Where divers and sundry abbots, priors, abbesses, prioresses, and other ecclesiastical governors and governesses of divers monasteries, abbacies, priories, nunneries, colleges, hospitals, houses of friars, and other ecclesiastical and religious houses and places within this our sovereign lord the king's realm of England and Wales, of their own free and voluntary minds, good wills and assents, without constraint, coercion or compulsion of any manner of person or persons, since the fourth day of February, the twenty-seventh year of the reign of our now most dread sovereign lord, by the due order and course of the common laws of this realm of England, and by their sufficient writings of record, under their convent and common seals, have severally given, granted and by the same their writings severally confirmed all their said monasteries, abbacies, priories, nunneries, colleges, hospitals, houses of friars, and other religious and ecclesiastical houses and places and all their sites, circuits and precincts of the same, and all and singular their manors, lordships, granges, manses ... appertaining or in any wise belonging to any such monastery, abbacy, priory, etc. ... by whatsoever name or corporation they or any of them be called, and of what order, habit, religion, or other kind or quality soever they or any of them then were reputed, known or taken; to have and to hold all the said monasteries, abbacies, priories ... etc. to our said sovereign lord, his heirs and successors for ever and the same said monasteries ... etc. voluntarily, as is aforesaid, have renounced, left, and forsaken, and every of them has renounced, left, and forsaken. THE SIX ARTICLES ACT (1539). +Source.+--31 Henry VIII. cap. 14. (_Statutes of the Realm_, III. 739.) ... And forasmuch as in the said Parliament, synod, and Convocation, there were certain Articles, matters, and questions proposed and set for the teaching Christian religion, that is to say: First, whether in the most blessed Sacrament of the Altar remaineth, after the consecration, the substance of bread and wine, or no. Secondly, whether it be necessary by God's law that all men should communicate with both kinds or no. Thirdly, whether priests, that is to say, men dedicate to God by priesthood, may, by the law of God, marry after or no. Fourthly, whether vow of chastity or widowhood, made to God advisedly by man or woman, be, by the law of God, to be observed, or no. Fifthly, whether private masses stand with the law of God, and be to be used and continued in the Church and congregation of England, as things whereby good Christian people may and do receive both godly consolation and wholesome benefits or no. Sixthly, whether auricular confession is necessary to be retained, continued, used and frequented in the Church or no.