The 200 houses of 

friars in England and Wales constituted a second distinct wave of foundations,

almost all occurring in the 13th century. Friaries, for the most part, were concentrated in urban
areas. Unlike monasteries, friaries had eschewed income-bearing endowments; the friars,
as mendicants, expected to be supported financially by offerings and donations from the faithful,
while ideally being self-sufficient in producing their own basic foods from extensive urban kitchen
gardens.[citation needed]
The Dissolution of the Monasteries in England and Ireland took place in the political context of other
attacks on the ecclesiastical institutions of Western Roman Catholicism, which had been under way
for some time. Many of these were related to the Protestant Reformation in Continental Europe. By
the end of the 16th century, monasticism had almost entirely disappeared from those European
states whose rulers had adopted Lutheran or Reformed confessions of faith (Ireland being the only
major exception). They continued in those states that remained Catholic, and new community orders
such as the Jesuits and Capuchins emerged alongside the older orders. [5]
But, the religious and political changes in England under Henry VIII and Edward VI were of a
different nature from those taking place in Germany, Bohemia, France, Scotland and Geneva.
Across much of continental Europe, the seizure of monastic property was associated with mass
discontent among the common people and the lower level of clergy and civil society against powerful
and wealthy ecclesiastical institutions. Such popular hostility against the church was rare in England
before 1558; the Reformation in England and Ireland was directed from the king and highest levels
of society. These changes were initially met with widespread popular suspicion; on some occasions
and in particular localities, there was active resistance to the royal program.