The surrender of England's last monastery, Waltham Abbey, on 23 March 1540 marked the end of medieval English monasticism but not of the crown's attack on the possessions of the English church. On the contrary: it marked the end of only the first phase thereof.

From 1540 to 1553 the campaign developed in five new directions. First, bishops found themselves often entering into unfavourable ‘exchanges’ with the crown which resulted, in particular, in parting with London houses and choice rural manors. Next, there was intermittent pruning of the resources of cathedrals, i.e. their deans and chapters, by similar methods. The cathedrals concerned were those which, like Exeter, Lincoln and London, had always had secular chapters, as well as those which had previously been served by monastic communities, an arrangement almost unique to England. Of these, the two that had been ‘twinned’ with secular cathedrals (Bath with Wells, Coventry with Lichfield) had already been suppressed and their churches seized. But there were eight others (Canterbury, Durham, Ely and Worcester among them) that were formerly staffed by monks and were refounded in 1540/1 as secular cathedrals – though with considerably less landed endowment than their Benedictine or Augustinian forebears had enjoyed. These, too, were thereafter liable to further depletion of income at royal hands. So were the six quite new bishoprics of Bristol, Chester, Gloucester, Oxford, Peterborough and Westminster which, between 1541 and 1543, had been granted ex-Benedictine abbey churches to serve as cathedrals of the new sees carved out of existing dioceses, notably Lincoln.