Politicians who are fond of the idea of ‘Britishness’ no doubt think this was an event unique to these islands. In fact, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland had all embarked on national programmes of monastic closure before Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s chief minister, realised that was a way to make his king rich beyond the dreams of avarice.
Indeed, earlier monarchs were in the habit of temporarily seizing the assets of Cistercian, Cluniac and Benedictine priories tied to French mother houses whenever England was at war with France, and Henry V finally ‘nationalised’ all these ‘alien priories’ by act of Parliament in 1414. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge, not to mention Eton College, were great beneficiaries of the closure of monasteries whose wealth was diverted into education: Cardinal Wolsey created Christ Church, Oxford, by converting St Frideswide’s Priory into a college and grabbing the assets of 20 smaller monasteries.
But these were all partial and small-scale dissolutions compared with the one that Thomas Cromwell executed, and the thoroughness with which he managed the process makes today’s stealth-taxing politicians look like rank amateurs.
