tethe[425].’ It appears that London himself wrote to Cromwell the day after to beg him to favour the abbess and her sisters[426]. Did he perhaps feel that he had gone too far, or are we to infer that his usual methods were even more brutal than this? And thus the work was finished. Within five years of the time that the first visitation of the monasteries had begun, a complete devastation of all the religious houses had been accomplished, and a torrent of wealth had been poured in upon the Crown, ‘such,’ says Hallam, ‘as has seldom been equalled in any country, by the confiscations following a subdued rebellion[427].’ The suppression which included the larger houses was evidently a far greater financial success than the first. A new device for gaining revenue had been invented, and put in operation during the last few years. It consisted in imposing a fine on every place in which a religious house had existed, ‘for the toleracyon and contynuaunce of the monastery ther[428]’; an ingenious device, which yielded a most substantial income. ‘The King had then in his hand,’ says Burnet, ‘the greatest opportunity of making royal and noble foundations that ever King of England had. But whether out of policy, to give a general content to the gentry by selling to them at low rates, or out of easiness to his courtiers, or out of an unmeasured lavishness of expense, it came far short of what he had given out he would do.... He designed to convert £18,000 into a revenue for eighteen bishoprics and cathedrals. But of these he only erected six.... Great sums were indeed laid out on building and fortifying many ports in the Channel, and other parts of England[429].’