'The dissolution of the monasteries was a disaster for many but a golden opportunity for few. Is this true?'

        The effects on the people were first seen to be huge in size indicating that many people were displaced and forced to become accustomed to a lower standard of living. Monks and nuns were often the ones portrayed to be out starving on the streets, their ordered way of life suddenly ended after being cast out into a turbulent and fast changing world.  In reality only 1500 out of 8000 monks could not find alternative paid employment within the church with which to supplement their pensions.  It was the nuns that did less well as they were not allowed to marry nor were eligible for the priestly positions that the men held. The nuns that were not able to return to their families would have been forced to live a basic life, though there was no need for them to starve.  Protestant writers have said that this would have been all the nuns needed as they had taken vows of poverty so there was no need for them to live in luxury.   There is no evidence of the servants or the poor who benefited from the church on a regular or casual basis it is thought that the servants at the monasteries or in the churches would have been able to find employment from the new owners of the monasteries land.  As for the charity the monasteries provided to the poor, it is now believed to have added to an already existing problem instead of creating a new one.  The plight of the poor was already a dire problem nation wide and the closer of the monasteries would have just intensified the problem.  Another argument used to prove the dissolution affected many people in a sever way is the transfer of the monastic estates to a new bread of capitalists who will make high profits at any costs.  This resulted in farmers squeezing tenants into paying higher rents, then to make room for profitable farming they were responsible for causing large scale homelessness and depopulation.  New research has shown these claims to be largely unfounded.  The rents charge by the new landowners have been found to be similar to those of the old land owners, it also shows that nearly all of the enclosure of the monastic land took place before the dissolution rather than after it, this shows that it was not the dissolution of the monasteries that caused this displacement.  Many writers clamed that towns were suffering economically because of the closer of the religious houses.  Although it is true that some towns did posses a large number of religious houses in every case that has been studied the disappearance of the expenditure generated by the monks, nuns and friars has been assessed as having minimal impact on the prosperity of the community as a whole.  If towns were experiencing problems it was not because the monasteries had ceased to exist.

        By the end of Henry’s reign over half of the monastic land had left royal possession permanently as the land on which the monasteries had once stood was vacant.  This meant that more people were now enjoying a higher social rank as land owners.  The people that benefited greatly from the dissolution were merchants who had made their living from trade or the younger sons of landowning families who, because of the system of primogeniture would have fallen out of the social elite into which they were born. These people (especially the merchants) could now move up the social ladder, making the gap between rich and poor even greater.  Some would argue that it was this enlargement of the land owning classes which resulted in England becoming a parliamentary monarchy freer form violent revolution.

        In conclusion I do not believe that the dissolution of the monasteries was a disaster for that many people, undoubtedly it did put more strain on the country economically, and it also slightly worsened the problem of poverty leading future rulers to deal with the problem but in the long run most people could find alternative employment and finance a key statistic to prove this fact was only 1500 out of 8000 monks could not find employment elsewhere.  I also don’t believe it was a golden opportunity for many, when you consider England’s population in 1540 and compare it to the number of people who were transported to a higher social rank it is unrealistic to say that this happened to a very large percent of people.  I think that ‘many’ and ‘few’ are two extremes of the situation.