The 1536 Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries: Same Suppression ...

eing carried out. 23 For example, Prior Barton of St. Leonard‘s Stamford and his solitary
companion complained of being too few in number to get up for matins. 24 The reduction of
numbers was partly due to the Black Death. Beyond the immediate effect of killing off
inhabitants, the death of elders led to less-experienced and younger monks taking over the
orders. As a result, previously higher ideals of monasticism were relaxed by the new men in
charge. 25
Henry V responded to the problems of relaxed orders by attempting to enforce the
original stricter rules. He addressed some 350 Benedictine monks and prelates at Westminster on
5 May1421, and expressed his concern that the monastic zeal of earlier days had now faded.
Devotion was being replaced with negligence. The articles he proposed resembled Episcopal
injunctions, with the aim of getting Benedictines to lead full monastic lives again by raising the
standard of their order. In other words, his proposed document was less a radical proposal and
more an appeal for a stricter observance of existing rules, such as continued prayers for
benefactors, dress, and accommodation. Most of the proposals, however, were rejected, and the
monks watered down the articles before accepting the heavily revised document. What his
reforms showed was a lack of desire among monks to get back to the original strictness of their
orders. 26
Furthermore, Henry V‘s reforms were neither the first nor the last attempt at reforming
the rule. Reforms were previously carried out in the thirteenth century by the Lateran Council,
which established that monks were not to be professed before twenty years of age, they were not
to farm landed property, meat was to be forbidden, and all religious were to be present at divine
23 Heale, 176.
24 Ibid.
25 Taunton, 132-5; McKisack, 306.
26 Greatrex, 42; Christopher Allmand, Henry V (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 278.
36