Netley Abbey - Dissolution

Dissolution

In 1535 the abbey's income was assessed in the Valor Ecclesiasticus, Henry VIII's great survey of church finances, at £160 gross, £100 net, which meant the following year that it came under the terms of the First Suppression Act, Henry's initial move in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. At the beginning of the following year, the king's commissioners, Sir James Worsley, John Paulet, George Paulet and William Berners, delivered a report to the government on the monasteries of Hampshire which provides a snapshot of Netley on the eve of the Dissolution. The commissioners noted that Netley was inhabited by seven monks, all of them priests, and the abbey was:

A hedde house of Monkes of thordre of Cisteaux, beinge of large buyldinge and situate upon the Ryvage of the Sees. To the Kinge's Subjects and Strangers travelinge the same Sees great Relief and Comforte.

— Sir James Worsley

In addition to the monks, Netley was home to 29 servants and officials of the abbey, plus two Franciscan friars of the strict Observant part of that order who had been put into the abbot's custody by the king, presumably for opposing his religious policies. The royal officers also found plate and jewels in the treasury worth £43, "ornaments" worth £39, and agricultural produce and animals worth £103. The abbey's debts were moderate at £42.

Abbot Thomas Stevens and his seven monks were forced to surrender their house to the king in the summer of 1536. Abbot Thomas and six of his brethren—the seventh opted to resign and become a secular priest—crossed Southampton Water to join their mother house of Beaulieu. Abbot Thomas was appointed abbot of Beaulieu in 1536 and administered it for two years until it in turn was forced to surrender to the king in April 1538. The monks received pensions after the fall of Beaulieu; Abbot Thomas ended his days as treasurer of Salisbury Cathedral, and died in 1550.