ABSTRACT
The Dissolution of England’s abbeys and priories in 1536—40; the destruction of chantries, colleges, hospitals, guilds, fraternities and brotherhoods from 1547 and the organized pillage of parish churches in 1552—53, represents the greatest single act of privatization in the history of English governance. The Court of Augmentations was set up in 1536 to organize the exploitation of ecclesiastical lands and property in favour of the Exchequer. A century later, surviving brasses were to be revisited by another group of zealous reformers in the period up to and including the Civil War, following Parliamentary Ordinances of 1641 and 1643 that ordered removal of images and superstitious inscriptions. The Edwardian inventories of church goods contain very large numbers of brass bowls, candlesticks, crosses, and censers, and the subsequent glut in supply is likely to have dramatically reduced their monetary value.
