In due course another band of royal agents was let loose upon the land to carry out the work of dissolution. The “Instructions for the King’s Commissioners” are exceedingly minute. For each county an Auditor and Receiver was to be appointed, with one of the clerks of the late visitation, and to these were to be joined “three other discreet persons to be named by the King.” These were to visit each condemned house and exhibit the Statute of Dissolution to the head and his brethren. The inmates were then to be required to make on oath a full disclosure of the state of their affairs, to surrender their charters and seal, plate, and other effects. Such of the monks as were willing to take “capacities” were to be referred to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chancellor, and were to be rewarded for their complacency; the rest were to be transferred to other houses. Orders were to be given that the monks were to cease receiving any income except such as was absolutely necessary, but they were to continue “to sow and till their grounds as they have done before,” and the Superior was referred to “the Chancellor of the Augmentation for his yearly stipend and pension.” But evidently the agents were prepared to accept favourable offers. Henry Lord Stafford, writing to Cromwell on March 12th, 1537, says: “The Commissioners will be in Staffordshire on Sunday next. The Prior of Stone thinks his house shall stand, whereof the country is glad; so my suit is in vain unless your Lordship help me to the Priory of Rontone, for which I was first suitor: howbeit Sir Simon Harcourt makes great labour for it”; and he proceeds again to plead his poverty and his large family, mentioning that he had twelve children.[139] The Commissioners in Staffordshire dissolved three out of the nine houses which came within the scope of the Act, namely Ronton, Stone, and Trentham. The majority were spared, some, as we have seen, through the intervention of powerful or interested friends, but all on payment of large sums.[140] For instance, Hulton, having paid £66 13s. 4d., obtained a grant of exemption on October 1st, 1536, the Abbot being Edward Wilkyns; Rocester’s grant was made on March 11th, 1537, and its payment £100; Tutbury, per Arthur Meverell, received its license on May 3rd; Croxden, per Thomas Chawner, on the 2nd of July, by payment of £100; St. Thomas’, Stafford, per Richard Whyttewall, on July 4th, by payment of £133 6s. 8d. On April 3rd, Robert Burgoyn had written to the Bishop, who so earnestly had desired the Priory: “According to your desire ... I have forwarded letters from the Chancellor of the Augmentations to Mr. Scudamore to survey the lead of the late house of Canons beside Stafford,”[141] which shows how narrowly the house escaped, even for a time, the clutches of Roland Lee and Cromwell, for though he spoke of it as “the late house,” it did not surrender till October, 1538. Lee kept up his persistent begging for it to the end.