The "King's Proceedings" of 1536 undoubtedly intensified the misery of the citizens. The monastery was dissolved by the royal commissioners; the cathedral church defaced and its roof pulled off, and the lead, worth £647, stacked within the desecrated building;[346] the house of the Franciscans razed "because the poor people lay so sore upon it;[347] and all monastic property seized into the King's hand." Dugdale, quoting Hales' letter to the Protector Somerset, attributes to the dissolution the state of decay and misery into which the city had fallen in the third year of Edward VI. "There were not at that time," the letter runs, "more than 3,000 inhabitants, whereas within memory there had been 15,000."[348] It is very doubtful whether the high figure is correct, and certainly the population never sank to so low as 3,000. In a petition coming from the people of Coventry in 1548 it is stated that there were "to the number of eleven to twelve thousand housling people"[349] within the city. But it was the sweeping and iniquitous act of confiscation, known as the suppression of the guilds and chantries, rather than the dissolution of the monasteries, which brought the citizens to the verge of ruin. So extensive was the house property belonging to the guilds, and so intimately were these bodies connected with the corporation, that this calamity involved the city finances in the most terrible confusion. Having no property from which to draw the money for the annual fee-ferm of £50, one or two persons, the citizens declared to the Earl of Warwick, were yearly ruined by the tax levied for its payment.[350] The poorer class--of late years greatly increased in numbers--were deprived of the guild charities, the children of a schoolmaster[351] and the less wealthy craftsmen of all hope of provision for old age and an honourable burial after death. The burgesses of Lynn and Coventry protested against the confiscation. There were but two churches in the city, the latter declared, "wherein God's service is done, whereof the one, that is to say, the church of Corpus Christi, was specially maintained of the revenues of such guild lands as had been given heretofore by divers persons to that use.... If therefore now by the act the same land should pass from them, it should be a manifest cause of the utter desolation of the city." For the people, the petitioners declared, "when the churches were no longer supported, nor God's service done therein, and the other uses and employments of those lands omitted, should be of force constrained to abandon the city and seek new dwelling places."[352] This energetic protest was not without its effect. The citizens were permitted to purchase back the guild lands for the sum of £1315, 1s. 8d., a very large amount in those days,[353] which, in spite of their poverty, they were enabled to gather together.