The main excuse for this step in the general suppression was the report of Cromwell’s visitors as to the condition of the monasteries. This was the infamous _Comperta_, a pestiferous document of unrivalled mendacity and malignity, which for three-and-a-half centuries surrounded the memory of the latter days of England’s religious with a miasma of noxious effluvia. If any unscrupulous or hasty controversialist desires to think evil of monks and nuns, he will herein find a surfeit of garbage. But with the printing of the Domestic State Papers, and the revelations therein afforded of the character of the visitors as displayed in their own letters, the falsity of most of their statements has been manifested beyond gainsaying. Dr. Gairdner’s cool judgment in editing the official Letters and Papers of Henry VIII.’s reign gave the first definite blow to the possibility of placing any reliance on the _Comperta_ documents, as they are flatly contradicted in so many places, and are obviously incredible in others. Abbot Gasquet has further exposed their worthlessness after a masterly and searching fashion; but it has been reserved for scholarly members of the Anglican communion, such as the late Canon Dixon and Dr. Jessopp, to denounce the authors of the monastic Black Book in terms of extraordinary but justifiable severity. In short, it would not be possible for anyone of a decently-balanced mind--we care not whether he is English Catholic, of the Roman obedience, nonconformist, or agnostic--to make a careful documentary study of the times of the suppression of the monasteries of this country, without rising from the task with a feeling of almost unqualified disgust for the actual visitors, and of indignation with a king and a minister who could use such miscreants as their tools. “When the Inquisitors of Henry VIII. and his Vicar-General, Cromwell,” writes Dr. Jessopp, “went on their tours of Visitation, they were men who had 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 anyone 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--6 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, or were the accused even intended to be put upon their trial.”