THE END OF THE ABBEY
After Henry VIII’s break with Rome over the denial of his annulment from Katherine of Aragon by the Pope, Henry’s chief minister and strategist, Thomas Cromwell was given cart-blanche to dissolve the religious houses in England and Wales. By Cromwell’s reckoning their wealth, treasures and lands that they owned would be better used by his lord and master, Henry. The other major plus: Henry would be the Supreme Ruler of the newly formed Protestant Church of England, with the Acts of Succession and Supremacy,
On behalf of Henry a valuation survey of the religious houses in the country was carried out known as the Valor Ecclesiaticus. With all this in mind starting in 1536, two years after Cromwell had been appointed, the dissolution started. The greater Abbeys were the last to see a visit from the King’s commissioners, the Abbey of St Edmund as one of the richest in the land one of these. On their arrival in 1538 they, found not only the Abbey well run but Edmund’s shrine empty, devoid of a body. Obviously ‘given the nod’ as to their impending visit, had the monks spirited the blessed saint away, that is if he was ever there?
The destruction of the shrine would be their number one priority. In the words of commissioner John Ap Rice “they found the shrine exceedingly cumbrous to deface” referring to the levering off of the gold, silver and precious jewels covering it amounting to some 5,000 marks. However, the Abbey may have been spending monies it did not have leading up to the dissolution, as an estimate of the Abbey’s worth at the dissolution was less than expected. They also found various relics according to them “of vanity and superstition.”
Not all religious houses were as compliant as that in Bury. Abbot Whyting of Gloucester Abbey suffered an horrendous death being hung, drawn and quartered for failing to give up his charge. The peaceful surrender of the Abbey of St Edmund to the crown took place on November 4th, 1539. The last Abbot, John Reeve aka Reve or De Melford given a house in Crown Street with an enormous pension. Along with about forty monks, Abbot Reeve filed out of the Abbey. A capable abbot he died within a year, it is said, of a broken heart, obviously not collecting his generous pension.
