“How far can Henry VIII’s decision to dissolve the monasteries be explained by the Crown’s financial problems that had developed since Henry became King in 1509?”
Example essay response
“How far can Henry VIII’s decision to dissolve the monasteries be explained by the
Crown’s financial problems that had developed since Henry became King in 1509?”
By the 1500s, England’s monasteries had become vastly wealthy so if Henry dissolved them; it
was an easy way for him to gain lots of money quickly. Due to his extravagant spending on his
lifestyle and expensive wars with France, Henry had spent most of the money that had been left
to him by his prudent father, King Henry VII, meaning that it was very beneficial to have a large
injection of wealth into the Crown. However the dissolution of the monasteries also came about
due to a culmination of many other reasons such as the corruption present in the Catholic
monasteries and the fact that the majority of monks and nuns were still loyal to the Pope rather
than Henry as the Supreme Head of the Church of England.
By 1535, Henry’s finances were struggling due to his fighting expensive wars abroad therefore
the dissolution of the more than 500 monasteries in England seemed like a shrewd financial
move. In Cromwell’s 1535 Valor Ecclesiasticus survey, he found that, if seized, the monasteries
had the potential to double the Crown’s annual income. This was due to the many riches
monasteries possesed, not only in coins but also in artwork and land. Henry was often fighting
expensive wars abroad especially in France against his arch enemy Francis I of France or else
using his wealth on vanity projects such as the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. Therefore the
dissolution of the monasteries was imperative for Henry in order to stabilise his finances.
However it was not only financial reasons which led Henry to dissolve the English monasteries;
a key reason was to bring to an end a section of the clergy who had no loyalty to him. Almost all
of the monks and nuns who served in England’s monasteries during Henry's reign had sworn an
allegiance to the Pope rather than to Henry who by 1534 had become the Supreme Head of the
English Church. This meant that Henry could not trust that his clergy was actually loyal to him.
Therefore it was in the interest of having complete control over all aspects of religion in England
that Henry dissolve the monasteries rather than the financial gains he made from it.
Furthermore it was well-known that the Catholic Church in England ie. the remaining
monasteries had become highly corrupted.This was exposed in part by Cromwell’s survey the
“Valor Ecclesiasticus” in 1535, which highlighted the corruptions and abuses rife among smaller
monasteries in particular - some records even show that some monks had married despite
undertaking a compulsory vow of celibacy in order to remain close to God. Cromwell used the
survey to find the most damning evidence that monasteries were not fit for purpose and thus
should be dissolved. The inappropriate behaviour present in many of England’s monasteries
served as another reason which made Henry decide to dissolve them in order to prevent such
abuses of position again.
Another important reason why Henry VIII decided to dissolve England’s monasteries was due to
the fact that they no longer fitted in with the religious doctrine in England - Protestantism. The
primary reason for the existence of a monastery was to pray for the souls of its parishioners yet
the new Protestantism advocated by Henry encouraged the fostering of a personal relationship
with God - thus rendering the monastery irrelevant. Keeping England's monasteries open was
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