Page:Henry VIII and the English Monasteries.djvu/16

x tion; and this portion of the work came to an end in September when Layton and Legh arrived at Oxford and Cambridge respectively. In October and November the visitors changed the field of their labours to the Eastern and South-Eastern districts, and in December we find Layton advancing through the midland counties to Lichfield, where he met Legh, who had finished Huntingdon and Lincolnshire. Thence they proceeded together to the North, and York was reached on 11th, January, 1536. But with all their haste, to which they were urged by Crumwell, they had not got very far forward in their northern work before the meeting of Parliament.

From time to time whilst on their work of inspection, the visitors, and principally London and Legh, sent brief written reports to their employer. Practically all the accusations made against the good name of the monks and nuns are contained in the letters sent in this way, and in the document or documents known as the Comperta Monastica, drawn up at the time by the same visitors and forwarded with their letters to their chief, Crumwell. No other evidence as to the state of the monasteries is forthcoming, and the inquirer is driven back ultimately upon the worth of these visitors' words. It is easy, I know, to dismiss inconvenient witnesses as being unworthy of credit, but in this case a study of these letters and documents will be quite sufficient, I believe, to cast considerable doubt upon their testimony; and an examination into their subsequent careers will more than justify the rejection of their testimony as wholly unworthy of belief.

The general method of procedure was probably much the same in each case. The visitors were furnished with eighty-six articles of inquiry and with five-and-twenty injunctions, to which they had power to add much at their