The first round of suppressions initially aroused considerable popular discontent, especially in

Lincolnshire and Yorkshire where they contributed to the Pilgrimage of Grace of 1536, an event
which led to Henry increasingly associating monasticism with betrayal, as some of the spared
religious houses in the north of England (more or less willingly) sided with the rebels, while former
monks resumed religious life in several of the suppressed houses. Clauses within the Treasons Act
1534 provided that the property of those convicted of treason would automatically revert to the
Crown, clauses that Cromwell had presciently drafted with the intention of effecting the dissolution of
religious houses whose heads were so convicted, arguing that the superior of the house (abbot,
abbess, prior or prioress) was the legal "owner" of all its monastic property. The wording of the First
Suppression Act had been clear that reform, not outright abolition of monastic life, was being
presented to the public as the objective of the legislative policy; and there has been continuing
academic debate as to whether a universal dissolution was nevertheless being covertly prepared for
at this point.