Dissolution of The Monasteries - Context

Context

At the time of their suppression, a small number of English and Welsh religious houses could trace their origins back to Pre-Conquest Anglo-Saxon or Celtic foundations; but the overwhelming majority of the 825 religious communities dissolved by Henry VIII owed their existence to the wave of monastic enthusiasm that had swept western Christendom in the 11th and 12th centuries. Very few English houses had been founded later than the end of the 13th century; the most recent foundation of those suppressed being the Bridgettine nunnery of Syon Abbey founded in 1415. (Syon is also the only suppressed community to maintain an unbroken existence in exile, the nuns returning to England in 1861.) Typically, 11th and 12th century founders had endowed monastic houses with both 'temporal' income in the form of revenues from landed estates, and 'spiritual' income in the form of tithes appropriated from parish churches under the founder's patronage. In consequence of which, religious houses in the 16th century controlled appointment to about two fifths of all parish benefices in England, disposed of about half of all ecclesiastical income, and owned around a quarter of the nation's landed wealth.

The Dissolution of the Monasteries in England took place in the political context of other attacks on the historic institutions of Western Roman Catholicism which had been under way for some time, many of them related to the Protestant Reformation in Continental Europe; however, the religious changes in England under Henry VIII and Edward VI were of a different nature from those taking place in Germany, Bohemia, France, Scotland and Geneva. On the continent, while the nobles were acquiring a taste for Church plunder, there was the added element of mass discontent against ecclesiastical power and wealth among common people and the lower levels of clergy and civil society. In England the early Reformation was directed from the highest levels of society, but was met with widespread popular suspicion; this spilled over, in other occasions and localities, into active resistance.

The dissolution resulted in few modifications to the practice of religion in England's parish churches; in general the English religious reforms of the 1530s corresponded in few respects to the precepts of Protestant Reformers, and encountered much popular hostility when they did. The Protestant flavour of innovations expressed in the Ten Articles was reversed when Henry VIII expressed his desire for continued orthodoxy with the Six Articles of 1539, which remained in effect until after his death.

Cardinal Wolsey had obtained a Papal Bull from the Pope, authorising some limited reforms in the English Church as early as 1518, but reformers (both conservative and radical) had become increasingly frustrated at their lack of progress. Henry wanted to change this, and in November 1529 Parliament passed Acts reforming apparent abuses in the English Church. They set a cap on fees, both for the probate of wills and mortuary expenses for burial in hallowed ground; tightened regulations covering rights of sanctuary for criminals; and reduced to two the number of church benefices that could in future be held by one man. These Acts sought to demonstrate that establishing royal jurisdiction over the Church would ensure progress in "religious reformation" where papal authority had been insufficient.

The monasteries were next in line. J.J. Scarisbrick remarked in his biography of Henry VIII:

Suffice it to say that English monasticism was a huge and urgent problem; that radical action, though of precisely what kind was another matter, was both necessary and inevitable, and that a purge of the religious orders was probably regarded as the most obvious task of the new regime - as the first function of a Supreme Head empowered by statute "to visit, extirp and redress".

The stories of monastic impropriety, vice and excess that were to be collected by Thomas Cromwell's visitors may have been biased and exaggerated, although also chronicled by Sir Thomas More. Nevertheless, the religious houses of England and Wales – with the notable exceptions of those of the Carthusians, the Observant Franciscans, and the Bridgettine nuns and monks – had long ceased to play a leading role in the spiritual life of the country, and other than in these three orders, observance of strict monastic rules was partial at best. The exceptional spiritual discipline of the Carthusian, Observant Franciscan and Bridgettine orders had, over the previous century, resulted in their being singled out for royal favour; in particular with houses benefitting from endowments confiscated by the Crown from the suppressed alien priories; otherwise in this latter period, donations and legacies had tended to go instead towards parish churches, university colleges, grammar schools and collegiate churches, which suggests greater public approbation of such purposes. Levels of monastic debt were increasing, and average numbers of professed religious were falling. 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. 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. 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. In most larger houses, the full observance of the Canonical Hours had become the task of a sub-group of 'Cloister Monks', such that many or most of the professed members of the house were freed to conduct their business and live much of their lives in the secular world. Extensive monastic complexes dominated English towns of any size, but most were less than half full.

Nor was it insignificant that Cromwell and Henry, from 1534 onwards, were constantly seeking for ways to redirect ecclesiastical income to the benefit of the Crown – efforts they justified by contending that much ecclesiastical revenue had been improperly diverted from royal resources in the first place. Princes throughout Europe were facing severe financial difficulties due to sharply rising expenditures, especially to pay for armies, fighting ships and fortifications. Most tended, sooner or later, to resort to plundering monastic wealth and taxing the clergy. Protestant princes might claim a godly authority to do so; Catholic princes might seek the approval of the Papacy. The wealth of the Church offered a standing temptation for secular rulers, and idle monastic wealth was the most exposed target.

Finally, it is probably not coincidental that the dissolution of the monasteries coincided closely with the introduction of the printing press to England. This invention not only aided reformers in spreading their religious texts, it also made redundant the monasteries' most valuable service to the monarch: their painstaking copying of manuscripts.