sentences:  In 1539 it was dissolved with all the monasteries by Henry VIII.Over the following 150 years the churches in the neighbourhood passed over to the reformed church, while Roman Catholic priests led a precarious existence tending to the larger part of the population, which remained faithful to the old religion.From the mid-16th century the Lord of this Liberty was the Earl of Meath, whose family acquired the lands of the monastery from Henry VIII when he dissolved the monasteries.