‘Of Honest Conversation and Competently Learned’. The Dissolution of the Chantries (1548) and Chantry Priests of the East and West Midlands

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn December 1547, Edward VI’s parliament passed the Act for the Dissolution of Chantries, Colleges and ‘like institutions’, all targeted as they originated from the now denounced doctrine of Purgatory. The Court of Augmentations was commissioned to survey all relevant institutions throughout England and Wales. This article focuses on the surveys of the East and West Midlands, but the experiences highlighted were common throughout the kingdom. Recounting the stories found in the records enables some conclusions to be drawn on how religious change was introduced to wider society: how parishes and communities, especially the lives of the ordinary clergy ‘of honest conversation’, were affected. Tudor society was influenced by immediate and longer-term consequences of religious change: whether through the loss of place and becoming a pensioner of the state or the loss to parishes of property and aspects of parish life. Disturbance and disruption were at the heart of Reformation