Henry VIII's campaign in the 1530s to dissolve the English monasteries was not unprecedented, but followed more than a century after Henry V's assault on the alien priories, and some ten years after Thomas Wolsey's initiatives directed at converting certain monastic resources into assets for funding colleges. It appears that the money raised in this manner was exhausted before Wolsey's drive had dissipated; thus, seriously depleted houses which could be closed on the grounds of their spiritual and material inadequacy offered a plausible rationale for diverting additional monastic property. Lillechurch nunnery fell in 1522, its property converted into funds for setting up St John's College at Cambridge: an initiative supported by Bishop Fisher of Rochester, at the behest of Lady Margaret Beaufort.

Wolsey's subsequent moves to found colleges at Oxford and Ipswich with funds from the buildings and estates of St Frideswide at Oxford were followed by successful applications to the pope for the suppression of additional monastic houses. By 1525, when public hostility about the closures had grown to significant proportions, noticeable unease was becoming wide-spread among monastic heads: a point which will be raised again later in this chapter.

The Dissolution process of the 1530s was swift, highly destructive, and, in some ways, inconsistent in approach. The king, while avowing an over-whelming desire for reform, nevertheless authorised the demolition of monastic buildings for saleable and re-usable materials, having first ascertained through a survey resulting in the Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1535 the value of the various convents and their possessions.