The larger monasteries had been falling into the king's hands by voluntary surrender ever since 1536; a new visitation and a new Act for the dissolution [Sidenote: 1539] of the greater monasteries completed the process.
[Sidenote: War on relics] An iconoclastic war was now begun not, as in other countries, by the mob, but by the government.

Relics like the Blood of Hailes were destroyed, and the Rood of Boxley, a crucifix mechanically contrived so that the priests made it nod and smile or shake its head and frown according to the liberality of its worshipper, was taken down and the mechanism exposed in various places.

At Walsingham in Norfolk was a nodding image of the Virgin, a bottle of her milk, still liquid, and a knuckle of St.Peter.

The shrine, ranking though it did with Loretto and Compostella in popular veneration, was now destroyed.

With much zest the government next attacked the shrine of St.Thomas Becket at Canterbury, thus revenging the humiliation of another Henry at the hands of the church.