One result of establishing the Church of England was the Dissolution of the Monasteries in England and Wales, over 800 of them in total, during 1536-40. This included all types and sizes of building where monks or nuns lived communally and practised daily Catholic worship. They were places of learning, employment, hospitality and nursing, but corruption had also set in to some extent, funded by paid requests for prayers and pilgrims’ donations.

In 1535 an audit of monastic possessions and property ~ Valor Ecclesiasticus ~ was carried out along with reporting of the inmates’ behaviour, e.g. drunkenness, and this gave King Henry VIII (1491-1547) and his adviser, Lord Cromwell of Wimbledon (c.1485-1540) both financial and moral reasons to proceed with closing them all down, starting with the smallest and continuing up the scale.

Henry needed money for war with France and the monasteries owned 20% of the land, which was sold off in a move which was largely welcomed. The buildings were either repurposed as manor-houses, colleges, CofE parish churches and cathedrals, such as Chester, Gloucester and Bristol, or they were demolished and the masonry and metalwork reused in Henry’s other projects. Thousands of abbots, monks and nuns were paid off, but some rebelled and were executed.

(Images LtoR: the cloisters at Gloucester Cathedral by Eirian Evans at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0, Thomas Cromwell / Public domain)

Nottinghamshire-born Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556) enrolled at Cambridge University aged 14 and remained there for more than two decades, taking holy orders in 1520 and obtaining his Doctorate of Divinity in 1526. His first marriage, to Joan, cost him his Fellowship at Jesus College but when she died in childbirth he was reinstated. It was on a break from Cambridge in 1529 that he first met King Henry VIII (1491-1547).

Thus began his pivotal role in the establishment of the monarch as supreme head of the English Church instead of the Pope, and the introduction of Protestantism. He made the most progress in drawing up new Articles for the Church of England during the reign of young Edward VI (1537-53), as Henry had not really been interested in any religious reform and had appointed Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury (1533-56) in order for him to pronounce Henry’s various marriages successively invalid and valid..

Cranmer’s involvement was not without its dangers (he sent his second wife, Margarete, and their children abroad for their safety) and Henry gave him his ring as proof of royal backing against anyone who came to arrest him. His luck finally ran out with the accession of Catholic Queen ‘Bloody’ Mary (1516-58), Henry’s first deligitimised daughter, and he was burnt at the stake for supposed treason.

(Images LtoR: first official Bible in English distributed by Cranmer to all parish churches, by University of Glasgow Library at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, and Thomas Cranmer / Public domain)