Lord Cromwell was the chief minister through whose mediation these novel royal grants of houses and lands were distributed. There was evidently no chance of attention from his lordship without the most open and explicit offers of the grossest bribery. The Chancellor Audley, in bargaining with Lord Cromwell for the abbey of St. Osyth, for "some present trouble in this suit," one day sent twenty pounds, with "my poor hearty good will, during my life." Perhaps the bribe, though only placed to account, had not its full weight, as the chancellor does not appear, in the present instance, to have possessed himself of this abbey, though, afterwards, with the spoils of two rich monasteries, he built the most magnificent mansion in England, by which he perpetuated his own name in the once-famed Audley-End. Sir Thomas Elyot, in soliciting his lordship's mediation with the king to reward him with "some convenient portion of the suppressed lands," found it advisable to offer a conditional promise! "Whatsoever portion of land that I shall attain by the king's grace, I promise to give to your lordship the first year's fruits, with my assured and faithful heart and service." All were offering their hearts and the rest of their lives to Lord Cromwell. As for the regal dispenser himself, so stupendous was his portion that it became necessary to found a court never heard of before--"The Court of Augmentation," an expressive designation, indicating its plenary character, with its chancellor and its treasurer, and a long routine of officers, and none too many, "that the king might be justly dealt with," says Cowell, "the interpreter," "for all the manors and parks, the colleges and chantries, and the religious houses which the king did not sell or give away;" that is, the selected prey which the royal eagle grasped in his own talons. We are accustomed to trace the Reformation to Henry the Eighth; but in verity small are the claims of this sovereign on posterity, for through all the multiplied ramifications of superstition, nothing under him was reformed. The other great event of the Reformation--the assumption of the spiritual supremacy--accorded with the national independence from a foreign jurisdiction. The policy was English; but it originated in the private passions of the monarch. Assuredly, had the tiara deigned to nod to the regal solicitor, then had "the Defender of the Faith" only given to the world another edition of his book against Luther.