Although the English Benedictines had been dissolved by Henry VIII in the 1530s, one solitary monastery was re-established in Westminster Abbey by the Roman Catholic Queen, Mary I of England, 20 years later.
[2] Buckley survived until the reign of James I, by which time a number of Englishmen had become Benedictines in the monasteries of Italy and Spain and had obtained a faculty from Pope Clement VIII (in 1602) to take part with the secular clergy and the Jesuits in the English mission.
It was through the efforts of the English monks of the Cassinese or Italian Congregation (including Thomas Preston) that Buckley became instrumental in preserving monastic continuity in England.
[3] It is through Buckley that the English Benedictine Congregation lays claim to an unbroken continuity with the pre-Reformation monasticism of England.
And I do receive and admit as monks, brethren, lay-brethren, oblates of the said monastery and to them do grant, impart and assign all rights, privileges, as above, all those whom D. Thomas Preston of Shropshire, D. Augustine [Smith] and D. Anselm [Beech] Lancastrians, and D. Maurus [Taylor] of Ely have admitted or received as monks, lay-brethren, oblates, and to whom they have granted the rights, &c, as above: since to them I did grant authority and power so to admit, &c, as appeareth more at large in my letters of the 21st November 1607: the which [letters] as to all and each of their parts I do by virtue of these presents hold ratified and confirmed, and will so hold them in perpetuum.