Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Wolsey and the Parliament of 1523
- The Act of Appeals and the English reformation
- Thomas Cromwell and the ‘brethren’
- Henry VIII and the dissolution of the Secular Colleges
- God's law and man's: Stephen Gardiner and the problem of loyalty
- Bondmen under the Tudors
- Wales and England after the Tudor ‘union’: Crown, principality and parliament, 1543–1624
- Robe and sword in the conquest of Ireland
- The principal secretaries in the reign of Edward VI: reflections on their office and archive
- Philip II and the government of England
- Sin and society: the northern high commission and the northern gentry in the reign of Elizabeth I
- The crown, the gentry and London: the enforcement of proclamation, 1596–1640
- Taxation and the political limits of the Tudor state
- Bibliography of the writings of G. R. Elton, 1946–1986
- Index
Henry VIII and the dissolution of the Secular Colleges
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Wolsey and the Parliament of 1523
- The Act of Appeals and the English reformation
- Thomas Cromwell and the ‘brethren’
- Henry VIII and the dissolution of the Secular Colleges
- God's law and man's: Stephen Gardiner and the problem of loyalty
- Bondmen under the Tudors
- Wales and England after the Tudor ‘union’: Crown, principality and parliament, 1543–1624
- Robe and sword in the conquest of Ireland
- The principal secretaries in the reign of Edward VI: reflections on their office and archive
- Philip II and the government of England
- Sin and society: the northern high commission and the northern gentry in the reign of Elizabeth I
- The crown, the gentry and London: the enforcement of proclamation, 1596–1640
- Taxation and the political limits of the Tudor state
- Bibliography of the writings of G. R. Elton, 1946–1986
- Index
Summary
The surrender of England's last monastery, Waltham Abbey, on 23 March 1540 marked the end of medieval English monasticism but not of the crown's attack on the possessions of the English church. On the contrary: it marked the end of only the first phase thereof.
From 1540 to 1553 the campaign developed in five new directions. First, bishops found themselves often entering into unfavourable ‘exchanges’ with the crown which resulted, in particular, in parting with London houses and choice rural manors. Next, there was intermittent pruning of the resources of cathedrals, i.e. their deans and chapters, by similar methods. The cathedrals concerned were those which, like Exeter, Lincoln and London, had always had secular chapters, as well as those which had previously been served by monastic communities, an arrangement almost unique to England. Of these, the two that had been ‘twinned’ with secular cathedrals (Bath with Wells, Coventry with Lichfield) had already been suppressed and their churches seized. But there were eight others (Canterbury, Durham, Ely and Worcester among them) that were formerly staffed by monks and were refounded in 1540/1 as secular cathedrals – though with considerably less landed endowment than their Benedictine or Augustinian forebears had enjoyed. These, too, were thereafter liable to further depletion of income at royal hands. So were the six quite new bishoprics of Bristol, Chester, Gloucester, Oxford, Peterborough and Westminster which, between 1541 and 1543, had been granted ex-Benedictine abbey churches to serve as cathedrals of the new sees carved out of existing dioceses, notably Lincoln.
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- Information
- Law and Government under the TudorsEssays Presented to Sir Geoffrey Elton, pp. 51 - 66Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1988
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