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illness, unemployment or debt, any of which could turn modest prosperity into indigence overnight. The quality of life, moreover, depended upon more than mere material sufficiency. The greatest challenge of the towns, throughout the length of our period (and indeed well beyond it), was to create a viable and satisfying human life for crowded communities of diverse origins and resources. A generalisation which can be ventured
the suppression of this medium-sized priory of Augustinian canons in Suffolk, it reflects the Tudor government’s concern (manifested in the 1536 Act for the Suppression of the Lesser Monasteries) that widespread unemployment should not result from the closure of religious houses. For other material on monastic employment, see for example 6 , 7