Monday, April 25, 2011

Question from Guy - Last monastery suppression

When was the last monastery suppressed?


Foose said...

There's disagreement about this. Scarisbrick and some other modern authorities say that Waltham Abbey, dissolved in March 1540, was the last monastery closed down as a result of the Dissolution.

However, many 19th-century writers argue that the Abbey of Rushen, on the Isle of Man, was the last - it was dissolved in 1553. The discrepancy can perhaps be explained by one note I found, stating that the Isle of Man was not subject to the statute (I understand the Isle of Man was technically a semi-independent lordship - at one point there were "kings" of Man - that had survived from earlier times) and that its religious foundations were dissolved "not by force of any statute or law, but simply by an act of power on the part of the sovereign of England." (Sir James Gell, attorney-general for the Isle in the 19th century)

Henry VIII apparently ordered a valuation and inventory of Rushen in 1541, beginning the process, but Rushen was not actually closed until 1553.

shtove said...

I can beat that.

Multyfarnham monastery, a Franciscan establishment in Ireland, was still hanging on in the 1590s. Considered a scandal for Elizabeth I's government.

It was finally deroofed in 1651.

The same policies were pursued in Ireland as in England. But there is an Irish way of dealing with orders from on high!

It's still going, used as a retreat for "artists":