Dissolution of the monasteries

Dissolution of the monasteries

1. why were the monasteries dissolved?

   • financial reasons
     • the king needed extra income
       • the king was short of money to pay for day to day expenses
       • the valour Ecclesiasticus showed Henry who could be gained by dissolving the monasteries
       • the king had costly ambitions, Eg: to win the wars against the French
       • Henry could not ask for money from parliament for day to day expenses
     • Henry and cromwell knew of the potential financial gains that were in the church
       • The act for first fruit and tenths (1534) brought £4000, which had previously gone to rome
       • princes in germany, inspired by lutheranism, were collecting revenues from church lands
       • the idea of confiscating all church lands had been suggested in 1533 but had not been acted on, so the idea fro the dissolution of the monasteries was not entirely new
       • from the valour ecclesiasticus (1535) Henry knew that the church brought in £136,000 a year
       • monasteries owned 1/4 of all cultivated (farm)land in Britain, a huge source of income
     • Henry wanted to protect his country from foreign invageres that might restore Catholicism, like Charles V and Frances I
   • religious reasons
     • Anticlericalism - the monasteries had been criticised and were declining anyway
       • monasteries were seen as corrupt places paid for by earlier generations
       • the Black Death had had a devistating impact on the population of the monasteries
       • the numbers of new entrants to monasteries had been declining