the Abbey an additional couple of years before it was dissolved. But the recently appointed Abbot William Flatbury, installed at the insistence of the Duke of Norfolk, apparently was prevailed upon by the Duke and by Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex, to hasten the Dissolution, and yield the jewel to those in Royal favour. The engineering of Flatbury's appointment, according to a contemporaneous observer, had been done with the "connivance of Cromwell on purpose to bring about a speedy surrender." In 1536 the Abbey with all its appurtenances was transferred by deed by the abbot and brethren to Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, and to Anthony Rous his marshal and Nicholas Hare. The Duke subsequently sold the Abbey again to Thomas Godsalve, who in turn sold it to Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk. Post-Dissolution In 1610 the Abbey and Manor were sold to John Scrivener, son of Ralph Scrivener, an Ipswich barrister grown rich in the wool trade, and the family built an estate nearby. John Scrivener's brother Matthew was an early Governor of the Virginia Colony, where he drowned in 1609. John Scrivener's sister Elizabeth was married to Harbottle Wingfield of Crowfield Hall, Suffolk, cousin of Edward Maria Wingfield, the first President of the Jamestown Colony. John Scrivener's son, Thomas Scrivener Esq., married Mary Bedingfield, only daughter and heir of William Bedingfield, of Fressingfield, Suffolk and a relation of Sir Henry Bedingfield. The two conspicuous rows of joist holes cut into the great archway of the eastern refectory wall are intended to support an upper floor or gallery, probably inserted after the suppression when the building was converted to secular uses. Today Today Sibton Abbey is a picturesque ruin, largely overgrown, with the refectory and the south wall of the nave still visible but subject to modern repairs. The Abbey and the Manor remain in the hands of the Scrivener heirs, today's Levett-Scrivener family, and the ruins are private. Many of the cartularies of the old Abbey were transferred to the East Suffolk Record Office by J.E. Levett-Scrivener Esq., who also transferred some of the Abbey's early medieval music. In centuries past, the Levett-Scrivener family sometimes made the ruins available to county historical societies and historians. The Abbey ruins are a scheduled monument. The site is not open to the public. References External links Cistercian Abbeys: Sibton Cistercian monasteries in England Ruins in Suffolk Monasteries in