Cromwell saw in them an opportunity which Henry was all too ready to grasp. A Commission was formed to visit and report on the universities and all religious houses; and when the visitors had finished their work, which they had done carefully and thoroughly, they laid their verdict before the House of Commons in the famous Black Book, which was destroyed some years later by order of Queen Mary. Much of what it contained is therefore lost to us, but as the Commons, who sat, remember, in the Chapter-Room at Westminster, heard clause after clause read out, which told, with a few honourable exceptions, a terrible story against the monasteries, they could not restrain themselves, and over and over again shouts of "Down with the monks" rang through the vaulted building. Generally speaking, the largest of the monasteries had come well out of the inquiry, and Parliament therefore began by only dissolving the smaller houses, at the same time ordering that the lands and incomes of these latter should be handed over to the king, as head of the Church, to be spent in the "high and true interests of religion." Certainly the Commons had none but high motives in passing this Act, and never dreamt of a general dissolution, or the appropriation of all that immense wealth for anything but religious or educational purposes. They had not realised Henry’s greed, "which no religion could moderate, or the force of his will, against which nothing, however sacred, seemed able to stand." The monks at Westminster naturally heard very quickly all the particulars of the deliberations which had taken place inside the Chapter-Room. How they must have lingered about the cloisters that day; how eagerly and excitedly must they have talked during those hours when talking was allowed, wondering in what way all these things would end; how they must have speculated as to their own future, and that of the few other large monasteries in which the Commissioners had declared that "thanks be to God, religion had been right well kept and observed." They had not long to wait.