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

King‘s Crown to handle the new influx of wealth also emphasizes the financial component of the
closures. 2 Furthermore, Woodward points out how the monetary benefits linked with the removal
of the richly decorated shrines would have increased the wealth usurped into the Royal
Treasury. 3 Benjamin Thompson also argues that financial reasons were the main factor behind
the closures in his article ―Monasteries and their Patrons at Foundation and Dissolution,‖ as does
Francis Gasquet in his two volume work on the monasteries during the reign of Henry VIII. 4
Another principal argument is that Henry sought monastic reforms because the
monasteries were no longer performing adequately. Elizabeth M. Hallam argues in her essay
―Henry VIII‘s Monastic Refoundation of 1536-7 and the Course of the Dissolution‖ that he
originally aimed to reform monasteries and to assert his authority. 5 The concern was that
monasticism was no longer being rigorously followed and would become increasingly corrupt in
the sense that inmates were no longer the epitome of piety. 6 The visitors who conducted the
survey of monastic lands were arguably chiefly concerned with discovering the condition of the
monasteries because they had doubts about the way they were being run, both spiritually and
financially. 7 One concern was that the monks were becoming great landowners, entering the
secular realm with desires of enlarging their revenues for personal wealth rather than for the
well-being of the order as a whole.
2
George William Otway Woodward, The Dissolution of the Monasteries (New York: Walker, 1966), 50.
3
Ibid, 52.
4
Benjamin Thompson, ―Monasteries and their Patrons at Foundation and Dissolution,‖ Transactions of the
Royal Historical Society 4 (1994); Francis Aidan Gasquet, Henry VIII and the English Monasteries, vols I and II
(London: John Hodges, 1889).
5
Elizabeth M. Hallam, ―Henry VIII‘s Monastic Refoundations 1536-7 and the Course of the Dissolution,‖
Historical Research 51 (1978): 124-5.
6
William Easterby, The History of the Law of Tithes in England: Being the York Prize Essay of the University of
Cambridge for 1887 (Cambridge, 1888), 28; R.W. Hoyle, ―The Origins of the Dissolution of the Monasteries,‖ The
Historical Journal 38 (1995), 276-7.
7
G.W. Bernard, The King’s Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2005), 251.
2