dissolution of the monasteries

On 15 May 1532, the Convocation of Canterbury surrendered the Church of England's right to make its own laws without royal approval. Thomas More resigned the next day. The monasteries followed four years later. Henry VIII had decided he wanted the other half.

On 23 March 1540, Waltham Abbey surrendered to Henry VIII's commissioners - the last of England's nearly 900 monasteries to fall. Five years of institutional seizure, centuries of religious life, ended with a signature and a pension.