This is a paperback edition of a classic work: David Knowles' abridgement of Volume 3 of The Religious Orders in England. Opening with vignettes of monastic life in the early Tudor period, the book examines the changing economic and religious climate as a prelude to the sombre story of the Suppression. The fate of the monastic buildings and lands and of the religious themselves is described in full, and numerous engravings and photographs illuminate this account of the transition from splendour to desolation.