Episode 151: Sick to Death
The History of English Podcast
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The Dissolution of the Monasteries
The dissolution of the monasteries is also very important to our story because of what happened to the libraries in those buildings. In many cases those books contained the only surviving copy of Old English poems and early pieces of literature. But now, in the late 1530s, those libraries were raided and most of those books were lost forever. Only six of Worcester Priory's 600 books are known to exist today. And the Abbey of the Augustinian Friars at York had 646 books when it was dissolved. Today only three of those books survive.
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