Page "Dissolution of the Monasteries" Paragraph 1

At the time of their suppression, a small number of English and Welsh religious houses could trace their origins back to Pre-Conquest Anglo-Saxon or Celtic foundations ; but the overwhelming majority of the 825 religious communities dissolved by Henry VIII owed their existence to the wave of monastic enthusiasm that had swept western Christendom in the 11th and 12th centuries.

Very few English houses had been founded later than the end of the 13th century ; the most recent foundation of those suppressed being the Bridgettine nunnery of Syon Abbey founded in 1415.

( Syon is also the only suppressed community to maintain an unbroken existence in exile, the nuns returning to England in 1861.

) Typically, 11th and 12th century founders had endowed monastic houses with both ' temporal ' income in the form of revenues from landed estates, and ' spiritual ' income in the form of tithes appropriated from parish churches under the founder's patronage.

In consequence of which, religious houses in the 16th century controlled appointment to about two fifths of all parish benefices in England, disposed of about half of all ecclesiastical income, and owned around a quarter of the nation's landed wealth.