Editing Dissolution of the monasteries (section)

===Health and education===
The [[Suppression of Religious Houses Act 1539]] also provided for the suppression of religious hospitals, which had constituted in England a distinct class of institution, endowed for the purpose of caring for older people. Very few of these, such as [[Saint Bartholomew's Hospital]] in London (which still exists, though it took a different name between 1546 and 1948), were exempted by special royal dispensation but most closed, their residents being discharged with small pensions.{{Sfn|Clark|2021|pp=440–441}}

[[File:Lost Monastic Houses in the City of London.jpg|thumb|Lost monastic houses in the City of London]]

Monasteries had undertaken schooling for their [[novice]] members, which in the later medieval period had tended to extend to [[choir|choristers]] and sometimes other younger scholars. Where monasteries had provided [[grammar school]]s for older scholars, these were commonly refounded with enhanced endowments; some by royal command in connection with the newly re-established cathedral churches, others by private initiative. Monastic orders had maintained, for the education of their members, six colleges at the universities of Oxford or Cambridge, of which five survived as refoundations. Hospitals too were frequently to be re-endowed by private benefactors; and many new almshouses and charities were to be founded by the Elizabethan gentry and professional classes ([[London Charterhouse]]/[[Charterhouse School]] being an example which still survives). Nevertheless, it has been estimated that only in 1580 did overall levels of charitable giving in England return to those before the dissolution. On the eve of the overthrow, the various monasteries owned approximately {{convert|2000000|acre|km2}}, over 16 percent of England, with tens of thousands of tenant farmers working those lands, some of whom had family ties to a particular monastery.{{citation needed|date=October 2019}}