Memory and the Dissolution of the Monasteries in Early Modern England

The dissolution of the monasteries was recalled by individuals and communities alike as a seismic rupture in the religious, cultural, and socio-economic fabric of early modern England. It was also profoundly important in shaping contemporary historical consciousness, the topographical imagination, and local tradition. Memory and the Dissolution is a book about the dissolution of the monasteries after the dissolution. Harriet Lyon argues that our understanding of this historical moment is enriched by taking a long chronological view of the suppression, by exploring how it was remembered to those who witnessed it and how this memory evolved in subsequent generations. Exposing and repudiating the assumptions of a conventional historiography that has long been coloured by Henrician narratives and sources, this book reveals that the fall of the religious houses was remembered as one of the most profound and controversial transformations of the entire English Reformation.

• Recovers the dissolution of the monasteries as essential to our understanding of the English Reformation
• Extends our understanding of the workings of memory in the early modern period, and of how and why some moments become watershed historical events
• Interrogates the conventional divide between the medieval and early modern periods, challenging our understanding of traditional models of historical periodisation