among our high and ancient peers, although its origin was more
memorable than illustrious. The founder of the family had
been a confidential domestic of one of the favourites of Henry
the Eighth, and had contrived to be appointed one of the
commissioners for "visiting and taking the surrenders of
divers religious houses." It came to pass that divers of
these religious houses surrendered themselves eventually to
the use and benefit of honest Baldwin Greymount. The king was
touched with the activity and zeal of his commissioner. Not
one of them whose reports were so ample and satisfactory, who
could baffle a wily prior with more dexterity, or control a
proud abbot with more firmness. Nor were they well-digested
reports alone that were transmitted to the sovereign: they
came accompanied with many rare and curious articles, grateful
to the taste of one who was not only a religious reformer but
a dilettante; golden candlesticks and costly chalices;
sometimes a jewelled pix; fantastic spoons and patens, rings
for the fingers and the ear; occasionally a fair-written and
blazoned manuscript--suitable offering to the royal scholar.
Greymount was noticed; sent for; promoted in the household;
knighted; might doubtless have been sworn of the council, and
in due time have become a minister; but his was a discreet
ambition--of an accumulative rather than an aspiring
character. He served the king faithfully in all domestic
matters that required an unimpassioned, unscrupulous agent;
fashioned his creed and conscience according to the royal
model in all its freaks; seized the right moment to get sundry
grants of abbey lands, and contrived in that dangerous age to
save both his head and his estate.