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In 1539 his son William was appointed one of the auditors of the Court of Augmentation. This Court, of which one at least of the members had been employed as a commissioner for the surrender of religious houses, was ostensibly founded to ensure the increase of the royal exchequer to such a point as would enable the sovereign duly to establish and strengthen the defences of the realm. Within a year Mr. Cavendish had so well played his cards and acquitted himself that he received from Henry VIII a grant of Church property—the lordships and manors of Northawe, Cuffley, and Childewicke in Hertfordshire. In 1548, the year after his marriage, he was further rewarded not only by the post of “Treasurer of the Chamber to the King” which, we are assured, was “a place of great trust and honour,” but the knighthood which brought his third wife the title that raised her above the majority of her fellow-gentlewomen. He did not bring her a virgin heart, for he had been twice married and twice a widower without male heir. But he conferred on her important social position, a great deal of land—additional prizes fell to his share in the way of lesser glebe properties, abbeys, and rectories, because his appointment in the royal exchequer kept him au courant of the places which were being given or going cheap in the market—and she in her turn brought him the sons he doubtless so greatly desired.