the preamble to the Act that in the larger monasteries "religion was
right well kept and observed," and that it was only in the smaller
houses with less than twelve members that disorder and corruption
existed, whereas in the reports of the commissioners no such
distinction is observed, the charges being levelled just as strongly
against the larger as against the smaller communities. Had Parliament
been in possession of the reports or had there been any adequate
discussion, it is difficult to see how such an arbitrary distinction,
founded neither on the nature of things, nor on the findings of the
commissioners, could have been allowed to pass. It is noteworthy too
that many of the individuals, whose names were associated in the
/Comperta/ with very serious crimes, were placed in the possession of
pensions on the dissolution of the monasteries, and some of them were
promoted to the highest ecclesiastical offices in the gift of the
crown.

Besides, if the reports of Leigh and Leyton be compared with the
episcopal visitations of the same houses or with those of the royal
visitors appointed in 1536 to carry out the suppression of the smaller
monasteries, it will be found that in regard to the very same houses
there exists a very open contradiction between their findings.
Unfortunately the accounts of the visitations have disappeared to a
great extent except in case of the diocese of Norwich. In this diocese
the visitations were carried out very strictly and very minutely, and
although some abuses were detected the bishop could find nothing of
the wholesale corruption and immorality discovered a few years later
by the minions of Cromwell. Similarly the commission appointed in 1536
to superintend the suppression decreed in that year, the members of
which were drawn from the leading men in each county, report in the
highest terms of houses which were spoken of as hot-beds of iniquity