The precise moment and occasion of the decision to have done with all the remaining monasteries, great and small, are almost as difficult to discover as are those marking the opening of the first attack. As late as July 1537, the king was elaborately re-founding Chertsey at Bisham and the nunnery of Stixwold in Lincolnshire, in order that they might offer their prayers for himself and his queen, and a whole batch of monasteries was being given formal exemption from the Act of Suppression. Indeed, the arrangements for Bisham were not completed and registered till 18 December, and the trickle of lesser houses officially refounded ‘in perpetuity’ did not dry up till May 1538, when the nunnery of Kirklees received a patent to this effect.

Long before this, however, a new policy was developing. On 11 November 1537, the wealthy priory of Lewes was surrendered to the king. There was a long history behind this, and the prior was in a very vulnerable position, so that pressure could easily be brought to bear on him. Lewes took with it Castleacre, which duly conformed to the surrender on 22 November. A few days later the Premonstratensian abbey of Titchfield in Hampshire followed suit, at the end of a long intrigue.