tury the monastic
institutions had so far departed from the ideal of their founders, and
outlived their usefulness, as to call for some drastic measures for
their improvement. Steps had been taken from time to time with this
object, before the reign of Henry VIII, when a combination of
circumstances, into which we need not now enter, enabled the King to
carry out his scheme for the Dissolution of the monasteries,
comprising the two chief classes of abbeys and priories into which
they were divided. The coming storm was heralded at St. Mary's on 11th
November, 1535 on which date, "by command of the king," a solemn
procession was held in the church to inaugurate its downfall by a
Litany, in which the Prior and Canons took part, "with their crosses,
candlesticks and vergers before them," as if in mockery of the state
of which they were so soon to be deprived. The "Act of Suppression,"
passed in 1536, sealed the fate of the smaller foundations, to be
followed three years later by the "voluntary surrender" of their
property by the larger monasteries, thus making a clean sweep of the
whole. The last Prior, Linstede, has been blamed for so far
acquiescing in the measure as to accept a pension from the royal
bounty; but with the fate of the last Abbot of Glastonbury before him,
who had been hanged for his resistance, he probably thought that his
own opposition would only have led to a useless martyrdom without
averting the fall of his priory. It may be mentioned, as having some
bearing on our history, that part of the wealth released by the Act
was applied to the foundation of six new bishoprics, thus by a strange
coincidence bringing up the English dioceses to the number of
twenty-four, originally fixed upon by Pope Gregory the Great, while
his successor was set at defiance by the measures through which they
were created.

St. Mary Overy now enters on a new phase of existence. We have seen
that it had become a double church, by union with the church, or
chapel, of St. Mary Magdalene, the one a conventual, the other a
public, place of worship. In the immediate neighbourhood there was a
third church, dedicated to St. Margaret, which had been founded by
Bishop Giffard in 1107, and granted to the fraternity at St. Mary's by
charter of Henry I. By an Act of 1540, the year of Linstede's
surrender, the whole were united into a single parish, under the title
of St. Saviour's, thenceforward the official designation of the
Collegiate C