But,
sadly enough, that is no serious charge against one in his times. It is
said that Henry used to say, when a knave was dealt to him in a game of
cards, "Ah, I have a Cromwell!" Francis Aidan Gasquet, a Benedictine
monk, in his valuable work on "Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries,"
says of Cromwell: "No single minister in England ever exercised such
extensive authority, none ever rose so rapidly, and no one has ever left
behind him a name covered with greater infamy and disgrace."

In 1535, Henry, as supreme head of the church, appointed Cromwell as his
"Vicegerent, Vicar-General and Principal Commissary in causes
ecclesiastical." His immediate duty was to enforce recognition of the
king's supremacy. The monks and the clergy were now to be coerced into
submission. A royal commission, consisting of Legh, Layton, Ap Rice,
London and various subordinates, was appointed to visit the monasteries
and to report on their condition.

Henry Griffin says in his chronicle: "I was well acquainted with all the
commissioners; indeed I knew them well; they were very smart men, who
understood the value of money, for they had tasted of adversity. I think
the priests were the worst of the whole party, although they had a good
reputation at the time, but they were wicked, deceitful men. I am sorry
to speak thus of my own order, but I speak God's truth." "It is a
dreadful undertaking," said Lord Clinton. "Ah! but I have great faith in
the tact and judgment of the men I am about to select,"
retorted Cromwell.

Dr. John London was a base tool of Cromwell, and a miserable exponent of
the reform movement. He joined Gardiner in burning heretics, was
convicted of adultery at Oxford, was pilloried for perjury and died in
jail. The other royal agents were also questionable characters. Dean
Layton wrote the most disgusting letters to Cromwell. Once he informed
his patron that he prayed regularly for him, prefacing this information
with the remark, "I will now tell you something to make you laugh."

Father Gasquet sums up his view of the commissioners in the words of
Edmund Burke: "It is not with much credulity that I listen to any when
they speak ill of those whom they are going to plunder. I rather suspect
that vices are feigned, or exaggerated, when profit is looked for in the
punishment--an enemy is a bad witness; a robber worse." Burke
indignantly declares: "The inquiry into the moral character of the
religious houses was a mere pret