Peterborough Abbey Church,
raised by Henry VIII to Cathedral
status for a new diocese the King
The medieval Church of England had a particularly unique tradition in which several cathedrals did not have the usual dean and chapter of canons but a monastic community that followed the Rule of Saint Benedict and was governed by the Prior (the Abbot being, in theory, the Bishop.) Canterbury, Winchester, Ely, Carlisle, Durham, Rochester, Norwich, and Worcester were all such arrangements. (Carlisle was not a Benedictine foundation, but one of the Arrouaisian Canons who followed the Rule of Saint Augustine.) Typically in such situations, the Prior was named as dean of the newly constituted chapter of secular canons that replaced the monks. Thomas Goldwell was prior of the Benedictine monks at Canterbury—a large house of 69 monks. He signed the assent to the royal supremacy in 1534 which acknowledged Henry as head of the Church. Monastic life continued as normal until 1539 when the monastery was suppressed. Goldwell was given an annual pension of £ 80 and named a prebendary (canon) of the Cathedral. (1539 £ 80 equals about $60,000 in modern currency, but approximately five times that in actual buying power.) Winchester Priory had 45 monks and the last prior, William Kingsmill, was appointed dean of the Cathedral. Robert Steward had been prior of Ely since 1522. Although he had supported the validity of the Royal Marriage to Katherine of Aragon, he soon switched sides to Henry and supported the Royal Supremacy as well as playing an active role in convincing monasteries to surrender to the King. When his own monastery was suppressed in November 1539 he was given a handsome pension. Two years later he was appointed first dean of the new Cathedral. Hugh Whitehead was Prior of the monks at Durham from 1519. Like the others, he acceded to Henry’s supremacy. The monastic community was dissolved in 1540 and he was pensioned but then appointed first dean of the new secular chapter. Under Edward VI he was imprisoned in the Tower of London along with his bishop, Cuthbert Tunstall, for refusing to go along with the Protestantization of the Church of England by Archbishop Cranmer.
Henry was not only into dismantling the monasteries—he was also into building up the Church. While his primary goal in suppressing the monasteries was to enrich the royal coffers, he not only provided for the monks and nuns out of the revenues of the suppressed houses, he also used the monastic endowments to establish a number of new dioceses to provide good pastoral oversight for the Church. Most of these dioceses were founded on, and from the revenues of, suppressed monasteries. Dioceses were founded at Bristol, Chester, Gloucester, Oxford, Peterborough and Westminster. Henry also moved the See of Coventry to Lichfield. Other than Lichfield, the new sees were all established in former Benedictine abbeys, except for Oxford which was originally established in the former Augustinian Osney Abbey and later (1545) transferred to Saint Frideswide’s Priory (Augustinian) which had been suppressed and then incorporated into Wolsey’s Cardinal College in 1525. Peterborough Abbey was the site of the grave of Katherine of Aragon who had been buried there only five years before and so was saved from being destroyed or deconsecrated. Henry was faced with an even greater conundrum in what to do with Westminster Abbey which had been the site of English coronations for almost five centuries. Henry may have been willing to break continuity with the papacy, but not when it came to his Crown and its traditions. He had a superstitious urgency to preserve any and all symbols of Royal legitimacy and Westminster Abbey was central to this. Westminster Abbey was also the second wealthiest religious house in England. The monastic community was suppressed in 1539 and in 1540 Henry took the city of Westminster and the county of Middlesex from the Diocese of London to create the Diocese of Westminster. Thomas Thirlby, a churchman loyal to Henry was named bishop and William Benson (sometimes Boston), the former monastic prior, was named Dean of a chapter of 12 canons drawn mostly from the monks. The idea of a Diocese of Westminster was only to preserve a reason for the Abbey Church to be preserved and was neither pastorally useful nor economically feasible. The Diocese was suppressed in the reign of King Edward VI. The Abbey was left impoverished of its revenues and almost destroyed by the greed of the Duke of Somerset, the uncle of King Edward VI and “Lord Protector of England” in the King’s minority. The Church was restored to abbatial status during the reign of Mary and then under Elizabeth became a “royal peculiar”—directly under the Crown who appoints the dean and canons. It remains that way today as a Collegiate Church (a church with a college of canons led by the dean) under the Crown.