The Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536-40)

Cromwell sent "investigators" round the monasteries to inspect livelihood there. They (mostly) falsely reported that the monks raised families, lived in moderate luxury, and gambled for money.

*PLURALISM Pluralism is when a person has more than one job. The record in the Tudor era was a whopping 25 jobs!

Henry VIII was advised to do this by Thomas Cromwell.

*ABSENTEEISM Absenteeism is when a priest was away from his parish for a very long time. Often the villagers would hold the service instead!

****TITHES A tithe is what a peasant payed to the monastery to keep a small plot of land on the land owned by the monasteries.

HOPE YOU LEARNT A LOT . . . :-})

The first monasteries were dissolved in 1536.

Henry thought the Catholic church was corrupt. Many priests and monks were absentees* and pluralists**.

Many monks became beggars, as they had no jobs.

Henry thought the monks were a threat to his reign. He had passed the Act of Supremacy in 1534, which stated that he, and he alone was the Head of the Church in England.

***THE PILGRIMAGE OF GRACE This was an occurrence in the year 1536 when an angry mob, led by Robert Aske, marched down to London to demand the undoing of the Dissolution. Henry agreed to listen to the leaders concerns, and the majority of the mob marched back to where they came from. Then, Henry sent his troops to capture the leaders of the Pilgrimage. The leaders, along with Aske, were treacherously executed. Aske himself was imprisoned in a cage over York Cathedral until he starved to death. The crows picked at his corpse.

Henry was bankrupt. He had spent a large portion of the Royal Treasury on wars in France and Scotland (such as the pointless Battle of the Spurs in 1514), which cost a king's ransom (a lot of money . . . )! If he could redirect the flow of money (in the form of refurbishment grants and tithes****) towards him, he would be much richer. It was said that the monasteries held a third of Britain's money!

Henry claimed that the common people were forcing him to dissolve the monasteries. When people in the Catholic North heard this, they formed an uprising called the Pilgrimage of Grace***.

The monks only answered to the pope, and were obviously influencing the common people. The monks also publicly rebuffed the Act of Supremacy. They could effect an uprising, and Henry saw this as the only thing to do to save his reign as king.