{"id":1440,"date":"2017-02-10T13:31:09","date_gmt":"2017-02-10T13:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/englishhistory.net\/?p=1440"},"modified":"2022-01-18T12:09:09","modified_gmt":"2022-01-18T12:09:09","slug":"dissolution-of-the-monasteries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/tudor\/dissolution-of-the-monasteries\/","title":{"rendered":"Dissolution of the Monasteries"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Reformation was a period of rapid change in Europe, and England was no exception. King Henry VIII (r. 1509-1547 CE) broke away from the Catholic church, and in doing so he left the church’s monasteries, priories, and other holdings in an awkward position. They had a great deal of wealth, but they no longer had government patronage or a clear role in society. Henry found a simple solution to that problem when he seized all of their assets for the English crown. This act came to be known as the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and it was more than enough to prove that it was the king, not the church, that held ultimate power in England.<\/p>\n
The Dissolution took place between 1536 and 1541<\/strong>, during the reign of Henry VIII<\/a>. His authority to order the Dissolution was granted under the Act of Supremacy, which passed in 1534<\/a>.<\/p>\n Henry VIII was a monarch with two great problems<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The combination of these two problems eventually led to the Dissolution of the Monasteries. He dealt with his first problem by breaking away from the Catholic church and founding the Anglican church with himself as the head. Some branches of the Catholic church in England objected, but most submitted to his decree.<\/p>\n The major exceptions were found in the nation’s monastic communities, which helped to start the conflict between them and the crown.<\/p>\n Many of those communities were quite wealthy. One of the chief complaints among religious reformers and secular writers of the time was that monasteries were too wealthy, encouraged pilgrimages to view fraudulent relics, and that the monks maintained an inappropriate lifestyle. Many of them owned a significant amount of productive land, while other religious communities extracted significant revenues from the local population. The Catholic church also had a long history of taking tithes from the people. Given that Henry was already an enemy of the Catholic church, it should come as no surprise that he wanted to claim all of that money for himself.<\/p>\nWhy Did The Dissolution of the Monasteries Happen?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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What Happened during the Dissolution of the Monasteries?<\/strong><\/h3>\n