Crumwell," he writes, "went on their tours of visitation, they were men who had no experience of the ordinary forms of inquiry which had hitherto been in use. They called themselves visitors; they were, in effect, mere hired detectives of the very vilest stamp, who came to levy blackmail, and, if possible, to find some excuse for their robberies by vilifying their victims. In all the Comperta which have come down to us there is not, if I remember rightly, a single instance of any report or complaint having been made to the visitors from any one outside. The enormities set down against the poor people accused of them, are said to have been confessed by themselves against themselves. In other words, the Comperta of 1535- 1536 can only be received as the horrible inventions of the miserable men who wrote them down upon their papers, well knowing that, as in no case could the charges be supported, so, on the other hand, in no case could they be met, nor were the accused even intended to be put upon their trial."
The details of the Visitation may be read in this volume, and I pass to the second step in the dissolution of the monasteries. Parliament met on 4th February, 1536, and the chief business it was called upon to transact was the scheme of suppressing the smaller religious houses. What happened to induce it to consent to the measure is well known: or rather the account to be found in most of our history books is well known. The fact is that this tale has so often been told and retold that there is probably no incident in our history so universally accepted: even, I may perhaps be allowed to add, as there is none that rests upon so slender a basis of fact. The story, for example, as told in Green's History of the English People, may be taken as a fairly accurate statement of what is com-
