To act upon the evidence of the visitors was among the latest work of the Reformation Parliament. Its last, and by no means least, important session began on February 4th, 1536. To this session William Edie, the recently-elected Abbot of Burton, was summoned[127] in order to strengthen Cromwell’s party in the House of Lords. No attempt appears to have been made to sift the evidence alleged against the monasteries, but it was worked up with appropriate embellishments into the preamble of an Act which was passed in March, and which transferred to the King all religious houses of the annual value of less than £200 a year, referring to the Returns which had recently been “certified unto the King’s Exchequer” as providing the data by which the houses which were affected were to be ascertained (Article 7). These were the Returns, known as _Valor Ecclesiasticus_, which have been already examined in detail. Such evidence of abuses as is extant by no means allows us to draw such an arbitrary line and to say that the lesser houses were blameworthy and the greater innocent. Yet that is what the Act did, making it more emphatic by pointing to the contrast between the “manifest sin, vicious, carnal, and abominable living” in the houses to be dissolved, and the character of “divers great and solemn monasteries of the realm, wherein, thanks be to God, religion is right well kept and observed.” Indeed, as a matter of fact, the evidence which remains points rather the other way. Many of the great monasteries were certainly visited, and it was seldom indeed that such men as Layton and Legh could not find something scandalous. In no case in Staffordshire is there any extant evidence of abuses. If the Staffordshire houses were reported on, either the documents have perished or they have not yet been brought to light. The houses in Staffordshire included under the Act were Tutbury, Rocester, Croxden, Brewood Nunnery, Hulton, Trentham, Stafford (St. Thomas the Martyr), Stone, and Ronton. With these was classed St. Mary Broke, Rutland, and the total value is given as £976 5s. 3¾d.[128] The value, according to _Valor Ecclesiasticus_, was £975 13s. 9¾d.