding places of impiety in which it is hardly possible to remain pure and innocent.’ Simon Fish’s Supplication for the Beggars pursued similar themes, reflecting popular perceptions of the monastic houses as bloated and lecherous, nuns wanton and the religious generally as idol and counterfeit beggars.

Humanist critique of monasticism

Reform before the dissolution• The Humanist critique is reflected in the work that Wolsey began before the king’s Great Matter came to dominate the politics of the late 1520s.

• Besides securing greater episcopal oversight of monastic foundations (which claimed immunity from bishops’ inspections) Wolsey - with his secretary Thomas Cromwell doing the detailed legal work - obtained papal dispensations to dissolve a number of monasteries with the purpose of building Cardinal College at Oxford and a Grammar School in Ipswich; and in 1528 he held received a bull allowing him to unite monasteries with less than 12 members, indicating the imminence of a fundamental reform long before Henry made himself supreme head of the church.

• Several other bishops were similarly engaged: Bishop Alcock of Ely expelled two nuns under the King’s licence to turn the convent of St Radegund, Cambridge into what became Jesus College in 1496. John Fisher was similarly engaged on behalf of Lady Margaret Beaufort at Cambridge and Richard Foxe, Bishop of Winchester at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

• Such educational foundations would provide training for men who would enter religious service not within enclosed orders but as parish priests - this was where the religious goals of Tudor religion were directed before the royal supremacy.

Humanism and the Royal Supremacy• Henry supported the reforms of Wolsey and others, and what’s more,

shared the humanists’ disdain for reliquaries, pilgrimages and though a prolific builder himself, shared none of his father’s enthusiasm for building new monastic foundations even before the 1530s.

• In addition, Henry’s concern with the authority of the Scriptures and the importance of original sources is reflected in his personal correspondence with Erasmus of Rotterdam, his defence of the seven sacraments in 1520 and finally his insistence upon the authority of Scripture in challenging the pope’s authority to dispense, and his use of Hebrew Scholarship in defending his interpretation of Leviticus.

• Similarly, the ‘Act in Restraint of Appeals’ pronounced that ‘this realm of England is an empire’ by reference to ‘sundry old authentic histories and chronicles’, collected together by Edward Foxe and Thomas Cranmer in the Collectanea Satis Copiosa, presented to Henry in 1530 (and published in a readable, popular dialogue known as the ‘Glass of Truth’ in 1531).

• In November 1534, the Act of Supremacy gave the Crown the right to conduct visitations of all religious houses. In this context Cromwell was appointed Vicegerent in the Spirituals at the beginning of the following year: ‘for the sole purpose of undertaking a general ecclesiastical visitation’.

• Cromwell administered the oath of Supremacy to office holders - monks, friars and nuns - requiring explicit rejection of papal authority and willingness to preach the royal supremacy. During the period 1533-35, the very monastic houses most celebrated for their piety and loyalty to the king - the Carthusians, Observant Franciscans and the Bridgettines at Syon abbey - were also the first to speak out against the divorce, and to resist the break with Rome and the royal supremacy.

• During 1535 Cromwell also sent out two sets of commissioners to investigate the Church - one to find its value in both the secular clergy and the monasteries (they would produce a kind of Domes day book of the church, Valor Ecclesiasticus); the second to investigate the well-being of the monasteries (producing the Compendium Compertorum)

• The inspectors were Thomas Legh, Richard Layton, John ap Rice and John Tregonwell.

The implementation of Royal Supremacy

Superstition and misconduct• Following an Erasmian model, the Visitors defined ‘superstition’ in ways that would bring central monastic practices - such as the veneration of relics and pilgrimage - into that category.

• Financially, they found plenty of evidence that monasteries were squandering their resources.

• Morally, the visitors went out expecting to find evidence of sexual misconduct and found what they took to be extensive evidence.

• The evidence collected and collated in support of the Act for the Dissolution of the Monasteries, presented to the house in 1536 was decisive in securing its success in March, according to Latimer.

• How this evidence is viewed is at the heart of the debate about the dissolution. Was it mere propaganda, designed to support a dissolution that Henry and his ministers (especially Cromwell) had already decided upon?

• Or was the evidence gathered in good faith with a desire to reform?

The debateThe debate about the dissolution really focusses upon its timing. Was it planned from the outset (so that the Act for the Dissolution of the Smaller Monasteries was really a charade to hide plans for the complete dissolution of monasticism); or did dissolution emerge gradually as a solution to problems?

1.The dissolution was planned from the beginning and was driven by the need for finance. The first and most straightforward view - put forward by Colin Pendrill and many others - sees the king as intent upon dissolution from the beginning. In this view, Henry was driven by a desire to exploit the financial benefits of his new (he would say ‘traditional’) powers as Supreme Head of the Church. The Act for the Dissolution of the Smaller Monasteries was a strategic move by Cromwell.

2. The dissolution emerged in the course of the plans for reform and the response to it. This view, which is more subtle and nuanced, is put forward by G.W. Bernard and Richard Rex: Henry was motivated first by a desire to exercise his power to reform and plans for dissolution emerged as a policy later, in response to events.

The average student will be able to explain and support the first case; the best will be able to argue either.

The traditional view - dissolution was planned from the beginning (offers a ‘Catholic’ view)

• The traditional view of Henry’s motivation in dissolving the monasteries, is that once his title was secure he could now turn his attention to the financial exploitation of his ‘new’ (he would say ‘old’) powers.

• Henry had already signalled his intention to exploit the church financially by the fine imposed on the clergy in 1531 in return for pardon from the charge of praemunire, and by the Act in Restraint of Annates (conditional) of 1532.

• By early 1534 he had confirmed the Act giving Annates (about £4000) to the Crown which had in the past gone to Rome and by the end of that same year extended this to the First Fruits and Tenths (1st year’s revenue of all benefices and an annual tax of a 10th of the value of all ecclesiastical benefices).

• In the same year, the idea of confiscating all church lands was floated but not implemented. Hence, if Henry’s motives were political and spiritual, it was convenient that they were also enormous material rewards as well.

• The next phase was to liquidate the monasteries. In some parts of Europe, Luther and other reformers had decided that Purgatory did not exist and monasteries were already being dissolved.

• Henry wanted to do the same and thereby reap the financial rewards, but the problem was that there was little or no popular support for this move and so to announce the sudden dissolution of the monasteries would have been damaging to the regime.

Cromwell’s solution• In this view, Cromwell’s political brilliance was to dream up a cunning plan to

destroy the monasteries without appearing to do so.

• In the spring of 1536 a Bill was presented to Parliament calling for the dissolution of the smaller monasteries (those with an annual value of less than £200 a year). Pendrill writes ‘it should have ben evident to all that it was inherently unlikely that small monasteries were corrupt while later ones were shining beacons of virtue), yet faced with this bill, it was hard to voice opposition, much of it clearly exaggerated.’

• Errant monks would be moved to larger and worthy institutions - and this helps explain why the Act was passed with relative ease. ‘The king thus preserved the facade of a reformer while acting as a destroyer… In fact, he closing down the small monasteries not because they were corrupt, nor because they were corrupt but because he coveted their wealth. This was hidden from parliament by Cromwell’s marvellous propaganda about corruption.’

• Anyone asking awkward questions would be told that the king’s aim was to reform not destroy. Once the process began the distinction between small and large monasteries was conveniently forgotten, and when challenged, Cromwell claimed that the dissolution of larger monasteries was voluntary.

• Cromwell set up a special court in 1536 - the Court of Augmentations, whose first chancellor was Richard Rich, who would later become Lord Chancellor of England – an unnecessary move if the crown was only interested in dissolving the smaller monasteries.

After the Pilgrimage of Grace• Following the Pilgrimage of Grace, the Crown moved against the larger

houses by means of two strategies. The first was by means of Attainder (where abbots guilty of treason could be stripped of their lands and property which would revert to the crown. Monastic properties were treated as if they were the personal property of the abbots).

• The second approach was that of ‘voluntary surrender’. In fact, monks and abbots were faced with a stark choice - surrender or be punished.

• The abbots of Colchester, reading and Glastonbury chose martyrdom, but they were in a minority.

• ‘It was the most breathtaking plunder of the English Church that had ever been seen and it was accomplished by methods that bordered on terrorism.’ (Pendrill)

• By 1539, when the Act for the dissolution of the larger monasteries (or abbeys) was introduced into Parliament, the members were faced with a fait accompli. Most had already been dissolved and few wanted to miss out on a share of the spoils of those that were left. The Act was in fact post-hoc, legalising the voluntary surrender of monastic houses.

The second view - the policy of dissolution emerged only gradually (reflects a more sympathetic, ‘protestant’ perspective).

• As with Henry’s transition from divorce to royal supremacy, we should not assume that in 1536 the intention at the beginning was to end monastic life in England entirely - but Henry was clearly intent on reform, perhaps because this had always been a goal of reformers within the kingdom, but also because he recognised that monasteries represented the most likely source of opposition.

• The implementation of imperial kingship which at its heart denied the possibility of foreign jurisdiction within England was bound to focus on institutions which often owed direct loyalty to the pope (e.g Franciscans and Dominicans) or to mother houses in foreign territories (e.g. Carthusians, Cluniacs, Premonstratentians etc.).

• Yet there is no evidence in the records to suggest that Cromwell was planning for dissolution before 1536. As G.W. Bernard writes: ‘Verifying and securing loyalty, dealing with suspected treason, declaring and obtaining explicit acquiescence in the royal supremacy, asserting that supremacy through detailed instructions: all these were indeed fundamentally important in the evolution of policy in 1534-36. But there was also a strong reforming impulse.’

• The work of reform and the work of implementing the royal supremacy were in fact one and the same. In implementing reform, Henry was fulfilling the idea of imperial kingship - one in which he as Supreme Head would banish the superstitions and corruptions that had flourished hitherto either against or outside the word of God under the Bishop of Rome.

• To seek reform implies a vision of how things ought to be.. and in the manner of the visitations and the injunctions that followed, as well as in the act of suppression, there were implicit and sometimes explicit statements on what true religion was.

• The monastic order of worship had been questioned: ceremonies and observances were not to be seen as ‘the chief and uttermost of the whole true religion’. Relics, miracles and pilgrimages had been questioned, and this amounts to a profound change.

• It was in the course of this work that the idea for dissolution emerged. The dissolution the smaller monasteries can be seen as the immediate and practical demonstration of Henry’s right and duty to reform and to purify the church (Bernard).

The priority of reform

The process of dissolution• The purpose of Valor Ecclesiasticus was not to value

benefices for the purpose of dissolving monasteries, but for the purpose of taxing them in accordance with the Act of First Fruits and Tenths passed at the end of 1534.

• Nonetheless, in the process of carrying out the Valor Ecclesiasticus it was found that monasteries were often - and perhaps unsurprisingly - squandering their resources.

• The evidence presented in the Compendium Compertorum had been collected in a bid to identify areas for reform.

• Carried out by men convinced of reform ideas, it is no surprise that they found evidence of extensive superstition - particularly when they defined ‘superstition’ in ways that were bound to capture many central practices of monastic life - including prayers to saints, extensive belief in miracles, trade in relics and pilgrimage to holy sites.

Sexual immorality• The findings of sexual immorality could certainly have

provided grist to the propaganda mill but it is not necessary to draw the conclusion that the compilers were intent upon dissolution from the outset or that ending monasticism was ever their goal.

• The vast majority of monks and nuns - 70% - admitted of no breach of the vow of chastity, and this evidence was taken at face value. It is therefore the success of the oath of chastity that strikes the modern reader.

• But the sixteenth century did not think statistically. The effect of the Compendium, which enumerated by name all the offenders who admitted to breaches of chastity, was to reinforce the Erasmian stereotype of widespread sexual corruption - despite the relatively small numbers involved (just over 10% of admissions involved sex with another person - whether that be with a boy, a woman or another monk).

Injunctions• Following the visitation, monasteries received a series

of injunctions that included enforcing obedience to the rule ‘in so far as they do agree with Holy Scripture and the Word of God’ - implying that many rules did not.

• The injunctions also stated that ‘true religion is not contained in apparel, manner of going, shaven heads,… silence, fasting, uprising in the night, signing… but in cleanness of mind, pureness of living, Christ’s faith…

• The government was therefore putting forward an idea of Christian spirituality that was Erasmian and even Lutheran in tone but in doing so questioned both the validity of rules and the intrinsic value of monastic observances and ceremonies and their basic function of prayer to God.

• The demands of this kind of spirituality would place most traditional monastic practice out of court. It was perhaps the realisation of the need for extensive reform that led to the initial Act.

Evidence that the government was not yet committed to ending monasticism

• The Act for the Dissolution of the Smaller Monasteries called for those houses worth less than £200 to be dissolved for it was in those that ‘manifest sin, vicious carnal and abdominal living’ was found. This was broadly supported by the evidence of the Visitors, although it can be assumed that the broad stroke would be easier to implement than a more nuanced approach.

• According to Bernard, in theory, the Act would have dissolved 419 monasteries. In practice, many were exempted - because so many wanted to remain in the life and there were not enough larger houses to take them, so in the end only 243 were dissolved.

• This is not evidence of plans for wholesale dissolution. Had this been envisaged, it seems unlikely that the Act would have contained praise for the religious life of larger houses, like Glastonbury. Nor would existing monks and nuns be given the opportunity to transfer to other monasteries. ‘Exemptions and transfers were not the tools of a government already committed to bringing monasticism to an end’ (Bernard).

• Was the motive financial? Again, at this stage at least, it seems unlikely. The dissolution was estimated to bring the crown £18,000 p.a. out of which provision for pensions or the transfer of monks and nuns to other monasteries would be deducted.

Summary• It is important for students to be able to argue both cases but also to reach a decision and

not to sit on the fence. Even if it were true that by 1536 both the financial and the reform motives were at work, there is still the question of WHEN Henry decided on dissolution.

• If we take the first view, Henry was persuaded of the need for dissolution before 1536. During the period 1533-35, the very monastic houses most celebrated for their piety and loyalty to the king - the Carthusians, Observant Franciscans and the Bridgettines at Syon abbey - were also the first to speak out against the divorce, and to resist the break with Rome and the Royal Supremacy.

• The majority of historians see the dissolution as motivated by financial and political considerations. In the light of this, the Act for the Dissolution of the smaller monasteries was really a test to see if a wider dissolution might be possible.

• On the other hand, the evidence is only circumstantial: there is nothing in the sources to suggest that Henry and Cromwell had already decided on dissolution or that, once dissolution had been decided upon there was a plan to end monasticism outright.

• For George Bernard, the Act for the Dissolution of the Smaller Monasteries emerged from a genuine attempt to reform the institution by pruning dead wood, because reform was integral to the establishment of the Royal Supremacy. The idea of dissolution emerged after the work of ‘pruning’ the garden got underway and the garden was found to be so overgrown that mere pruning was not enough. The focus on smaller monasteries was a practical solution to the problem of implementing more extensive reform. The solution was broadly in line with the plans Wolsey wanted to implement in 1528.

• In this second, more subtle view, the general dissolution of the monasteries followed not from a pre-ordained plan but as a reaction to the participation of monastic houses in the Pilgrimage of Grace which confirmed that the monasteries could no longer be trusted.

Conclusion• Two pieces of evidence point towards a more cynical view.

• The first is the manuscript from 1534 which shows that the crown was already floating the idea of confiscating all Church wealth and making the entire clergy, secular and religious, the employees of the crown, paid a salary.

• The second is a letter found by J. J. Scarisbrick from Henry to his counterpart in Scotland which advises him on how to proceed with the dissolution. Henry advised that any plan should be kept secret and the first move should give the impression of being simply for reform. Leading clergy should be won over by promises of the worthy use of monastic resources and this, combined with an attack on the morals of the monks should make a for a quiet and easy suppression.

• Henry’s failure to live up to promises made or implied seem to show that he had practiced what he now preached.

Protestant/catholic/top-down/bottom-up?

A. Dissolution had nothing to do with religion. Henry was greedy and wicked and was persuaded by an unscrupulous minister.

B. The monasteries deserved to be dissolved because they had acquired the money under false pretenses and because they no longer carried out the functions their founders intended.

C. There was thriving spirituality at the time of the dissolution.

D. Cromwell made attempts to line his own pockets.

E. Valor Ecclesiasticus proved that monasteries had misused their funds.

F. Monasteries were unpopular. Numbers of men and women entering religious orders was in decline.

G. The king’s sole desire was to gain the riches of the monasteries.

H. There was very little popular opposition to the continued existence of the monasteries.

I. The dissolution was merely the next stage in establishing the supremacy of the King over the Church. The monasteries represented the biggest source of opposition to the monarch.