19/06/2026
The Dissolution of the Monasteries effectively closed down any kind of Health Service, had an impact on jobs, education, libraries and the lives of hundreds of people.
Today going to hospital when seriously ill or injured is fairly normal. However, did you know the hospital had its origins in the monastic religious houses?
The origin of the word hospital comes from the latin word – “hospes”, which stands for “a guest or visitor” – which is meant to provide shelter for travellers, pilgrims and those who suffered from illness.
Not all monasteries and nunneries would have a hospital and in some locations the hospital would be a separate site to the monastery itself. One of the largest was at St Leonards, York, and its specific function was to provide shelter and treatment to the sick and poor.
One of the seven ‘spiritual works’ included counsel and comfort for the sick. Monasteries were founded to interact for the souls of the living and the dead. The hospital were founded similarly but here the emphasis was on the practical relief of the suffering….
Monasteries and therefore hospitals to begin with were not publicly funded like ours are today but would need charity and revenue from various sources such as patrons, rent from owned land and houses, and for a few income generated from annual fairs and markets.
Between 1536 and 1540 the King took over 800 monasteries, abbeys, nunneries and friaries, some of which had accumulated great wealth and land (through bequests for instance).
These had been home to more than 10,000 monks, nuns, friars and canons. Many former monasteries were sold off to landowners. Others were taken over and became churches, such as Durham Cathedral. Many were left to ruin. A few monks who resisted were executed, but those who surrendered were paid or pensioned off.
Some of the funds gained went to finance new institutions, such as Trinity College in Cambridge and Christ Church in Oxford. But whole monastic libraries were destroyed, countless music manuscripts lost and England’s rural landscape changed forever.
As a result, as many as 14,000 monks, nuns and friars, as well as countless monastic servants and tenants, had their lives changed, while about 200 people were executed for opposing the Dissolution.
Those who were homeless and sought refuge in them went back to life on the street and living in poverty.
Roads and towns would be “littered” with those who had nowhere to go. This would lead to a petition sent to King Henry VIII to reopen and establish hospitals to remove those from the streets. This however was not done out of care but because of ‘the miserable people lyeing in the streete, offending every clene person passing by the way’.
In London, two of the hospitals to reopen and be managed under public ownership rather than monastic were St Thomas’ and St Barts, both of which there today, although not on their original sites.
The Dissolution (also known as the Suppression) of the Monasteries proceeded in stages. The ‘lesser monasteries’ (those with an income of below £200 a year and fewer than 12 inmates) were dissolved in 1536.
This was followed by further dissolutions that gathered pace in 1538, and by the middle of 1540 every monastery in England and Wales, many with histories stretching back to the Anglo-Saxons, had been dissolved
Many monasteries in early 16th-century England were thriving, and could not have anticipated their impending extinction. It seems likely that this was not envisioned when Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell first embarked on their dissolution.
Daily life still revolved around the dignified observance of religious services, and people from across society still entrusted the monasteries with their spiritual salvation, also turning to them for hospitality, employment, education and charity. Many monasteries were home to shrines containing relics of Christ and saints, attracting pilgrims from across the land.
The motives by Henry were as much financial as theological. While in the service of Cardinal Wolsey, Cromwell had seen the riches that could accrue from the suppression of religious houses. In December 1534 he boasted to the Imperial ambassador to England, Eustace Chapuys, that he would make Henry richer than all other kings in Christendom – riches which were to come from the monasteries.
The dissolved monasteries passed into the ownership of Henry in his role as head of the Church, and a new body, the Court of Augmentations of the Revenues of the King’s Crown, was established to oversee the seizing of property.
The king’s commissioners oversaw the surrender of individual houses: the buildings were surveyed, their possessions accounted for and the movable assets sold by auction. With an eye to future use or sale, the buildings escaped serious damage at this stage, although lead was stripped from the roofs, and glazing and bells were removed to be melted down.
Later the buildings were almost totally destroyed, with stone being sold or taken for building.
For most monks and nuns, the arrival of Henry’s commissioners and the destruction of their monasteries was a distressing experience.
The monasteries were not only their home; they were also at the centre of their belief system. They provided status, self-identity, friendship and security. There are even reports of some monks dying within days of the suppression of their monasteries.
Awarded only modest pensions, many nuns, for example, faced a very uncertain future, not least because they were forbidden to marry, even after being cast out of the cloister (though there are instances of this happening). This left some with no option but to return to their family.
Although many – probably most nuns had a genuine religious vocation, nunneries were also used as refuges (or dumping grounds) for the unmarriageable daughters of middling and gentry families. Some former nuns must therefore have received a frosty reception when they returned to their family manor house. They would have been regarded as a burden.
Many people looked to the monasteries for their living. The 18 monks at Sawley Abbey were looked after by no fewer than 42 servants. They included farmhands, plumbers, cooks, kitchen boys, carpenters, grooms, masons, labourers and washerwomen.
Many monastic servants lived in accommodation provided by their employer and were also given daily allowances of bread and ale. They now faced unemployment and homelessness.
The Song and Grammar school, where the boys of its tenants were educated for free, was closed. The poor and needy could no longer turn to the monastery for doles of cash and food.
Despite the high-minded ideals of Cromwell and some of his fellow Evangelicals, few of the profits from the Dissolution found their way into the pockets of the poor.
Either by agreement or subterfuge, monks and canons seem to have taken away books, vestments and altar furniture. Such possessions would have been useful in the priestly lives they followed after their communities dispersed.
English monasteries had been quick to adopt the new technology of printing and were acquiring printed books until almost the very moment of their dissolution. Many remained thriving centres of learning and scholarship. It therefore comes as no surprise that former monks made efforts to preserve their monastic libraries intact.
Many people, including Thomas Cromwell and his commissioners, were considerably enriched by the Dissolution. Even at the time, the monasteries were acknowledged as repositories of cultural treasures. But now these were esteemed only for their cash value.
The work of despoiling the monasteries of their riches began almost immediately they were suppressed. The gold and silver altar plate, jewels, and precious metal thread from vestments were sent to the king’s receiver at the Tower.
Lead was stripped from the roofs, and for convenience melted into large bars, or fothers.
Similarly, when monastic estates were dismembered it wasn’t just reformers who profited. Sir Anthony Browne, one of Henry VIII’s courtiers, acquired Battle Abbey (East Sussex) after its suppression in 1538. He rapidly eradicated the monastic church, despite it being built ‘on the very spot’ where William the Conqueror secured his great victory in 1066. He converted the palatial abbot’s residence into a mansion.
Some monasteries and their supporters seem to have tried to dispose of or conceal property before Henry’s commissioners arrived. The best vestments were removed or sold. Images were also deliberately concealed.
Some monks and nuns were salvaging property in the hope that it would one day be formally restored to their monasteries.
Sir William Cavendish from Cavendish in Suffolk. Was a knight, MP and courtier and he prospered during the 16th century as one of King Henry VIII's commissioners for the dissolution of the monasteries.
He married Bess of Hardwick (née Elizabeth Hardwick) in 1547, it was his third marriage and her second.
When he married Bess, she persuaded him to sell the former monastic lands he had amassed and move to Derbyshire, her home county. In 1552, they began building Chatsworth.
