Editing Dissolution of the monasteries (section)

===Politics===
The dissolution and destruction of the monasteries and shrines was very unpopular in many areas. In the north of England, centering on [[Yorkshire]] and [[Lincolnshire]], the suppression led to a popular rising, the [[Pilgrimage of Grace]], that threatened the Crown for some weeks. In 1536, there were major, popular uprisings in [[Lincolnshire]] and [[Yorkshire]] and a further rising in [[Norfolk]] the following year. James Clark claims in ''The Dissolution of the Monasteries'':

{{quote|The Lincolnshire rising lasted less than a week but before its end their cause was carried across the county's northern border. Now, there were copycat musterings passing up through Yorkshire as far as Northumberland, and to the west as far as the gateway into Wales.{{sfn|Clark|2021|pp=284-285}}}}

There were rumors that the King would tax livestock and calves in addition to stripping parish churches. The rebels demanded that Cromwell be removed and that the monasteries remain untouched. Henry used promises to calm the unrest before swiftly beheading some of the leaders.{{citation needed|date=October 2019}}

When Henry VIII's Catholic daughter, [[Mary I]], succeeded to the throne in 1553, her hopes for a revival of English religious life proved a failure. [[Westminster Abbey]], which had been retained as a cathedral, reverted to being a monastery; while the communities of the Bridgettine nuns and of the Observant Franciscans, which had gone into exile in the reign of Henry VIII, returned to their former houses at Syon and Greenwich respectively. A small group of fifteen surviving Carthusians was re-established in their old house at Sheen, as were eight Dominican canonesses in Dartford. A house of Dominican friars was established at Smithfield, but this was only possible through importing professed religious from Holland and Spain, and Mary's hopes of further refoundations foundered, as she found it very difficult to persuade former monks and nuns to resume the religious life. Schemes for restoring the abbeys at Glastonbury and St Albans failed for lack of volunteers. All the refounded houses were in properties that had remained in Crown possession. None of Mary's lay supporters would co-operate in returning their holdings of monastic lands to religious use. Lay lords in Parliament proved unremittingly hostile, as a revival of the "mitred" abbeys would have returned the House of Lords to having an ecclesiastical majority. There remained a widespread suspicion that the return of religious communities to their former premises might unsettle the legal title of lay purchasers of monastic land, and accordingly all Mary's foundations were technically new communities in law. In 1554, [[Cardinal Pole]] the [[papal legate]], negotiated a [[papal dispensation]] allowing the new owners to retain the former monastic lands, and in return Parliament enacted the [[heresy]] laws in January 1555.{{sfn|Bucholz|Key|2009|pp=110–111}} When Mary died in 1558 and was succeeded by her half-sister, Elizabeth I, five of the six revived communities left again to exile in continental Europe. An Act of Elizabeth's first parliament dissolved the refounded houses. But although Elizabeth offered to allow the monks in Westminster to remain in place with restored pensions if they took the Oath of Supremacy and conformed to the new [[Book of Common Prayer]], all refused and dispersed unpensioned. In less than 20 years, the monastic impulse had effectively been extinguished in England; and was only revived, even amongst Catholics, in the very different form of [[Counter-Reformation]] orders, such as the [[Jesuits]].{{citation needed| date= October 2019}}