ACT FOR THE DISSOLUTION OF THE GREATER MONASTERIES (1539).
Source.—31 H. VIII. cap. 13. (Statutes of the Realm, III. 733.)
Where divers and sundry abbots, priors, abbesses, prioresses, and other ecclesiastical governors and governesses of divers monasteries, abbacies, priories, nunneries, colleges, hospitals, houses of friars, and other ecclesiastical and religious houses and places within this our sovereign lord the king's realm of England and Wales, of their own free and voluntary minds, good wills and assents, without constraint, coercion or compulsion of any manner of person or persons, since the fourth day of February, the twenty-seventh year of the reign of our now most dread sovereign lord, by the due order and course of the common laws of this realm of England, and by their sufficient writings of record, under their convent and common seals, have severally given, granted and by the same their writings severally confirmed all their said monasteries, abbacies, priories, nunneries, colleges, hospitals, houses of friars, and other religious and ecclesiastical houses and places and all their sites, circuits and precincts of the same, and all and singular their manors, lordships, granges, manses ... appertaining or in any wise belonging to any such monastery, abbacy, priory, etc. ... by whatsoever name or corporation they or any of them be called, and of what order, habit, religion, or other kind or quality soever they or any of them then were reputed, known or taken; to have and to hold all the said monasteries, abbacies, priories ... etc. to our said sovereign lord, his heirs and successors for ever and the same said monasteries ... etc. voluntarily, as is aforesaid, have renounced, left, and forsaken, and every of them has renounced, left, and forsaken.