“CROMWELL MADE THE EXCEPTIONAL SEEM THE NORM. HE FOUND THE JUICIEST STORIES, THE JUICIEST EXAMPLES OF CORRUPTION”

Cromwell’s campaign

As we step inside the ruins, Morton explains the methods of Cromwell and his men. The Valor Ecclesiasticus was a crucial tool: a survey to discover how rich each monastery was – and how immoral the behaviour of its residents. “The ability to commission a report of that size tells us of Henry’s will for royal supremacy,” says Morton. It was a huge undertaking. And for Cromwell “it was particularly opportunistic. When it came to persuading parliament and the populace that these places should be closed, he made the exceptional seem the norm. He found the juiciest stories, the juiciest examples of corruption, and would say: ‘These people are all like this.’”

Indeed, a 1535 investigation by a pair of royal commissioners into the moral code being applied at Fountains ended with eight members of the community being charged with immoral acts including self-abuse, affairs with women both married and single, and sodomy with young boys – exactly the kind of juicy stories on which Henry’s loyal confidant could go to town.

While delivering this programme of political spin, Cromwell and his men also applied scare tactics to the monasteries themselves. “The abbot and the monks would have experienced a huge exertion of pressure,” explains Morton, “placing them under a psychological strain. Their obedience was being questioned. Do you accept the royal supremacy? If you don’t, does that mean you’re a traitor?

“Houses were visited by Cromwell’s men, who applied pressure for closure. They called people to interviews. They publicly demanded loyalty. In the early stages of closure, the crown was looking for those monasteries where the resistance wasn’t going to be the most acute. It was pushing a policy of voluntary surrender – getting the abbot to surrender the monastery to the crown.

“The more educated and confident could ask whether it was technically legal. Who actually owned the monasteries? Who owned the founders’ rights? And does the state have the right to run roughshod over them? This is why psychological pressure was really important. Cromwell was essentially trying to get around things by forcing people to give up the monasteries.”

Two years after the 1536 act of parliament that legitimised the first wave of closures, the

The vast vaulted cellarium, in which food, wine and ales were stored, indicates the abbey’s wealth. In 1535 it was the richest Cistercian monastery in England

The Pilgrimage of Grace, shown in a 1901 illustration. This uprising of 1536 was a protest against the break with Rome and the Dissolution