In late February and early March, 1536, the houses of the English Parliament passed the measure which would become the Act for the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries, 1536. The visitation ordered by king Henry VIII in 1535 (the year of the martyrdom of Saints Thomas More and John Fisher) had defined with great precision, with the evil efficiency which characterized Thomas Cromwell, the property and all belongings of all religious houses in the realm.March 1, 1536 was the date in which all belongings of the "lesser monasteries", that is, "every such monastery, priory, or other religious house, not having ... above the ... yearly value [yearly income] of two hundred pounds" automatically became personal royal property.
His Majesty received "all and singular the manors, lands, tenements, rents, services, reversions, tithes, pensions, portions, churches, chapels, advowsons, patronages, rights, entries, conditions, and all other interests and hereditaments to the same monasteries, abbeys, and priories, or to any of them appertaining or belonging". The act made clear that "all and singular premises, with all their rights, profits, jurisdictions, and commodities" belonged to "the king ... and to his heirs and assigns for ever, to do and use therewith his and their own wills, to the pleasure of Almighty God, and to the honour and profit of this realm." 
(text of the Act here)The great English expropriation was about to begin -- and so many in the higher classes were eager to be the beneficiaries of the property transferrals. The Suppression, which would be completed in 1539, also meant the destruction of the Catholic culture which had given birth to England:
The destruction of books was almost incredibly enormous. Bale describes the use of them by bookbinders and by grocers and merchants for the packing of their goods. Maskell calculates the loss of liturgical books alone to have approached the total of a quarter of a million. An eye-witness describes the leaves of Duns Scotus as blown about by the wind even in the courts of Oxford, and their use for sporting and other purposes. Libraries that had been collected through centuries, such as those of Christ Church and St. Albans, both classical and theological, vanished in a moment. ... A second destruction was that of the homes of study which the religious houses, especially those of the Benedictines, provided for all who leaned that way. (source)
One wonders if there is any way to "calculate the loss of liturgical books", which was enormous, after the demolition of the traditional Breviary and rites of Sacraments of the Latin Church in the 1968-1973 period... The spirit of destruction and rupture in the West has always been marked by a hatred of the Church and of her most solemn and ancient traditions, in recent times as well as 470 years ago.
