To carry out so huge a task in so short a time was to ensure much superficial work. It is true that the business habits of Englishmen and the bureaucratic nature of the Tudor administration, and the large number of lay officials, bailiffs, stewards, collectors, etc., in the employ of the monasteries, made the investigation easier than might otherwise have been the case. But even so there must have been many difficulties. We find in the returns ample evidence that through haste but little was done in the way of checking entries and balancing accounts. In the returns from Rocester Abbey the expenditure is given in four groups, each with its correct total. But the addition of the four totals is £1 too little. In the case of Stone Priory the “spiritual” balance is given as £68, etc., whereas it should be £59, etc., a difference of £9. But the tithe paid is correct for £119 14s. 11¼d., which is exactly £9 more than the real sum of the temporal and spiritual balances as these are shown. The official probably intended to write the spiritual balance as £lviiii, but when he came to make his final addition he read it as £lxviii, a mistake not difficult to make. Other mistakes of a similar nature will be noticed. No doubt it was difficult to compare and check the returns from different dioceses, as they came in at different times; and the omissions, from the stated incomes of monasteries, of items which elsewhere are noted as being paid to them, are probably due rather to deliberate concealment on the part of the monks than to any grave slackness on the part of the Commissioners. For instance, £2 3s. is noted in the valuation of the churches of Berkswick, Bushbury and Weston, as being paid to Stone Priory, but no trace of it appears in the monastic return. But it is remarkable that in the valuation of Dudley Priory no mention is made of the 10s. from Dudley Vicarage, or in that of Trentham Priory of the 6s. 8d. from Hulton Abbey, a few miles away, and the valuation of which immediately precedes it. The £4 6s. 8d. given in the valuation of Rocester Abbey as being paid to a chantry at Lichfield does not appear in the Cathedral valuation. The remarkable omissions in the Burton investigation will be dealt with fully later on. Again, many of the valuations could only be approximations: such were the returns made of offerings and payments in kind, and of the demesnes. It is, indeed, distinctly stated, as a rule, that the value of the demesne is given “according to the valuation of the Commissioners” or of one of them: Walter Wrottesley estimated the demesne at Dudley. Sometimes they called in assistance, possibly that of experts, or perhaps of local men, as happened at Rocester.