The ''Valor Ecclesiasticus'' (

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

: "church valuation") was a survey of the finances of the church in England,

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...

and English controlled parts of Ireland made in 1535 on the orders of

Henry VIII Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disa ...

. It was colloquially called the Kings books, a somewhat ambiguous term. In 1534, King Henry parted with the Pope and the Catholic religion and by the Act of Supremacy made himself the supreme head of the

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Chri ...

in his lands. One of his first actions in his new role was to impose

taxes A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed on a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures (regional, local, o ...

on the clergy. Taxes traditionally paid by clerics to the Pope were now to be given to him, and Henry also decided in late 1534 to create a new annual

income tax An income tax is a tax imposed on individuals or entities (taxpayers) in respect of the income or profits earned by them (commonly called taxable income). Income tax generally is computed as the product of a tax rate times the taxable income. Ta ...

of 10% on the income from all church lands and offices. To properly assess the new tax a survey of all church property and revenues had to be made. In January 1535, the government appointed commissions throughout the country to conduct the survey. All clergymen, parish priests, heads of monasteries, colleges, hospitals and other institutions under church auspices were commanded to give sworn testimony before their local commissioners as to their income, the lands their establishments owned and the revenues they received from all other sources. The commissioners were to examine documents and account books and from these and the testimony provide a full financial statement for every religious institution. The work of collecting the information was ordered to be completed by 30 May 1535 and the results sent in to the Exchequer in London. The commissioners were unpaid and untrained, mostly local

gentry Gentry (from Old French ''genterie'', from ''gentil'', "high-born, noble") are "well-born, genteel and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past. Word similar to gentle imple and decentfamilies ''Gentry'', in its widest c ...

mayors In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilities of a mayor as well as ...

magistrates The term magistrate is used in a variety of systems of governments and laws to refer to a civilian officer who administers the law. In ancient Rome, a '' magistratus'' was one of the highest ranking government officers, and possessed both judic ...

bishops A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is ca ...

and

sheriffs A sheriff is a government official, with varying duties, existing in some countries with historical ties to England where the office originated. There is an analogous, although independently developed, office in Iceland that is commonly trans ...

, but they approached the vast task with speed and, by the summer of 1535, the government had in its hands a detailed

accounting Accounting, also known as accountancy, is the measurement, processing, and communication of financial and non financial information about economic entities such as businesses and corporations. Accounting, which has been called the "languag ...

of the property and wealth of the church. Most of their work survives, preserved in 22

volumes and three folders at

The National Archives National archives are central archives maintained by countries. This article contains a list of national archives. Among its more important tasks are to ensure the accessibility and preservation of the information produced by governments, both ...

in Kew. Two of the volumes are

illuminated manuscript An illuminated manuscript is a formally prepared document where the text is often supplemented with flourishes such as borders and miniature illustrations. Often used in the Roman Catholic Church for prayers, liturgical services and psalms, th ...

s and seem to be a summary made for King Henry's personal use.

Accuracy

The commissioners had no particular reason to be partial to the clergy and they applied themselves to the task with much diligence. Where the figures can be checked, for example against the financial records of the king's officials in charge of dissolving monasteries in the later 1530s, they are shown to be broadly accurate though on the low side, in some cases by as much as 15%. There is, particularly in the north, a tendency to underestimate the value of some important classes of asset, especially agricultural land held in desmesne and

woodland A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with trees, or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the '' plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade (see ...

with standing timber. One theory to account for this is the natural tendency of taxpayers to make conservative estimates combined with the rushed nature of the work, which encouraged the commissioners to give the benefit of the doubt. Standing timber moreover, by its nature, provides a resource of occasional exceptional income, rather than a steady annual income stream, and hence was commonly ignored in income assessments for 16th century inventories of landed assets. In a few instances the discrepancy is of so large a scale as to suggest deliberate fraud in the returns in the ''Valor Ecclesiasticus''; as was the case for example of Norton Priory in

Cheshire Cheshire ( ) is a ceremonial and historic county in North West England, bordered by Wales to the west, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south. Cheshire's county tow ...

, where the submitted figure was so low as to render the abbey liable for suppression under the first (1536) statute for the dissolution of lesser religious houses.

Significance

The ''Valor'' gave the government for the first time a solid understanding of the scale of the wealth of the church as a whole and particularly of the monasteries. It was not long before King Henry began planning ways of seizing much of these riches for himself, starting with the smaller religious houses. Figures from the ''Valor'' were a vital part of the process of the

Suppression of Religious Houses Act 1535 The Suppression of Religious Houses Act 1535 ( 27 Hen 8 c 28; 1536 in modern dating), also referred to as the Act for the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries and as the Dissolution of Lesser Monasteries Act, was an Act of the Parliament of ...

, Henry's first move in the dissolution of the monasteries, which dissolved all monasteries with a declared income of less than £200 per year. The ''Valor'' is a document of the first importance for historians of the later mediæval and Tudor church, the

English Reformation The English Reformation took place in 16th-century England when the Church of England broke away from the authority of the pope and the Catholic Church. These events were part of the wider European Protestant Reformation, a religious and poli ...

, and the Dissolution. It is also valuable to economic historians of the period.

Bibliography and references

*''Abbeys and Priories in England and Wales'', Bryan Little, Batsford 1979 *''The Abbeys and Priories of Medieval England'', Colin Platt, Secker & Warburg 1984 *''Bare Ruined Choirs'', David Knowles, Cambridge University Press 1959

External links

Title page of the ''Valor'' from the National Archives showing King Henry VIII
Anglicanism English Reformation Dissolution of the Monasteries 1535 in Ireland 1535 in England Economic history of Ireland Economic history of England Collection of The National Archives (United Kingdom)