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Updated: May 3, 2025
A vast mass of Church property still remained for the spoiler, and by a bill of 1545 more than two thousand chauntries and chapels, with a hundred and ten hospitals, were suppressed to the profit of the Crown.
No nobility was so poor as that of Scotland, and nowhere in Europe was the contrast between their poverty and the riches of the Church so great. Each step of the vast spoliation that went on south of the border, the confiscation of the lesser abbeys, the suppression of the greater, the secularization of chauntries and hospitals, woke a fresh greed in the baronage of the north.
"The stranger who knows nothing of its story would surely smile if he were told that beneath the grass and daisies round him were hidden the vast foundation storeys of one of the mightiest of our proud mediæval abbeys; that on the spot where he was standing were once grouped a forest of tall columns bearing up lofty fretted roofs; that all around once were altars all agleam with colour and with gold; that besides the many altars were once grouped in that sacred spot chauntries and tombs, many of them marvels of grace and beauty, placed there in the memory of men great in the service of Church and State of men whose names were household words in the England of our fathers; that close to him were once stately cloisters, great monastic buildings, including refectories, dormitories, chapter-house, chapels, infirmary, granaries, kitchens all the varied piles of buildings which used to make up the hive of a great monastery."
Honours and lands were lavished as ever on themselves and their adherents. Warwick became Duke of Northumberland, Lord Dorset was made Duke of Suffolk, Paulet rose to the Marquisate of Winchester, Sir William Herbert was created Earl of Pembroke. The plunder of the chauntries and the gilds failed to glut the appetite of this crew of spoilers.
The suppression of chauntries and religious gilds which was now being carried out enabled Somerset to buy the assent of noble and landowner to his measures by glutting their greed with the last spoils of the Church.
The humiliation of the clergy, the Lutheran tendencies of half the bishops, the crash of the abbeys, the destruction of chauntries and mass-chapels, a measure which told closely on the actual worship of the day, the new articles of faith, the diffusion of Bibles, the "jangling" and discussion which followed on every step in the king's course, were all telling on the thoughts of men.
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