Less crafty but scarcely less efficient than the untiring Legh was his brutal colleague Layton. The Sussex monasteries which he visited in October, 1535, were so unfortunate as to incur his particular displeasure. He does not appear to have troubled himself, like Legh, with devising means to make the monks accuse one another: he reported everything to head quarters on his own responsibility, and wrote to Cromwell how at one place he found the abbot the ‘varaste hayne betle and buserde and the aranttes chorle’ he ever saw, while at another he swore that his master would scarcely believe ‘quanta sit spurcities.’ He concluded with two philosophic reflections that ‘sacerdotes omnes non creati ex natura angelica, sed humana,’ and ‘that the blake sort of dyvelisshe monkes ... be paste amendment[398].’ He possibly bore a personal grudge against these southern houses; at least this seems a likely explanation of the fact that later investigation showed them to be no worse than ordinary, and especially popular with their neighbours[399]. Layton, however, found willing listeners to his accusations in the King and Cromwell, and a commission was sent down to confiscate the property of the monasteries of Dover, Langdon, and Folkestone, and to take the surrender of these houses into the King’s hands. It was the first step of the great devastation which was to ensue during the following four years. The next scene of the visitors’ operations was in the northern counties. Early in 1535 Layton had taken occasion to inform Cromwell that he and Legh were particularly competent to carry on the work there. ‘Ther ys nother monasterie, selle, priorie, nor any other religiouse howse in the north,’ he wrote, ‘but other doctor Lee or I have familier acqwayntance within x or xii mylles of hit.... We knowe and have experiens bothe of the fassion off the contre and the rudenes of the pepull ... ther is matter sufficient to detecte and opyn all coloryde sanctitie, all supersticiouse rewlles of pretensyde religion, and other abusys detestable of all sorttes[400].’ Cromwell certainly had no reason to be dissatisfied with the results which his agents had already accomplished, and doubtless welcomed their zeal to continue their labours in a new field. With most astounding rapidity the visitation was carried through: all the houses in the north had been reported on by the end of February. There was certainly an object in having the work completed so quickly, for Parliament had already met, and was prepared to take action on the ‘comperta’ or catalogue of offences sent in by Cromwell’s agents. The extraordinary hurry in which the latter part of their task was accomplished, and the suspicious uniformity of the offences reported, furnish a last and most cogent reason for doubting the truth of the statements of the visitors. There must of course have been some immorality in the monasteries: the abbots and heads of houses were