In this rich study, British historian Moorhouse (Great Harry's Navy
) portrays the destruction of England's 650 Catholic monasteries and nunneries in the 1530s as a brazen smash-and-grab by a cash-strapped King Henry and his crafty vicar-general, Thomas Cromwell. After a beady-eyed inventory of assets by Cromwell's lawyer-accountants, Moorhouse notes, religious houses were seized or semivoluntarily “surrendered” to the Crown by terrified abbots, their occupants dispersed, their estates auctioned off, their shrines vandalized and buildings demolished, their jewelry and chalices sent to the royal treasury. Moorhouse finds continuity amid the upheaval by focusing on Durham Priory, a Benedictine monastery with a celebrated cathedral, that survived to become an Anglican Deanery. Drawing on monastic archives, the author vividly recreates the Priory's close-knit community and the warmth and grandeur of its Catholic observances —whose spirit, he contends, infused the Anglican era. His story is partly about the triumph of modernity, with its mercenary logic and remorseless bureaucracy, over medieval values of tradition and sacredness. But as it mourns what was lost in the English Reformation, Moorhouse's absorbing account takes stock of what was not. Photos. (May)
