to Life Page
to Home PageAct for the Dissolution
of the
Greater Monasteries
(1539)
During the years 1537, 1538, and the early part of 1539, numerous further
suppression or surrenders had taken place; these were covered, at the close of
the session in 1539, by the following Act, which vested all monastic property in
the King.
[Transc. Statutes of the Realm, III, 753.]
Where divers and sundry abbots, priors, abbesses, prioresses, and other
ecclesiastical governors and governesses of divers monasteries, abbacies,
priories, nunneries, colleges, hospitals, houses of friars, and other religious
and ecclesiastical houses and places within this our sovereign lord the King's
realm of England and Wales, of their own free and voluntary minds, good wills
and assents, without constraint, coaction, or compulsion of any manner of person
or persons, since the fourth day of Feb, the twenty-seventh year of the
reign of our now most dread sovereign lord, by the due order and course of the
common law of this his realm of England, and by their sufficient writings of
record, under their convent and common seals, have severally given, granted, and
by the same their writings severally confirmed all their said monasteries,
abbacies, priories, nunneries, colleges, hospitals, houses or friars, and other
religious and ecclesiastical houses and places, and all their sites, circuits,
and precincts of the same, and all and singular their manors, lordships,
granges, meases, lands, tenements, meadows, pastures, rents, reversions,
services, woods, tithes, pensions, portions, churches, chapels, advowsons,
patronages, annuities, rights, entries, conditions, commons, leets, courts,
liberties, privileges, and franchises appertaining or in wise belonging to any
such monastery, abbacy, priory, nunnery, college, hospital, house of friars, and
other religious and ecclesiastical houses and places, or to any of them, by
whatsoever name or corporation they or any of them, were then called, and of
what order, habit, religion, or other kind or quality soever they or any of them
were reputed, known, or taken; to, have and to hold all the said. .
.voluntarily, as is aforesaid, have renounced, left, and forsaken, and every of
them has renounced, left, and forsaken.
That the King our sovereign lord shall have, hold, possess, and enjoy to him,
his heirs and successors for ever, all and singular such late monasteries, etc.
. . . And it is further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that not only
all the said late monasteries. . .but also other etc. . .which hereafter shall
happen to be dissolved, suppressed, renounced, relinquished, forfeited, given
up, or by any other means come unto the King's highness. . .
All monastic lands shall be within the survey of the court of augmentation
except such as come by attainder.
|
to Life Page |
to Home Page |