Is it true that Anne Boleyn wanted to use the monasteries money to do charity and education? Thanks, Claire!
Yes, that is true. I've actually just done lots of research on this topic for our Anne Boleyn Fellowship webinar! Anyway, Anne's almoner John Skip preached on Passion Sunday 1536 advising the King to "reject the lure of personal gain” and ordered her chaplain, Hugh Latimer, preach “to dissuade the utter subversion of the said houses and to induce the kinges grace to the mynde to converte them to some better use.” Latimer preached in front of the King and based his sermon on Luke 20 verses 9-16, the parable of the vineyard. Latimer, and Anne through him, were saying that instead of dissolving the monasteries, the King could “converte the abbeys and prioryes to places of studye and goode letres and to the contynuall releve of the poore.”