glastonwells19 An Elegant and Distinguished Mansion By 1907, Glastonbury Abbey was but a "Magnificent and Historic Ruin" in the grounds of Abbey House, an "elegant and distinguished" Gothic mansion built to the East of the great church. The dissolution of the monastery in 1539 brought an abrupt end to around 1,000 years of Christian worship on the abbey site. It was done by Act of Parliament, part of King Henry VIII's plan to bring the whole Church under government control and to make as much money as possible. Earlier Acts of Parliament had given the king all the power he needed for a legal takeover of all the monasteries in the land. Government agents, encouraged to seek out (or even manufacture) evidence of failure or malpractice, had created an atmosphere highly critical of the life within monasteries. In the face of all these problems all the abbots and abbesses thought it preferable to surrender voluntarily to the king and take the often very generous pension offered. The Abbot of Glastonbury, Richard Whyting, refused to surrender his monastery voluntarily to the king. The king's agents came to Glastonbury in September 1539 to find evidence of this treasonable behavior. "... there of now, we proceeded that night to search his study for letters and books; and found in his study secretly laid, as well a written book of arguments against the divorce of the King's majesty and the lady dowager, ...as also divers pardons, copies of bills, and the counterfeit life Thomas a Becket in print." "We have daily found ... both money and plate, hid and mured up in walls, vaults and other secret places, as well as by the abbot and others of the convent," Excerpts from Letters from the King's Commissioners to Thomas Cromwell, King Henry VIII's principle secretary and architect of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, September 1539. Richard Whyting was arrested and charged with treason and burglary. He was tried at Wells and found guilty of stealing his own church's plate. He was executed on the Tor, overlooking the now deserted abbey and the vast tracts of the Somerset landscape which had once belonged to the monks. "The late abbot of Glastonbury went from Wells to Glastonbury, and there was drawn through the town upon a hurdle to the hill called Tor, where he was put to execution." "... the said abbot's body being divided into four parts, and the head stricken off; whereof one quarter standeth at Wells, another at Bath, and at Ilchester and Bridgwater the rest, and his head upon the abbey gate at Glastonbury." Excerpts from Letters from the King's Commissioners to Thomas Cromwell, November 1539