Effects on public life[edit]

Main article: List of English abbeys, priories and friaries serving as parish churches
The surrender of monastic endowments was recognised automatically as terminating all regular
religious observance by its members, except in the case of a few communities, such as Syon, who
went into exile. There are several recorded instances where groups of former members of a house
set up residence together, but no cases where an entire community did so; and there is no indication
that any such groups continued to pray the Divine Office. The dissolution Acts were concerned
solely with the disposal of endowed property, at no point do they explicitly forbid the continuance of a
regular life. However, given Henry's attitude to those religious who resumed their houses during the
Pilgrimage of Grace, it would have been most unwise of any former community of monks or nuns
within his dominions to have maintained covert monastic observance