Editing Dissolution of the monasteries (section)

===Effects on public life===
{{main|List of English abbeys, priories and friaries serving as parish churches}}
The surrender of monastic endowments was recognised automatically as terminating all regular religious observance by its members, except in the case of a few communities, such as Syon, who went into exile. There are several recorded instances where groups of former members of a house set up residence together, but no cases where an entire community did so, and there is no indication that any continued to pray the Divine Office. The dissolution Acts were concerned solely with the disposal of endowed property, and never explicitly forbade the continuance of a regular life. Given Henry's attitude to those religious who resumed their houses during the Pilgrimage of Grace, it would have been seen as unwise for any former community to maintain covert monastic observance.{{citation needed|date=October 2019}}

[[File:Selby Abbey Nave.jpg|thumb|left|[[Selby Abbey]] in Yorkshire, Benedictine abbey, purchased by the town as a parish church]]
The local commissioners were instructed to ensure that, where portions of abbey churches were also used by local parishes or congregations, this use should continue. Parts of [[List of English abbeys, priories and friaries serving as parish churches|117 former monasteries]] (of over 800) survived (and mostly still remain) in use for parochial worship, in addition to the fourteen former monastic churches that survived in their entirety as cathedrals. In around a dozen instances, wealthy benefactors purchased a complete former monastic church from the commissioners and presented it to their local community. Many other parishes bought and installed former monastic woodwork, choir stalls and stained-glass windows. As it was commonly the case by the late medieval period that the abbot's lodging had been expanded, these properties were frequently converted into country houses by lay purchasers. In other cases, such as [[Lacock Abbey]] and [[Forde Abbey]], the conventual buildings themselves were converted to form the core of a Tudor great mansion. 

Otherwise, the most marketable fabric in monastic buildings was likely to be the lead on roofs, gutters and plumbing, and buildings were burned down as the easiest way to extract this. Building stone and slate were sold off to the highest bidder. Many monastic outbuildings were turned into granaries, barns and stables. Thomas Cromwell had already instigated a campaign against "superstitions": pilgrimages and veneration of saints, during which ancient and precious valuables were grabbed and melted down, the tombs of saints and kings ransacked for whatever profit could be got from them, and their [[Christian relic|relics]] destroyed or dispersed. Even the crypt of King [[Alfred the Great]] was not spared. Great abbeys and priories like Glastonbury, [[Walsingham Priory|Walsingham]], [[Bury St Edmunds Abbey|Bury St Edmunds]], and [[Shaftesbury Abbey|Shaftesbury]], which had flourished as pilgrimage sites for many centuries, were soon reduced to ruins. However, the tales of widespread mob action resulting in destruction and [[iconoclasm]] partly confuses the looting spree of the 1530s with the vandalism wrought by the [[Puritans]] in the next century against the Anglican privileges. 

Despite this, writer G.W.O. Woodward claimed:
{{quote|text=There was no general policy of destruction, except in [[Lincolnshire]] where the local government agent was so determined that the monasteries should never be restored that he razed as many as he could to the ground. More often, the buildings have simply suffered from unroofing and neglect, or by quarrying.{{sfn|Woodward|1974|p=23}}}}

[[File:Cloisters at Laycock Abbey - geograph.org.uk - 1427064.jpg|thumb|right|[[Lacock Abbey]] in Wiltshire, an Augustinian nunnery converted into an aristocratic mansion and country estate]]
Once the new and re-founded cathedrals and other endowments had been provided for, the Crown became richer to the extent of around £150,000 ({{Inflation|UK|150000|1538|r=-2|fmt=eq|cursign=£}}),{{Inflation-fn|UK|df=y}} per year, although around £50,000 ({{Inflation|UK|50000|1538|r=-2|fmt=eq|cursign=£}}){{Inflation-fn|UK|df=y}} of this was initially committed to fund monastic pensions. Cromwell had intended that the bulk of this wealth should serve as regular income. After Cromwell's fall in 1540, Henry needed money quickly to fund his military ambitions in France and Scotland. Monastic property was sold off, representing by 1547 an annual value of £90,000 ({{Inflation|UK|90000|1547|r=-3|fmt=eq|cursign=£}}).{{Inflation-fn|UK|df=y}} Lands and endowments were not offered for sale, let alone auctioned. Instead, the government responded to the flood of applications for purchase. Many applicants had been founders or patrons of the relevant houses and could expect to be successful. Purchasers were predominantly leading nobles, local magnates and gentry, people with no discernible religious tendency, other than a determination to maintain and extend their family's local status. The landed property of the former monasteries included large numbers of manorial estates, each carrying the right and duty to hold a court for tenants and others. Acquiring such feudal rights was regarded as essential to establish a family in the late medieval gentry. For a long period, freehold manorial estates had been very rare in the market, and families seized on the opportunity now offered to entrench their positions. Nothing would subsequently induce them to surrender their new acquisitions. The Court of Augmentations retained income sufficient to meet its continuing obligations to pay annual pensions; but as pensioners died off, or as pensions were extinguished when their holders accepted a royal appointment of higher value, then surplus property became available each year for further disposal. The last surviving monks continued to draw their pensions into the reign of [[James VI and I|James I]] (1603–1625), more than 60 years after the dissolution.{{citation needed|date= October 2019}}

[[File:Kite aerial photo of Bolton Abbey.jpg|thumb|left|[[Bolton Abbey]] in Yorkshire, surviving parochial nave and ruined monastic choir]]
The dissolution did not greatly affect English parish church activity. Parishes that had formerly paid their tithes to a religious house now paid them to a lay impropriator, but rectors, vicars, and other incumbents remained in place. Congregations that had shared monastic churches continued to do so, with former monastic parts now walled off and derelict. Most parish churches had been endowed with [[chantries]], each maintaining a [[stipend]]ed priest to say [[mass (liturgy)|Mass]], and these were unaffected. In addition, there remained over a hundred collegiate churches in England, whose endowments maintained regular choral worship through a corporate body of [[canon (priest)|canons]], [[prebend]]s or priests. All these survived the reign of Henry VIII largely intact, only to be dissolved under the [[Chantry#Abolition of Chantries Acts, 1545 and 1547|Chantries Act 1547]], by Henry's son Edward VI, their property being absorbed into the Court of Augmentations and their members being added to the pensions list. Since many former monks had found employment as chantry priests, the consequence for these clerics was a double experience of dissolution, perhaps mitigated by the promise of a double pension.{{citation needed|date= October 2019}}{{-}}