288 The Fall of the Wiltshire Monasteries. 



Committee after the expenses had been paid — a result largely due 

 to the hospitality which the Members enjoyed at the hands of Mr. 

 Lowndes and Mr. Fuller, and to Sir J. Dickson Poynder's very 

 generous and helpful loan of a break for the excursions. 



Siljc Jfall of tfje Mi(ts|iit "^omdtxm* 



By the Rev. W. Gilchrist Claek, M.A. 

 ^HE period covered by the process of destruction of the 

 religious houses in Wilts was the same as that over 

 England generally — the sliort space of fo\ir j^ears. In 1535 they 

 were all standing, as yet untouched ; by the 15th December, 1539, 

 not one was left. During this short space, however, a social and 

 economic change (to say nothing at this time of the religious effect) 

 was earned thi'ough, second only in importance — ^if, indeed, it be 

 second — to the change produced in the fourteenth century by the 

 ravages of the Black Death. 



The campaign against the religious houses began, as I have said, 

 in 1535, but the preparations for it had been in progress ever since 

 the fall of Wolsey, in 1529. Indeed it was that great churchman 

 who fii'st accustomed men's minds to the wholesale confiscation of 

 religious property, when he suppressed S. Frideswide's, Oxford, and, 

 as the articles of his impeachment say, " above thirty houses of 



* This paper, originally read at the Corsham Meeting, July, 1895, is now 

 printed with illustrative documents, mostly from the Record Office, and pub- 

 lished in the series of " Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reign of 

 Henry VIII.," referred to subsequently as " Letters and Papers." My chief 

 indebtedness is to Fr. Gasquet's "Henry VIII. and the Monasteries," and 

 Dixon's " History of the Church of England after the Abolition of the Papal 

 Supremacy " ; while I have to thank A. Story Maskelyne, Esq., of H.M. Record 

 Office, for much help in verifying references, and for transcripts of several 

 documents. 



