HENRY VIII: DISSOLUTION OF MONASTERIES

Question 1

What had humanists condemned monasteries as?

Answer 1

A drain on the commonwealth.

Question 2

What was the principle reason for the dissolution of the monasteries?

Answer 2

Financial. The Crown was in dire need of an additional permanent source of income.

Question 3

How early had talks began about the Crown assuming control over the Church property and estates?

Answer 3

As early as 1533.

Question 4

What evidence is there to support that generally people believed the monasteries no longer commanded enough respect to justify their great wealth?

Answer 4

Wolsey was met with no opposition when he dissolved some 29 houses in the 1520s.

Question 5

What was Cromwell’s first action as vicegerent in 1535?

Answer 5

To assess the state of the monasteries, through a team of agents.

Question 6

Who carried out much of the work in compiling the Comperta Monastica?

Answer 6

Some of Cromwell’s most trusted servants: e.g. John ap Rhys, Richard Layton, John Tregonwell.

Question 7

Why were these trusted men chosen by Cromwell to create the Comperta Monastica?

Answer 7

They were able, ambitious and supported his reformist agenda.

Question 8

What were the commissioners instructed to record in the Comperta Monastica?

Answer 8

To record whether or not the monasteries were complying with the Oath of Supremacy and to detail any offences committed.

Question 9

What was the Valor Ecclesiasticus? What year?

Answer 9

1535.
It was the greatest survey of ecclesiastical wealth and property ever undertaken and has been described a kind of Tudor Domesday Book.

Question 10

What did the Valor Ecclesiasticus value?

Answer 10

Taxes paid to the Crown from ecclesiastical property and income that had previously been paid to the pope.

Question 11

What was the net annual income of the Church put at between? (Valor)

Answer 11

Between £320,000 and £360,000

Question 12

What did the Valor provide overall?

Answer 12

A list of itemised expenditure as well as income, which Cromwell manipulated and then used to show evidence of widespread corruption.

Question 13

What was Cromwell able to demonstrate through the Valor?

Answer 13

The bankruptcy of monasticism by revealing only 3% of its income was regularly allocated to charitable work.

Question 14

What act was passed in March 1536?

Answer 14

The Act for the Dissolution of the Smaller Monasteries.

Question 15

How many houses were suppressed under the 1536 act? What were the two options given to inmates?

Answer 15

399 houses.

1. Continue their vocation by moving to a larger monastery.
2. Abandon their vocation and rejoin society.

Question 16

What did a 1539 Act of Parliament do?

Answer 16

Made legal what had already occurred, namely the closure of the remaining monasteries.

Question 17

What were Cromwell’s commissioners instructed in 1539?

Answer 17

That all monasteries, regardless of their size, wealth or powerful connections, were to be closed and their property seized.

Question 18

Give an example of an individual who suffered under the terms of the Treason Act.

Answer 18

Richard Whiting, Abbot of Glastonbury, head of one of the richest monasteries in England.

Question 19

What were the Crown denying during the final closures of the monasteries?

Answer 19

Even as the last of the monasteries closed, the Crown still denied the destruction was taking place.

Question 20

By 1540, how many monastic houses had been closed?

Answer 20

Every one of the 800.

Only a small percentage as been transformed into schools, bishoprics or hospitals.

Question 21

Why was there such little opposition to the dissolution?

Answer 21

Henry had the law on his side. As supreme head of the Church he had the power to deal with people as he wished.

Question 22

What had nuns and monks accepted that meant they would not oppose the dissolution?

Answer 22

Accepted Henry’s position as supreme head of the Church, by swearing the Oath of Supremacy in 1535.

Question 23

What had the majority of senior clerics, abbots, priors and other heads of houses been, so they could not oppose?

Answer 23

They had been bought off, depriving them of the rank and file of the leadership they needed to resist.

Question 24

What was a negative economic impact of the dissolution of the monasteries?

Answer 24

The monasteries had been large employers of farm workers and had provided stimulus to the local economy.

Question 25

What was a negative social impact of the dissolution?

Answer 25

They offered hospitality for pilgrims and charity for the old and infirm.

Question 26

What was an economic impact for Henry?

Answer 26

The properties from the dissolution were sold quickly and at far less than their market value. As Henry wanted to solve his immediate financial problems.