Hand in hand with the suppression of the monasteries came the fall of the various houses of the friars. This had probably been a part of Cromwell’s scheme from the very first; it will be remembered that several houses suffered in the early part of his ministry, as a penalty for permitting their inmates to preach against the King’s divorce. A sort of preliminary visitation had been carried on in 1534, at Cromwell’s command, by his agents Browne and Hilsey[419]: but a far more energetic person was found in Richard Ingworth, Bishop of Dover, who, on the 6th of February, 1538, was commissioned by the Vicar-general to carry on a second investigation, in which he was to visit all the houses of the various orders of friars in England, to examine into and correct abuses, and to expel and punish the guilty inmates[420]. As he refers to the King’s Vicegerent, as his ‘synguler helper for XII yeres past[421],’ there is reason to think that he had been an intimate of Cromwell’s before the latter had entered the royal service: it is possible that they had worked together in the suppression of the monasteries which furnished funds for Wolsey’s colleges. A greater traveller than Ingworth could scarcely have been found in those days. The number of houses he visited during the first six months of 1538 is perfectly amazing, but with all his energy, Richard of Dover was far less efficient than his terrible master. When he hesitatingly wrote to Cromwell to ask whether he should meddle with the White Friars of Winchester, he received a smart rebuke for his doubts, and was told that though he had changed his friar’s habit, he had not changed his friar’s heart[422]. The Vicar-general found it necessary to give him a coadjutor, and chose a singularly apt man for his purpose in Dr. John London, Warden of New College, Oxford, who received a special commission with the mayor and two others to ‘loke vpon’ the friars of that town[423]. The friars gave the Commissioners more trouble than the monks. They seemed to have secret ways of learning when the visitors were going to arrive, and either carefully hid, or else sold all their valuables beforehand, a fact which affords the most probable explanation of the amount of poverty reported by the visitors. Still the houses fell without ceasing; if not by voluntary surrender, by compulsion. Nor did the visitors hesitate in the case of nunneries, to resort to the most shameful devices to elicit a surrender. London’s conduct was so disgraceful, that Cromwell was obliged to recognize the justice of the complaints of the Abbess of Godstow against him, and ‘steye his procedinges[424].’ ‘Doctor Londone,’ wrote the abbess to the Vicar-general, ‘whiche ... was ageynste my promotyon and hathe ever sence borne me greate malys and grudge like my mortall enmye, is sodenlie cummyd unto me withe a greate rowte with him, and here dothe threten me and my susters, sayeng that he hathe the kynges commyssyon to suppres the house spyte of my tethe[425].’ It appears that London himself wrote to Cromwell the day after to beg him to favour the abbess and her sisters[426]. Did he perhaps feel that he had gone too far, or are we to infer that his usual methods were even more brutal than this?