 In April 1539, Parliament passed a new law retrospectively legalising acts of voluntary surrender and assuring tenants of their continued rights, but by then the vast majority of monasteries in England, and Wales had already been dissolved or marked out for a future as a collegiate foundation.Some still resisted, and that autumn the abbots of Colchester, Glastonbury, and Reading were hanged, drawn and quartered for treason, their houses being dissolved and their monks, on these occasions, receiving a basic pension of £4-year.St Benet's Abbey in Norfolk was the only abbey in England which escaped formal dissolution.