530 Marlborough Chantries and the supply of Clergy in olden days. 



for Wolsey's well-known policy of dissolving monasteries in 1525 

 under powers which had been granted by the Pope and 

 ratified by King Henry VIII. in the preceding year. Four 

 years later, in 1529 (21 Henry VIII.) an Act was passed 

 forbidding priests (either secular or regular) to receive any 

 stipend for singing masses for souls. 1 Six years later, in March, 

 1536, the King, with the consent of Parliament, assumed power 

 to deal with the possessions of every religious house of which the 

 income was not above £200 a year. 2 A Court of Augmentations 

 was created by the same parliament, and on the 24th April, 1536, 

 Sir T.Pope was made its treasurer and other officers were appointed. 

 Lacock Abbey, with a few other houses with small income, received 

 a royal grant (dated 30th Jan., 1537) to remain undissolved (for 

 the time being) on payment to His Majesty of £300, a good deal 

 more than one year's income. 3 The respite, nevertheless, was brief, 

 for the abbess and nuns surrendered to the Commissioners on 21st 

 Jan., 1539. In the interim the other smaller houses were dissolved : 

 among them, Maiden Bradley, Monkton Farley, Ivychurch, Kington 

 St. Michael, Kiugswood, in G-loster confines, Longleat, Easton 

 Ptoyal, and others, in 1535-6. Then the Friaries followed : the 

 Carmelites of Marlborough priory, south of the High Street (now 

 a boarding house for Marlborough College), in July, 1538 ; the 

 Dominicans of Salisbury and Wilton, with the Franciscans of 

 Salisbury, in October, the other little priory at Marlborough, of 

 Gilbertine canons of the Order of Sempringham, was dispersed in 



1 "A supplication of the poor e commons : whereunto is added the Supply- 

 cation of Beggers Corupyled by Syrnon Fyshe Anno Mcccccxxiiii." was not 

 published until late in 1528, or early in 1529. It was followed immediately 

 by a noteworthy reply : " The Supplycacyon of Soivlys, made by Syr Thomas 

 More, knyght, councellor to our soureign lorde the Kynge and chancellor of 

 hys Duchy of Lancashire and Agaynst the supplycacyon of beggars. Cum 

 privilegio. [W. Rastell : Lond., 1528 ?] 



: The Act for the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries (1536), 27 Hen. 

 VIII.. cap. 28, is printed among Gee and Hardy's Documents Illustrative 

 of the History of the English Church, pp. 257 — 68. That for the Greater 

 Monasteries (1539) ibid, pp. 181 — 303 Also the Act dissolving the chantries 

 <1547), 1 Edw., VI.., cap. 14, ibid, pp. 328—57. 



3 King Henry VIII and the English Monasteries, i.. 50 — 64. 



