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

to be maintained. Horsham was a similar case. Folkestone, on the other hand, was so small and
poor that it actually surrendered before the 1536 Act. The examination of the three priories
revealed that monasticism had declined, although the extent of decline may be questioned. And
thus, it can be argued that closing these monasteries and transferring the inmates to religious
houses that maintained the strictness of their orders and continued to function well was not a bad
idea for Henry. Additionally, through the process of closures, it was made evident that several
inmates did not even wish to remain in their orders.
The problems with religious houses stipulated in the terms of the 1536 Dissolution Act,
such as corruption, were explicit with the closures of priories as shown through the study of
Boxgrove, Folkestone, and Horsham, with repeated injunctions and imposed reforms. Boxgrove,
for example, had injunctions imposed on it numerous times, all of which pointed to similar
problems. Attempts were also made to reform the Benedictine order as a whole. Over the years,
its original zeal and strictness had been relaxed. Henry V tried to reassert the original strictness
of the order, but his attempts amounted to little. Wolsey, too, attempted to address the laxity of
the religious orders, but his attempts similarly failed. He mainly addressed the issue of
supervision and visitation. However, as past events had shown, visitations followed by
injunctions on houses in need of reform had a tendency to fail. The idea of closing smaller, non-
functioning priories and transferring inmates to larger well-maintained ones was a better means
of reform. Thus, Henry‘s closures were directly in-line with previous directives for closures. The
key difference, however, was that the first dissolutions were immediately followed by a general
closure of all monasteries.
The 1536 Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries should not be viewed as a first step to the
closures of all monasteries in England. Instead, the hindsight should be put aside and the first set
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