Although few of the Franciscan houses in 1536 could have boasted of an income of more than £200 a year, they were not affected by the first act for the suppression of the monasteries, which was designed to close down all religious houses whose incomes were less than this figure. There are probably two reasons why the friars were excluded in 1536. One is that the first act was not designed to destroy the religious life, but to reduce the number of religious houses. There were at the time several hundred small monastic communities, often comprising only a handful of men or women, and it was thought advisable to close these houses and to give their inmates the choice between ‘taking their capacities’ (which meant seeking secular occupation) or going to swell the depleted numbers in the larger monasteries. As the numbers in the friaries were much more even than in the older monasteries, there was no clear distinction to be drawn between the ‘greater’ and the ‘lesser’ houses, nor was the number of friaries great enough to demand a reduction. Moreover, although the act of 1536 laid stress on the decay of the smaller houses and on their redundancy, there is no doubt that the King had an eye on their estates, which were often out of proportion to the number of men whom they were intended to support.