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'Laws annexing ecclesiastical first fruits and tenths to the king necessitated "Commissioners of the Tenth" being appointed throughout the country to establish all church wealth in England and Wales. This survey, undertaken in the spring and summer of 1535, resulted in the Valor Ecclesiasticus  records, used as a basis for clerical taxation'. A central debate in the mind of Henry VIII was about the revenue of Church and the contributions it should make to the State. In a highly charged Reformation setting, the King could hardly demand the Annates, Peter's Pence, and Indulgence Sales, that had previously gone to the Pope in Rome. The language had to be changed at least.  Henry did not want to halt the river of money. He wanted to divert the income stream to his own treasury. But for that he needed new names and Protestant methods.  The mechanism devised by his Secretary, Thomas Cromwell, was contained in  26 Henry VIII, c. 3  (1534). This was "An Act concernin...

  The Act of Supremacy  in 1534 gave Henry VIII extraordinary powers. As Supreme Head of the Church of England the king was entitled to reform it in any way he thought necessary "and from time to time correct errors and enormities in the Church, by visitations or otherwise". His newly appointed Vicar-General, Thomas Cromwell, took this responsibility seriously. Cromwell charged a number of men as "royal visitors" and sent them out to survey and assess the moral health of all monasteries and nunneries throughout England and Wales. Clergyman Richard Layton, lawyer Thomas Legh, and notary clerk William Blyth, conducted the Northern Visitation over two months in early 1536. Their work informed the last part of the damning Compendium Compertorum , which was published to Parliament in time to promote the passing of  An Act for the Suppression of Lesser Monasteries. The Visitors understood they had a reforming task at the institutions they inspected. Their benchmark for im...