In 1533 (24 Henry VIII. c. xii.) the Statute for the Restraint of Appeals to Rome was passed. In 1534 Parliament made him “Supreme head of the Church of England.” He therefore took the Pope’s place, and received the firstfruits and tenths. In 1535 Commissioners were appointed to take the value of all ecclesiastical benefices, in order to settle the firstfruits and tenths. In 1536 the valuation was completed. In 1535, by 27 Henry VIII. c. xx., for tithes to be paid throughout the realm. In 1536 (28 Henry VIII. c. xvi.), the power of the Pope over tithes in England was finally extinguished. The monks viewed the King’s conduct in taking the Pope’s place with the most bitter hostility. They constantly used their influence to excite the feelings of the people against the King. Henry knew all this, and that he could never alienate them from the Pope. The subsequent conduct of the King and his ministers was guided more by political expediency than on religious or moral grounds. There was but one course open to the King, and that was to dissolve all the religious houses. It was a bold, arduous, and dangerous step. The morality of these houses was the only vulnerable point in which he thought he could successfully carry out his plan. He first obtained an Act of Parliament empowering him “to visit, order, and reform all errors and abuses in religion.” This was the lever which Henry’s agents used to expose every real and imaginary immoral act, and thus create hostility in the minds of the people against them. A Royal Commission was issued in 1535 with unlimited power to visit the monasteries. In 1536 the report was finished. But the original was destroyed in Queen Mary’s reign. We must be careful as to what credence should be given to evidence taken down and reported upon by such Commissioners as Leigh and Leyton, who had not scrupled to suborn witnesses. An Act was passed in 1536 (27 Henry VIII. c. xxviii.), which dissolved every monastery with a revenue of less than £200 per annum, and transferred to the King all the monasteries, priories, and other religious houses, all the sites, circuits, churches, chapels, advowsons, patronage, manors, granges, lands, hereditaments, tithes, pensions, annuities, rights, etc., which belonged to such monasteries; and that “The king shall have them in as large and ample a manner as the governors of those houses possessed them. That he was to have and to hold them, his heirs and assigns, to do and use therewith his and their own wills, to the pleasure of God and to the honour and profit of this realm.” And the Act further states that “Those who take the above property from the king shall have, hold, and enjoy the same _in like manner, form, and condition as before the Act of Dissolution_.” Those who took the property were therefore subject to the same limitations, privileges, and burdens as the _religiosi_ were. By this Act, 376 houses were dissolved and their properties vested in the Crown. The King