In 1534, King Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic Church and became head of the Church of England. This led to the passing of two lesser-known acts, the Suppression of Religious Houses Act 1535 and the Suppression of Religious Houses Act 1539 (also known as the “Two Dissolution Acts”).
These acts were the legal instruments of what is now known as the Dissolution of the Monasteries, a long process during which the Crown confiscated the properties of the hundreds of priories, monasteries, monastic orders and other religious establishments that fell under the control of the English monarch. In doing so, Henry inadvertently set in motion a chain of events that would forever change the way scholars of English history approached the primary sources used in their research.
Because monasteries had served a variety of functions throughout history, their dissolution had far-reaching consequences. It changed the face of England, religious buildings slowly became private property – but it also changed the scientific landscape.
Many of Britain’s early historians came from monasteries (often in the form of chroniclers), including Gerald of Wales, the Venerable Bede and Roger Bacon. As archivists, they also preserved the primary sources that researchers still study today.
In the decades following the dissolution, the manuscripts, like the other possessions of the religious houses, slowly changed hands. The king took several manuscripts for himself, and others were taken and hidden by former members of the order or locals. Thousands probably disappeared.
Although the extent of the loss is difficult to estimate, it was researched in detail by the Anglo-Saxon and palaeographer (expert in manuscript analysis) Neil Ripley Ker in his book Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, first published in 1941. Thanks to the combined efforts of today’s scholars, this research is now available as a constantly updated database.
Where have the manuscripts gone?
Bibliographic research over the past few decades has revealed that some have been assembled by local and often little-known collectors. As for the rest, the writings of contemporary antiquarians (those people interested in the material remains of the past) provide valuable information about what existed before the Dissolution, how much disappeared, and how.
National Portrait Gallery
From 1533 the English poet and antiquarian John Leland undertook the laborious task of inventorying the most important manuscripts from the monasteries, and in 1546 he listed his work up to that point in a then unpublished address, commonly known as the ‘Newe Yeares Gyfte’. Meanwhile, Leland’s colleague John Bale wrote a synopsis of the famous writers of Britain based on Leland’s work, first published in Latin in 1548. The preparatory notes survive in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
From Bale’s preface to the New Year Book we learn that many of the manuscripts were eventually cut up and used as candlesticks or shoe cloths, some were sold abroad and many were sold to bookbinders.
Such recycling had already taken place in the past. The membrane (treated animal skin, also called parchment or vellum) from which most manuscripts were made could be reused to make new books, especially as binding material, and also had a less obvious but no less useful afterlife. And it would continue to do so for many years to come. For example, in 1629 one of the copies of the Magna Carta supposedly had to be rescued from a tailor’s workshop.
The Magna Carta in question found its way into the collection of the antiquarian Sir Robert Cotton. Like other collectors before him, Cotton sought to preserve the evidence of British history, especially the monastic manuscripts that are now scattered. His collection still exists today, as the Cotton manuscripts became one of the founding collections of the British Library.
Trinity College, Cambridge
The disintegration itself occurred at a turning point in historical methods. In the 16th century, a new intellectual movement spread to England from Italy, where it had begun over a century earlier: humanism. Renaissance humanism was concerned (initially) with the study of the classical world, and eventually gave rise to a new culture of learning that involved the re-evaluation of historical sources (including the manuscripts mentioned above).
On the continent, this was often done by consulting the texts in the monasteries themselves. In England, where the monasteries no longer existed, these sources fell into the hands of scholars and collectors who wanted to use them, such as Matthew Parker and Cotton.
Neither Parker nor Cotton limited themselves to collecting these documents. Their libraries were the centre of research circles that used, edited and sometimes published original manuscripts with the help of another continental invention – the printing press. Although antiquarians were not necessarily historians and were generally considered to be more interdisciplinary, their work facilitated historical research by preserving and disseminating primary sources.
Historical research has developed considerably since the 16th century. The sources that were saved from destruction or dispersal at the time of the Dissolution have been read, reread, translated, studied and contextualized in many different ways since the time of the early archaeologists.
Henry VIII may never have intended to compromise these manuscripts, but it is undeniable that the Dissolution had a profound impact on English and British scholarship, shaping the minds of aspiring humanist historians and giving them unprecedented access to original documents.
In addition to the impact on the historiography of its time, the dissolution of the archive could also have drastically changed the sources we still use today. Without the collectors’ desire to preserve them, the surviving manuscripts would probably have disappeared into tailors’ and cobblers’ shops and never resurfaced.
Disintegration is more than just a story of loss and destruction. It is also the story of efforts large and small, collective and individual, to preserve a country’s heritage in a time of great change and uncertainty.
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