my sister’s, now fatherless and motherless, I am forced to show the truth.”[168] Other petitions had flowed in, and gradually matters were arranged. Some houses were granted as they stood, sites, buildings, furniture and other contents, stores, animals, farm implements, etc., to a single recipient in return for a single money payment. No doubt influential petitioners like Bishop Roland Lee and Lord Derby (who obtained Dieulacres) met with less rivalry than more obscure suitors who made efforts for the smaller houses. There appears to have been keen competition for the little nunnery at Brewood. When the houses and belongings were to be sold _en bloc_, Dr. Legh, with whom went William Cavendish as auditor, appears to have had the management, while Scudamore conducted the business where other arrangements had been made, and the contents of the houses were sold by public auction. The religious houses found that their attempts to secure a further lease of life for themselves by authorized payments to the Royal Treasury, or by irregular bribes to Cromwell and his friends, had all failed. The large fines recently paid served to prolong the houses for a twelvemonth only, and as the autumn of 1538 drew on the news probably reached all the houses that they were doomed. The harvest having been safely gathered in by the monks, in accordance with the royal injunctions, the royal agents began to close round them once more, and the last agony began. John Scudamore was appointed “Receiver-General unto the King’s Majesty of the dissolved possessions” in Staffordshire and elsewhere. He received his authorization on August 23rd, 1538, from Sir Richard Riche, the Solicitor-General and Chancellor of Augmentations. His instructions were to survey all the lands of surrendered houses and to make a return of their yearly value, with such pensions and corrodies, etc., as they might be burdened with. The bells and superfluous houses were to be sold, and the lead melted into “plokes” and sows and marked with the Royal mark, and delivered under indenture to the constables of neighbouring castles.[169] On September 27th, the goods of both houses at Stafford were sold, on October 4th the friary at Lichfield, on the 15th Scudamore was at Croxden, and next day at Rocester; on the 21st he was at Hulton. The details of all these sales are extant and are full of interest. The sales were evidently conducted in a most wasteful way, as Robert Burgoyne, who acted as auditor at the sales at Stafford, testified. He told Scudamore, “I have sold in some ffrire houses all the buyldynges, the cause was for that they were so spoyled and torne by suche as sold the goodes, that in manner they were downe, and yff they shuld nott have ben sold, the kyng shuld have hadd nothyng theroff.”[170]