Reasons for dissolution

• • In 1535 Cromwell was ordered to send a commission of 6 officials to inspect the monasteries. 
  • These visits were called the "visitations".
• Between 1536 and 1540, 800 abbeys were closed.
• Findings of the visitations 

  • The visitations found that: 
  • Hundreds of monks were not celibate, either having a mistress or having affairs with young boys.
  • Some nuns had even had children. 
  • One monastery in Yorkshire was even accused of working with pirates!
• • The results of the visitations were recorded in the Compendium Compertorum. However, these results were not very reliable.
  • Inspections were too fast to be thorough, commissioners often bullied monks and nuns while questioning them, evidence was focused on the negatives and was exaggerated, or even made up.
• • Protestants believed that monasteries were useless.
  • Their main role was to pray for the souls of the dead to get them into heaven, but Protestants believed you could only get into heaven by praying to God yourself.
• • Henry didn’t trust the loyalty of the monasteries.
  • He believed they were still loyal to the Pope in Rome rather than him, despite the Act of Supremacy, and some monks had shown resistance to his break from Rome.
• • Henry VIII commissioned the Valour Ecclesiasticus which surveyed the monasteries and found that they owned one-third of English land and earned £160,000 a year in total. 
  • This was three times as much as Henry’s crown lands.