The _Valor Ecclesiasticus_, therefore, cannot be regarded as a complete statement of the monastic income. Its deficiencies as regards expenditure are still more grave. Only certain disbursements were allowed to be taken into account--regular pensions, rents, endowed doles, and fees to bailiffs, collectors of rents, etc., auditors, and stewards, episcopal visitation fees, synodals and proxies. The statute had allowed other fees also to be deducted, such as those to the Chancellor and Judges, but the instructions to the Commissioners omitted these, and they are usually disallowed. The object of the investigation being to show as large a net balance of income as possible, disbursements were reduced to a minimum. Only those which could not be avoided were shown, and because any particular item of expenditure is not shown in any particular return we cannot assert with confidence that it was actually not incurred. Only two corrodies are recorded in the whole of Staffordshire, and alms at Burton, Rocester and Tutbury only, yet we know that Dieulacres maintained eight poor bedeswomen. The investigation was a contest between the two parties--the Commissioners, whose primary object was to make the income as large and the expenditure as small as possible, and the monks who naturally desired to reverse the proportion. The result was that there were serious omissions on both sides of the account, and the _Valor Ecclesiasticus_ is, accordingly, a very incomplete statement of the accounts of the religious houses. The omissions as regards income are many, but the information as to expenditure can only be described as altogether inadequate and incomplete. The Commissioners were not allowed to show much expenditure, even if they wished to do so: it was easy for them to allow little if they so desired. Under the direction of Bishop Lee it may safely be assumed that in Staffordshire they allowed the barest minimum. The fictitious character of the expenditure side of the account is well illustrated by the case of Burton-on-Trent. When, as will be described later,[64] the valuation sent in by the Commissioners was found to be hopelessly erroneous, and a revised statement was drawn up by the order of the Chancellor, Sir Thomas Audley, which increased the revenue from £356 16s. 3½d. to £501 7s. 0½d., the expenditure was, apparently, not re-investigated. In face of the enormous increase of income which had been shown the Chancellor could well afford to spare himself the trouble of enquiring whether the statement of expenses needed revising: he treated it with scornful indifference and passed it with the contemptuous remark at the foot of the more profitable survey: “Mem. to deducte owte of thys boke ye allowaunces accordinge to ye olde boke.”