The last abbot of Malmesbury and twenty-one other monks were dismissed and granted pensions in December 1539. It took a little while for this information to reach all interested parties. Following the sale of the borough of Malmesbury to the Abbey in 1215, it was the tradition for the next three centuries to grant the feudal tax, the fee farm of £20, to the queen of England. When in January 1540 lawyers drew up the marriage contract between Henry VIII and Anne of Cleeves they specified that the new queen was entitled to the Malmesbury fee farm and that it was the responsibility of ‘the abbot and convent of Malmesbury’ to collect and pay this money. The lawyers had failed to notice that the Abbey no longer existed. By the time of the marriage of the king and Anne, the monks were scattered to the winds and we know nothing about their subsequent careers, apart from two exceptions: Anthony Malmesbury obtained a post as a chantry priest at Frampton's Chantry in the church of St John ‘on the Wall’ in Bristol and Richard Ashton became curate of the parish of Churcham near Gloucester. These were junior clerical positions. Anthony Malmesbury was paid only £3 a year as a chantry priest, and he lost this post in 1548 when the chantry foundations across England were suppressed. By 1553 only seven former monks were alive and still receiving pensions: Walter Stacye, Richard Ashton, Thomas Frocester and Thomas Stanley who were by then married and Walter Sutton, Anthony Malmesbury and John Horsley who remained unmarried. Some of these survivors can be identified as having been present during the scandalous visitation of 1527 and one had been a prominent ‘rebel’: Richard Ashton, who later became the curate of Churcham, had been accused of taking off his monastic habit on several occasions, donning secular clothes and consorting with prostitutes.

The fate of the Abbey property after the Dissolution was complex. The landed estate was broken up and sold off to different purchasers, who were a mix of courtiers of national standing and local people. Thus, Sir Edmund Bridges, Baron Chandos, acquired Purton, John Dudley, duke of Northumberland, obtained Brokenborough and John de Vere, earl of Oxford, bought Crudwell, while Garsdon, Lea and Cleverton manors were purchased by the Moody family from Malmesbury and the local clothier, William Stumpe acquired Brinkworth.