CHAPTER I

THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS

§ 1. A monastery is a community of men or women, devoted to the service of God and obeying a fixed rule. Monastic rules of life varied in strictness and in detail; while each community supplemented the rule of its order by its own code of observances. The object, however, of these different rules and codes was one. The general term for the monastic life was 'religion' (_religio_): the 'religious' (_religiosus_) was bound by three vows, to poverty against the deceits of the world, to chastity against the lusts of the flesh, to obedience against the snares of the devil. His chief duty was to take part with his brethren in the recitation of the canonical hours, and in the celebration of daily masses. A portion of his day was set apart for meditation in the cloister; but his surplus time was devoted to labour. The business affairs of a monastery brought some religious into touch with the practical side of life. Others found their vocation in manual labour in the fields or workshops; while a certain number devoted themselves to literary work in the cloister.

§ 2. The rule of St Benedict, on which western monachism was founded, distinguishes between four classes of religious. Of these the two principal were cenobites, monks living in a community (_coenobium_) under rule, and the anchorites, who have departed (ἀναχωρεῖν) from the world to live a solitary life of prayer. These were the sources of the two main streams of Christian monachism. Naturally, the anchorite came first into existence. The cenobite followed, by the combination of anchorites in monasteries. The development of the _coenobium_ was gradual. About 305 A.D., St Anthony inaugurated the 'lauras' (λαῦραι) of northern Egypt, monasteries in which each anchorite lived in his separate cell and met for common services only on Saturday and Sunday. A few years later St Pachomius founded his first _coenobium_ at Tabennisi in southern Egypt. Here the social principle was more fully organised: common services in church were more frequent and labour was recognised as a factor in the monastic life; but the monks still lived separately. A further step was taken by St Basil, who about 360 founded a _coenobium_ near Neocaesarea. His rule introduced the idea of common life under one roof. It became the basis of the monastic system of the eastern Church, and its principles had a lasting effect on the monastic life of western Europe.

§ 3. The influence of the monachism of the east naturally spread westward. No general rule of life was followed at first. Each collection of monks was governed by its own special observances, aiming generally at the ascetic ideal of separation from the world pursued by the early anchorites. Monachism, however, was a powerful agent in the Christianising of the west. Each monastery under its abbot or father became a training-ground for monk-bishops who ruled dioceses in new monastic centres of missionary effort. The beginnings of organised monachism in Ireland may be traced to the monastery of Lerins, on an island near Cannes, where St Patrick received his training. The success of Irish monasticism soon reacted upon Gaul and Italy, when St Columban founded the monasteries of Luxeuil and Bobbio upon a rule derived from Irish practice. About the same time St Columba at Iona established the vogue of the Irish system in northern Britain.

§ 4. Meanwhile, a new development of the principle arose. St Benedict, a native of Norcia near Spoleto, retired about the beginning of the sixth century to a hermitage at Subiaco. Here he attracted a number of followers, and several monasteries arose in the neighbourhood under his direction. It was for the monastery of Monte Cassino, which he ruled for some thirty years, that he composed the rule which became the law of the monastic life of western Europe. The success and the general adoption of the rule of Monte Cassino in the west were due to the statesmanship with which its injunctions were adapted to climate and physical capacity. The Benedictine monk entered upon a life of work and prayer, which needed the habitual exercise of self-control; but his bodily health ran no risk of being ruined by pious excess. Isolated devotion was superseded by religious life in a common church and cloister. This was the end to which Pachomius and Basil had contributed; but the mystical temperament of the east fostered a contemplative and ascetic tendency which modified the conception of a common life of uniform duty. The early monasteries of Gaul, such as that of St Martin at Tours, followed the model of the _laura_ rather than the _coenobium_; and the separate cell and the practice of self-imposed austerities seem to have been general in early Celtic monasteries. The voluntary hardships of St Cuthbert in his cell on the Farne islands, the prayers and visions of the Saxon Guthlac at Croyland, were western survivals of the ideals of St Anthony and St Simeon Stylites. St Benedict, on the contrary, while casting no reflexions on a life which he himself had at first adopted, recommended to the aspirant for salvation no heroic tasks of prayer and fasting. His aim was the growth in grace of a brotherhood, living under a common rule in obedience to an abbot to whom considerable discretion was given. The natural tendency of the solitary life was to produce an emulation in religious endeavour; and monasteries which were little more than collections of anchorites were liable to the decay consequent upon the rivalry of their inmates. St Benedict enjoined emulation in good works among his monks; but their emulation had its root in humility and obedience, and its outward sign was a mutual deference far removed from spiritual pride. There can be little wonder that a rule, difficult but possible to follow, and allowing for individual weakness, spread far outside the community for which it was made, and that the Benedictine order by the end of the seventh century supplanted all other forms of monasticism in western Europe.

§ 5. The rule of St Benedict was introduced into England by St Augustine, prior of the monastery on the Coelian hill in Rome. At this time the chief strength of Celtic monachism was naturally in the north, although it had penetrated southwards to such isolated outposts as Glastonbury. Gradually Roman customs gained ground in the strongholds of Celtic Christianity. The grant of the monastery of Ripon to Wilfrid was followed by the departure of the Scottish monks. Little is definitely known of English monastic life at this period, but it is clear that it began to approximate more closely to the Benedictine model. Thus the nuns of Hackness, an offshoot of the monastery of Whitby, had a common dormitory; while the monasteries of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow differed in many respects from the local pattern, and were certainly established upon a principle of common life. In certain features a compromise seems to have been arrived at, as in the survival of the custom, which had probably been introduced by Irish missionaries, of grouping monks and nuns in one monastery under the presidency of an abbess. The most famous instance of this was the abbey of Whitby, but other examples are known in various parts of England remote from each other. For a few of these models may have been found in Gaul, where the Benedictine rule was not introduced until a period later than the coming of Augustine. Another feature was the establishment of bishops' sees in monasteries. In European countries where the traditions of the Roman occupation were more or less continuous, the cathedral within the city was a distinct foundation from the monasteries which, as at Paris or Rouen, rose at a later date outside the walls. But the Celtic missionaries in England broke new ground in a country from which the traces of Roman Christianity had almost disappeared, and their sees were founded in monasteries. This custom was followed in the natural order of things by Augustine at Canterbury. In the reorganisation of dioceses after the Norman conquest it was still continued. In eight of the seventeen medieval dioceses of England the cathedral, and in two others one of the two cathedrals, was a monastic church.

§ 6. The Danish invasions brought extinction to the monastic life in the greater part of England. It was not until about a hundred years later that it was revived. Odo, archbishop of Canterbury 942-59, prepared the way for the movement. Its success was achieved under his successor, St Dunstan, with the co-operation of Edgar the peaceful. Ethelwold, bishop of Winchester, and Oswald, archbishop of York, were its most active promoters. Both were disciples of the reformed Benedictine rule which, early in the tenth century, had begun to spread from the abbey of Cluny. The abbey of Fleury or Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, which, after the sack of Monte Cassino by the Lombards in 660, had become the resting-place of the body of St Benedict, was reformed under Cluniac influence. Oswald studied the Benedictine rule at Fleury. Made bishop of Worcester in 961, he was active in replacing the secular clergy of the churches of his diocese by monks. At Evesham, Pershore, Winchcombe, Worcester and elsewhere, Benedictine monks were introduced. In 971 Oswald aided Aelfwine, an East Anglian nobleman, to found the monastery of Ramsey in Huntingdonshire, and a few years later he and Ethelwold persuaded Abbo of Fleury to visit England and help them in extending the religious life. Ethelwold was equally active at Winchester, and, under a charter from king Edgar, restored destroyed monasteries throughout the country, including Ely and Peterborough. Dunstan, the reformer of Glastonbury, gave active sympathy to the movement, but was more cautious in his attitude to the secular clergy; and it is noteworthy that the reform did not at once extend to his cathedral church at Canterbury.

§ 7. This glorious period in the history of English monasticism closed with the disasters of the early part of the eleventh century. Canute and Edward the Confessor favoured and enriched many religious houses, and Edward, by his foundation of the abbey of Westminster, takes a foremost place among benefactors of the religious life in England. But, during this disturbed epoch, few new monasteries were founded, and the tendency to slackness in observance of the rule again appeared. The permanent triumph of monasticism was achieved after the Norman conquest. The Conqueror and his followers sought the salvation of their souls by the foundation of abbeys and priories on their new estates. The victory of Hastings was marked by the foundation of the abbey of Battle, the first of the long series of Norman monasteries in England. In the work of organisation ecclesiastics from the great abbeys of Normandy took, as was natural, the chief part. Two successive archbishops of Canterbury, Lanfranc, formerly a monk of Bec and abbot of St Stephen's at Caen, and Anselm, formerly abbot of Bec, were instrumental in giving the Benedictine order in England its pre-eminence under the early Norman kings.

§ 8. The Benedictine monasteries in England were colonised, or, where they were older than the conquest, received new blood from the monasteries of Normandy and France. We have seen that the rule of St Benedict was made for a special monastery: the order was a collection of independent houses which found the rule suitable to their needs. Thus each of the larger English Benedictine monasteries was a separate community, under the jurisdiction of the diocesan bishop, from whose visitations some powerful abbeys, such as St Albans, Evesham and Westminster, eventually obtained exemption. It was also subject to the visitation of two abbots, chosen annually by a general chapter of heads of English houses. The ruler of the monastery was the abbot: under him was his deputy, the prior, on whom a large part of the direct oversight of the house devolved. Where, as at Durham, the church of the monastery was also the cathedral of the diocese, the bishop was nominally abbot, but the actual ruler of the house was the prior; and to such houses the name of cathedral priory was given. The larger houses, however, frequently founded off-shoots on distant portions of their property, which were governed by priors appointed by the mother house, and were known as priories or cells. Although some of them became important houses, they were at first part and parcel of the mother house, and many continued to be so throughout the middle ages. Thus St Martin's at Dover was a priory of Christ Church, Canterbury, and Tynemouth in Northumberland was a priory of St Albans.

§ 9. There were also certain priories founded in subordination to foreign houses. Thus Bec had a priory at St Neots in Huntingdonshire; the abbey of Mont-Ste-Cathérine at Rouen had one at Blyth in Nottinghamshire. Both these houses contained several monks: in the thirteenth century there were fourteen at Blyth, all probably foreigners, and many of them sent from the parent house for a change of air. But there were also a large number of monastic possessions known as priories, which were not strictly conventual, but were simply manors in the possession of alien monasteries, on which a prior or _custos_, sent from the mother abbey with another monk as his _socius_, resided for a portion of the year, practically as estate agent. Sometimes he was allowed, as at Ecclesfield in Yorkshire, a priory of Saint-Wandrille, to serve the cure of the parish church; but this was not common. Where these small 'alien priories' are known to have existed, we need not expect to find any trace of monastic arrangements in the parish church. Still less need we look for traces of a cloister. During the hundred years' war with France, the alien priories were repeatedly confiscated by the Crown, and before their final confiscation in 1414 many had been granted to English charterhouses, chantry colleges, and similar foundations. Conventual priories, such as Blyth and St Neots, were continued as independent monasteries under English priors.

§ 10. The popularity and wealth of the Benedictine order naturally led in many monasteries to relaxation of the rule. From time to time monks who felt the necessity of closer communion with God and a stricter life sought their need in the foundation of new houses under a more severe form of their rule. The first important move in this direction was made in the abbey of Cluny, from which, founded in 910, proceeded the monastic reform of the tenth century. St Berno, the first abbot, died in 927. One essential point distinguished Cluniac monasteries from Benedictine. Each Benedictine abbot was the president of his own republic. The Cluniac houses, on the other hand, were priories directly under the supervision of the abbot of Cluny, the autocrat of the order. They were exempt from episcopal visitation, and the abbot, holding his general chapters at Cluny, was responsible to the pope alone. In England their chief house was the priory of St Pancras at Lewes, founded in 1077 by William de Warenne for a prior and twelve monks: the prior of Lewes took second rank among Cluniac priors. Of some thirty-two English houses of the order several were cells of the larger priories, and at the general chapter would be represented by the priors of their parent monasteries. Owing to the dependence of the order upon Cluny, its English priories shared confiscation with the other alien foundations. They were allowed to continue, however, as 'denizen' houses with English priors, and the priory of St Saviour at Bermondsey was raised to the dignity of an abbey. Of ruins of Cluniac priories in England, the most complete are at Wenlock in Shropshire and Castle Acre in Norfolk. The plans of Lewes and Thetford priories have been recovered from foundations and fragments, and there are substantial remains at Bromholm in Norfolk.

§ 11. The Carthusian order was founded by St Bruno at the Grande-Chartreuse near Grenoble in 1086. Its members were vowed to fasting and the solitary life. Each had his separate cell, the monastery being composed of one or more courts, round which these dwellings were arranged. The brethren met in church for the night-office, mass, and vespers: the lesser hours were said, and meals, save on certain days, were taken by each monk separately. The order thus was a revolt against the common life, and a return to the anchoritic ideal. In England only two houses, Witham (_c._ 1179-81) and Hinton (_c._ 1227), both in Somerset, were founded before the middle of the fourteenth century. The remaining seven were all founded after 1340. The royal foundation of Shene priory in Surrey (1414) was the latest and wealthiest of all. In England the word Chartreuse (_Certosa_ in Italian) took the form Charterhouse. Considerable remains of charterhouses exist at Beauvale in Nottinghamshire (founded 1343), in London (founded 1371) and at Hinton; but the most complete idea of a Carthusian priory may be gained from the ruins of Mount Grace in Yorkshire (founded 1396).

§ 12. One of the many off-shoots of the Benedictine order was a congregation of monks and lay brothers founded in 1114 in the diocese of Chartres. The name of Thiron (_Tiro_) was given to the abbey from the _tirones_ or apprentices whom the founder united there, to pursue their trades in the service of God. Closely akin to this was the abbey of Savigny in the diocese of Avranches, founded in 1112, which between that date and 1147 planted some thirteen houses in England and Wales. When the order of Savigny was merged about 1147 in that of Cîteaux, its monasteries were said to belong to the Tironensian order. This, however, was not because of any definite affiliation to Thiron, but on account of similarity of observances between the two congregations. English Tironensian houses, such as Humberston abbey in Lincolnshire, became identical with the ordinary Benedictine monasteries, although a nominal distinction was recognised. Important remains of a Tironensian house exist at Caldey, a priory of St Dogmaels, on an island near Tenby. Such Savigniac houses as Buildwas and Furness became famous as Cistercian monasteries. Neither of these congregations possessed the organising capacity which the founders of the Cistercian order brought to their work. The same may be said of the Grandimontine order, founded in 1046 at Grandmont in the diocese of Limoges, which during the twelfth century founded three small priories in England.

§ 13. The Cistercian order took its name from the abbey of Cîteaux in Burgundy, which was founded in 1098 by Robert, abbot of the Benedictine house of Molesme. His monks aimed at a literal observance of the rule of St Benedict on the most austere lines. Meat was banished from their meals: their buildings followed simple laws of construction and were free from ornament. The real founders of the order were Stephen Harding, an Englishman, who became abbot of Cîteaux in 1109, and his disciple St Bernard, who in 1115 became abbot of the first daughter house, Clairvaux. Largely owing to the energy of St Bernard, the order spread with extraordinary rapidity. When Waverley abbey, its first English house, was founded in 1128, it possessed more than thirty houses. In 1152 an order forbade the foundation of new abbeys; there were then fifty houses in England and Wales out of 339. In spite of this prohibition, the number in the thirteenth century exceeded 600. In all, the houses of the order in England and Wales numbered 75, some of which possessed cells.

§ 14. Cîteaux, like Cluny, stood at the head of a federation of religious houses exempt from episcopal authority. These houses, however, were ruled by their own abbots, not by priors dependent on the abbot of Cîteaux; and thus the Cistercian abbeys were saved from the difficulties which befell the Cluniac in common with other alien houses. The Charter of Charity, drawn up in 1119, regulated the growth of the order and the relations between its monasteries. When the numbers of any house grew too large, it might, with the consent of the annual chapter at Cîteaux, send out at least twelve brethren, with a thirteenth as abbot, to found a new monastery. Thus Waverley was colonised from the abbey of L'Aumône in Normandy. Fountains, founded in 1132 and augmented from Clairvaux in 1134 or 1135, sent out colonies to Newminster in Northumberland (1138), Louth Park in Lincolnshire (1139), Woburn in Bedfordshire (1145) and Lysa in Norway (1146). The right of visitation of Cistercian houses belonged to the abbots of their parent monasteries: the abbot of Cîteaux was visitor of Clairvaux, the abbot of Clairvaux visitor of Fountains, and so on; while Cîteaux itself was visited by the abbots of Clairvaux and its three other eldest daughters. Monasteries thus founded were to be in places remote from the conversation of men. Such names as Vaudey (_Vallis Dei_) and Valle Crucis mark the favourite site of such abbeys in secluded valleys: it was seldom that the rule was transgressed, as in the case of St Mary Graces near the tower of London. The churches were dedicated in honour of our Lady: stone bell-towers were forbidden as well as wooden towers of excessive height, the windows were filled with plain glass, all paintings were prohibited save painted wooden crucifixes, and vestments and other ornaments were of the plainest kind compatible with dignity. All workshops, stables, etc. were within the abbey precincts, and precautions were taken against the growth of any colony of lay-folk near the monastery by the order that any house built outside the precinct wall was to be pulled down. A similar precaution regulated the establishment of the abbey farms or granges at a specified minimum distance from each other. Temporary guests were admitted under special conditions; but, after the dedication of the church and its octave were over, the presence of women within the precinct was forbidden.

§ 15. One point in the Cistercian rule, which arose from this self-contained ideal and had an important influence upon the planning of Cistercian buildings, was the division of the brethren of each abbey into monks (_monachi_) and lay brothers (_conversi_)[1]. The Cistercian monk was a clerk who could read and write. Like a Benedictine monk, he was not necessarily a priest, although it became very general for monks to proceed to priest's orders. His duties lay in the church and cloister, and, unless he held an office such as that of cellarer or kitchener, he was not immediately concerned with the business affairs of his convent. These, which in Benedictine houses were largely transacted by tenants or hired labourers and servants, were performed in Cistercian houses by the _conversi_. A _conversus_ was a layman who had turned from the service of the world to that of God. He entered the convent as a novice and in due course made his profession. He was precluded from learning to read or write and from taking holy orders. He was taught a few prayers and psalms by heart, but his business was manual labour in the convent workshops, or in its fields and granges. On ordinary work-days he had to attend part of the night-office and, if he was not stationed in a grange, had to come to compline. He observed the other hours by the recitation of special prayers at his work. His life was regulated by statutes which in respect of abstinence, silence and other similar essentials resembled those of the monks. The _conversi_ had their own separate common rooms in the cloister buildings, their own quire in the church and their own infirmary. They rose at an hour which was specially calculated to allow them enough sleep before their day's work: their chapter was held by the abbot only on Sundays and certain feast-days. Thus the convent was provided with all the workmen whom it needed. Some _conversi_ were deputed to live upon the convent granges, each of which had a _conversus_ as prior. The white frocks and cowls of the monks gave the Cistercians their distinctive name of white monks as opposed to the Benedictines or black monks: the dress of the _conversus_ was a cloak (_cappa_), tunic, stockings (_caligae_), boots (_pedules_) and a hood (_capucium_) covering only the shoulders and breast[2].

§ 16. The monastic movement was not in the first instance a clerical movement, nor can the earliest founders have contemplated that their convents would include more than a few priests for the ministration of the Sacraments. But the ideal of the regular life as pursued in the monasteries attracted clergy as well as laymen. As early as 391, St Augustine established communities of regular clergy in Africa. In the later years of the eighth century, Chrodegand, bishop of Metz, introduced a rule of life, founded upon that of St Benedict, among the clergy of his cathedral, which was copied by other similar congregations of clergy. From this adoption of a rule (_canon_, κάνων) the members of such bodies became known as canons, and the bodies themselves, meeting in chapter-houses, where, as in monasteries, a chapter (_capitulum_) of the rule was read daily, took the name of chapters (_capitula_). The main object of the movement was the daily recitation of the canonical hours: the canons had their meals in common, and in some cases had a common dorter or dormitory. The tendency during the ninth and tenth centuries seems to have been for canons to establish their separate households in the neighbourhood of the church which they served. A marked distinction arose between the monks of cathedral priories such as Canterbury and the secular canons who served such churches as the cathedral of York. In the secular chapters the recitation of the hours was maintained and certain common funds were administered; but each canon had his own separate estate, a church or manor known as a prebend (_prebenda_), and the richer prebends became the perquisites of clerks in constant attendance upon the king or upon some bishop or nobleman. The number of resident canons was very small, and the duties of absentees were taken by their vicars (_vicarii_) or deputies. Colleges of chantry-priests, usually of late foundation, were organised as similar associations of secular clergy, who were bound, however, from the nature of their duties to continual residence. The colleges of Oxford and Cambridge had a similar basis. They were associations of clergy for teaching and study, with a common hall and church, and are therefore derived from a source distinct from the monastic movement.

§ 17. Bodies of canons regular, however, came into existence, distinct from the chapters of canons secular, living in monasteries, reciting the canonical hours, and leading the common life of monks. Their rule was modelled on an adaptation of a letter from St Augustine of Hippo to a congregation of religious women. It was shorter and couched in more general terms than the rule of St Benedict; but its aim was similar. Its followers became known as Augustinian or Austin canons. From their hooded black cloaks with white surplices and black cassocks beneath, they were often called black canons. The order did not appear in England until about 1106, when the priory of St Botolph at Colchester was founded by a Benedictine monk named Ernulf; nor did the papacy definitely recognise the order until 1139, when its houses were already numerous. The number of English Augustinian houses at its highest point reached 218, and of these 138 were founded before 1175. At the suppression of the monasteries there were about 170 Augustinian houses, while of Benedictine houses there were from 130 to 140. Augustinian houses varied greatly in size and wealth, and at no time did their wealthier abbeys approach the immense revenues of the greater Benedictine houses; while their average income was very moderate. Each house was governed by a 'prelate,' generally known as the prior, but in some 24 cases as the abbot. Most of their abbeys were in the midland districts: in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Norfolk, where their houses were numerous, the title of prior was universal. In 1133 one of their convents, Carlisle, was raised to the dignity of a cathedral priory. Their growth was analogous to that of the Benedictines: each house with its cells was an independent community: their visitor was the diocesan bishop, and very few of their houses became permanently exempt from visitation. The order also held its general chapters, at which two visitors were appointed yearly for each of the provinces into which its houses were divided.

§ 18. The order of Premonstratensians, known from their white habit as white canons, was founded by St Norbert at Prémontré, to the west of Laon, about 1120. The canons followed the Augustinian rule in the main, but their constitution shewed a tendency to follow Cistercian models. The order was centralised under the abbot of Prémontré, where the general chapters were held, and was extended by the Cistercian process of colonisation, each house sending out its body of canons as the nucleus of a new abbey. Lisques, a daughter of Prémontré, colonised Newhouse abbey in north Lincolnshire in 1143. In 1147 Newhouse founded a daughter house at Alnwick, and between that time and 1212 founded ten other abbeys. Of these Welbeck (1153) was responsible for seven more between 1175 and 1218. In all there were thirty-one abbeys of the order in England, not counting two cells. Cistercian influence can be seen in the constitution of each new house as an abbey, in the choice of secluded sites for the houses of the order, and in the principal dedication of most of its churches to our Lady. Like other centralised orders, the Premonstratensians were exempt from the jurisdiction of the diocesan bishop; but the allegiance of the English canons to Prémontré gradually slackened, and the administration of their order in England was delegated in course of time to a commissary. In 1512 Julius II exempted the English houses from obedience to Prémontré and placed them under the control of the abbot of Welbeck.

§ 19. The order of Prémontré originally made some provision for houses of nuns side by side with those of canons. The experiment languished, and although a body of nuns or canonesses followed the Premonstratensian rule, they had few houses. Only two are known in England, and neither of these was connected with any house of canons. But in the second quarter of the twelfth century Gilbert, rector of Sempringham in Lincolnshire, with the advice of the abbot of Rievaulx, founded a house of seven nuns following the Cistercian rule. The Cistercian order refused to take charge of the community, and Gilbert, possibly following the example of Prémontré, provided for its spiritual needs by associating with the nuns a body of canons under the rule of St Augustine. Gilbertine houses were thus at first regarded as nunneries in which the Sacraments were administered by an auxiliary community of at least seven canons. Minutely composed statutes provided for the seclusion of the two bodies from each other in two adjacent cloisters. In such double houses the maximum number of nuns ordained by statute was generally double that of canons: thus at Watton in Yorkshire, the largest house of the order, nominal provision was made for 140 nuns and 70 canons. The order, which was exempt from episcopal control, was placed under a general, known as the master of Sempringham. Sempringham was the mother house of a number of priories: new houses were founded on the Cistercian plan of the migration of twelve canons and a prior from one of the existing houses. _Conversi_ and _conversae_ formed a part of each establishment. The total number of Gilbertine houses was some 27, of which eleven were in Lincolnshire: with the exception of two houses in Wiltshire, one in Devonshire and one in Durham, the monasteries of the order were all within the four eastern dioceses of Lincoln, York, Ely and Norwich. The order never spread beyond England.

§ 20. Houses of Benedictine nuns were numerous in England. The most important of these lay within the dioceses of Salisbury and Winchester. In the midlands, the east and north, where they were numerous, they were with a few exceptions small foundations of which scanty traces are left. A few priories of nuns, chiefly in the dioceses of York and Lincoln, followed the Cistercian rule. In the sixteenth century the wealthiest of the Cistercian nunneries, which as a rule were small and poor, was at Tarrant in Dorset; and it was for the three nuns who originally settled here in the thirteenth century that the famous _Ancren Riwle_ or _Regulae inclusarum_ were composed. Cistercian nunneries were not subject to Cîteaux, but were visited by their diocesan bishop. Houses of nuns or canonesses following the rule of St Augustine were few; but of their two abbeys, Burnham and Lacock, there are substantial remains. The richest nunnery at the suppression was Sion abbey in Middlesex, founded by Henry V in 1414 for Bridgetine nuns, whose rule was modelled on that of St Augustine. The Bridgetine order, as well as that of Fontevrault, to which Nuneaton priory in Warwickshire originally belonged, attempted to provide regular chaplains for its members by uniting a convent of men to one of women. In connexion with some of the older Benedictine nunneries there were from an early date secular chaplains who had their own prebends in the monastic estates and their stalls in quire. In process of time such prebendal stalls in the churches of Romsey, Shaftesbury, Wilton, Wherwell and St Mary's, Winchester, became perquisites of clerks in the royal service, whose duties in the nunneries were performed by vicars.

§ 21. After the beginning of the fourteenth century the foundation of monasteries practically ceased, although the Carthusian order at a later date enjoyed some popularity, which was enhanced by royal patronage. Religious houses no longer afforded the only career possible to those who were unfitted for the limited professions open to the medieval layman. With the growth of a well-to-do middle class came the tendency to devote benefactions which at an earlier date would have been given to monasteries to parish churches. From the reign of Edward II onwards chantries and colleges of chantry-priests in parish churches were founded in great numbers. In one respect, however, the regular life kept in touch with national progress. The orders of friars found their way to England in the thirteenth century. In 1221 Dominicans (Friars preachers or black friars) settled at Oxford: about 1224 houses of Franciscans (Friars minor or grey friars) were established at Canterbury and London: Hulne priory in Northumberland and Aylesford priory in Kent were founded for Carmelites (white friars) about 1240: Clare priory in Suffolk was founded for the order known later as Austin friars in 1248. Of the lesser orders the most important was the Trinitarian, whose most famous house was St Robert's at Knaresborough. Although the general plan of a friary was similar to that of a monastery, the lives of monks and friars were totally different. The friar was a wanderer who lived on alms: his circuit was bounded by a special province, and he was not confined to the limits of a single house. The favourite places for friaries were thus the larger towns. No less than seven houses of friars were founded in Cambridge: there were six each in London and Oxford: Bristol, Lincoln, Lynn, Newcastle, Northampton, Norwich, Stamford, Winchester and York contained houses of all the four chief orders. An order of nuns, known as the Poor Clares from their foundress St Clare, was an off-shoot of the Franciscan order, and had five houses in England. The influence gained by these new bodies served to turn popular attention from the older orders. Not merely were the friars the revivalist preachers of the age, in antagonism to the conservative spirit of the monks and secular clergy[3]; but the great learning of many of their leading members earned them distinction and no little weight in the universities of Europe. The moral dangers of their life, their independence of episcopal control and their unchecked influence among the common people brought about an early decline from the ideals of their founders; but their achievements during the first century of their existence are one of the most remarkable episodes in religious history.

§ 22. Although monks and canons were bound to individual poverty and all who attempted to accumulate a private store of money were liable to punishment, the greater monasteries were large landowning corporations. Their early benefactors bestowed gifts of manors and churches upon them for which they were bound in return to the sole service of praying for the souls of the donors. Such alienations were regulated by the statute of mortmain (1279). Benefactions continued under the procedure established by this act, and the monasteries thus became owners of a very large number of parish churches. The custom of appropriation and its effects on the fabrics of parish churches has been stated in another volume of this series[4]. The constant plea for appropriation was founded on the insufficiency of the funds of a monastery to fulfil its duty of hospitality to wayfarers and of relief to the poor. In churches of which monks were proprietors, the vicar was a resident secular priest. Monks were not allowed, save in very exceptional cases, to serve the cures of parishes, which would have interfered with their duties in quire and cloister. Wherever we find it stated in print that an incumbent of a parish church or chantry was a monk, we should hesitate to believe it without consulting the original record of his institution. Canons, on the other hand, whose orders began in the association of secular priests under a rule, were given more licence in this respect. Premonstratensian canons were generally allowed to serve the parish churches belonging to their houses; and bishops granted similar licences, though not without demur, to Austin canons. It is sometimes stated that the object of the Augustinian order was to supply parochial clergy to churches on their estates. If this was so, the custom was severely checked in the thirteenth century; and, when in the later middle ages the number of appropriated churches served by Austin canons considerably increased, the quire services in their monastic churches suffered to an extent which was never contemplated by their founders.

§ 23. The position of monasteries as landowners naturally led to some slackening of the rule. Abbots and priors of the larger houses took their place among the spiritual barons of the realm. From the fourteenth century to the suppression twenty-four Benedictine and three Augustinian abbots, with the prior of Coventry and the English prior of the knights hospitallers, had a prescriptive right to seats in parliament. These are sometimes confounded with 'mitred' abbots: the right, however, of an abbot or prior to wear episcopal insignia depended, not upon a parliamentary summons, but upon a privilege granted by the pope. In addition to the extra-monastic duties thus incumbent upon certain heads of houses, the care of large estates took many of the brethren away from constant attendance in their house. When bishop Alnwick of Lincoln visited Peterborough abbey in 1437, he found that out of 44 monks there were seldom on ordinary days more than ten or twelve at any service in church. The obedientiaries or officers who looked after the chief departments of the convent came to church only on great festivals: some monks lived upon the abbey granges: every week at least seven were on furlough for blood-letting: two were at their studies at Oxford: several were old and infirm and could not attend service regularly. The somewhat trite remark of the cellarer at Leicester in 1440 that 'abundance of money is the cause of many evils' is justified over and over again in the records of episcopal visitations. In spite, however, of their wealth, even the richest houses, as a rule, were beset by money difficulties. Their expenses were great: hospitality and the daily alms were a serious drain on income: pensions and corrodies or shares in the common revenue were too liberally granted to outsiders: there was much necessary outlay on property: young monks had sometimes to be maintained in hostels belonging to monasteries at the universities: an ambitious abbot might run his house into extravagant expense on buildings: episcopal visitations meant a large fee to the bishop and expense upon his entertainment. The improvidence of officers, joined with the damage caused to property by pestilence and storm, constantly reduced monasteries to a state of bankruptcy. The heavy debts of monasteries, their insufficient assets, the irregularity with which accounts were rendered, and the consequent decay of discipline are abundantly illustrated in the registers of fourteenth and fifteenth-century bishops and in the patent rolls of the reigns of Henry V and Henry VI.

§ 24. '_Decem sunt abusiones claustralium_,' runs an inscription upon the quire-stalls of St Agatha's abbey, now in Richmond church, 'The abuses of those in cloister are ten: costly living, choice food, noise in cloister, strife in chapter, disorder in quire, a neglectful disciple, a disobedient youth, a lazy old man, a headstrong monk, a worldly religious.' The actual evidence of documents, when compared with the counsels of perfection in the rules of orders and the custom-books of monasteries, supplies a commentary on this text which applies to every century from the thirteenth to the sixteenth. It must also be owned that grave moral offences were not uncommon. Where slackness of rule was prevalent, temptations of this kind must have abounded, and convents which had the misfortune to possess an unworthy or lazy head were liable to succumb to them. Such weaknesses, however, are just those on which satirists lay excessive emphasis and to which scandal lends a too ready ear. The evidence of episcopal visitations, while it discloses much that is repellent to our ideal of the religious life, seldom proves that moral corruption was general in any given monastery, or that individual backslidings went without punishment. Cases of immorality, though not few, are generally treated with an individual prominence which would be impossible, if a whole monastery were implicated in them. This fact must be laid against the credence which is still sometimes given to the so-called _comperta_ of Henry VIII's commissioners, the trustworthiness of which is now rightly discredited. Bishops like Alnwick would spend months of hard work in visitations and several days, if necessary, on the impartial examination of the evidence for a single crime, while such commissioners as Dr Layton rushed at full speed through the monasteries committed to their inquiry, with prejudices already formed and with the most casual examination of witnesses, enforcing resignations of abbots and extorting confessions and bribes from frightened monks and nuns, with the closely allied objects of bringing the revenues of the houses to the royal exchequer and of earning grants of prebends and deaneries for themselves.

§ 25. There can be no doubt, however, that during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the life of monks and canons regular became generally more lax and easy, while the numbers of those who embraced the monastic life decreased. In the twelfth century the monasteries had been full to overflowing: each newly-founded house was a sign that the parent monastery had no more room. In the middle of the thirteenth century the numbers were still large but not unwieldy. Such numbers as we have indicate that the monasteries were kept up to the complement of inmates required by their statutes, but that there was no general increase. In Cistercian abbeys the number of _conversi_ swelled the total of inmates: at Louth Park during the same period there were 66 monks, while the _conversi_ numbered 150[5]. Such numbers, however, decreased greatly within the next hundred years. In 1349, the year of the great pestilence, there were 42 monks at Meaux, but only seven _conversi_: 32 monks and all the _conversi_ died. The pestilence worked similar havoc in other houses. In the small nunnery of Wothorpe, near Stamford, only one nun was left: Greenfield priory in Lincolnshire remained without a head for three months. There can be little doubt that the religious houses as a whole never recovered from the pestilence: there were not enough recruits from outside to compensate for the sudden decrease in numbers. Alnwick's visitations in the middle of the fifteenth century shew that the monasteries of his diocese were far from full. Later visitations in the diocese of Norwich strengthen the conclusion that even in important houses like the cathedral priory of Norwich a number of from 40 to 50 monks was exceptionally large. In 1492 there were only 17 canons in the wealthy priory of Walsingham. In the largest Premonstratensian houses, during the last quarter of the fifteenth century the numbers seldom exceeded 25. The distinction between the various orders was no longer clearly marked. After 1349 _conversi_ ceased to form a part of most Cistercian monasteries. Within the next fifty years they disappeared altogether, and the monks, like the Benedictines, administered their estates by hired labour. At the suppression of the monasteries the number of monks at Furness, where the accommodation was unusually large, was only 30. In Bury St Edmunds, one of the largest Benedictine abbeys, there were about 60.

§ 26. The decline in numbers after 1349 would inevitably tend to the extinction of small and poor houses. A few nunneries, such as Wothorpe, were amalgamated with larger foundations. Various causes also led to the suppression of small monasteries. An example had been set as early as 1312 by the extermination of the military order of knights Templars, whose rule was founded upon the Cistercian _Carta Caritatis_. Their lands in great part went to enrich the order of knights of St John of Jerusalem, whose property at the general suppression was very large. During the French wars, as we have seen, the smaller possessions of foreign abbeys were gradually appropriated to other religious foundations. Alien priories also formed a large portion of the possessions of Eton and King's college, Cambridge. For the purposes of later colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, this example was followed in the suppression of small English houses: Jesus college at Cambridge in 1497 entered upon the buildings and possessions of the nunnery of St Radegund. Wolsey founded Christ Church at Oxford in place of the priory of St Frideswide, and obtained the suppression of several small monasteries for the endowment of his colleges at Oxford and Ipswich. To Wolsey indeed the beginning of the general suppression may be fairly attributed. His measures, however, had reform for their end. Later acts of suppression were prompted by far different causes. Yet not even the financial advantages of the step could lead to the destruction of the monasteries at one blow. The act of 1536 put in the king's hands only those houses whose revenues were under £200 a year, and of these thirty-two, against which even the commissioners could find no evidence, were refounded. Such an act naturally produced serious economic changes: the ringleaders of the subsequent northern rebellion complained of the damage incurred by the poor from the loss of convent alms. The Pilgrimage of Grace brought disaster to the abbeys which had lent it support. Other houses made terms with the king by surrendering their possessions: the rest fell in consequence of the act of 1539, which extended the provisions of 1536 to all the surviving foundations. It may be granted that the dissolution of the monasteries was inevitable. But for their arbitrary seizure by the state there was only the shadow of a legitimate reason, and the motives of the suppression are exposed by the traffic in their property which followed. Pensions were granted to monks and canons from the exchequer; but the bulk of monastic property went to enrich private owners for the temporary relief of the extravagance of the Crown.

§ 27. Many monasteries were entirely ruined after the suppression, and of about a third of the number no vestige is left. Of rather less than a third there are substantial remains. In many cases, these are confined to the church, which, if it served the needs of a parish, was granted to the parishioners and partially used by them, the monastic quire being generally allowed to go into decay. More rarely, as at Christchurch priory, the whole church was retained. Secular chapters were founded in the cathedral priories, and six abbey and priory churches, including Westminster, were raised to the rank of cathedrals. Thus, allowing for the inevitable change of use to which the monastic buildings were put, at Canterbury, Chester, Durham, Ely, Gloucester, Norwich, Peterborough, Rochester, Westminster, Winchester and Worcester, the arrangements of a Benedictine monastery can be studied more or less satisfactorily, and at Bristol, Carlisle and Christ Church, Oxford, those of a house of Austin canons may be fairly well seen. Of ruined houses by far the most complete series of remains are those of the Cistercian abbeys, which, generally in remote situations, have been allowed to go to decay with little removal of material. Benedictine, Cluniac and Augustinian houses have suffered more: the remains of Benedictine houses like Reading or St Mary's, York, are not complete; while of Cluniac houses Wenlock, and of Augustinian, Haughmond and Lilleshall are some of the few exceptions to the general rule of destruction. Only three Cistercian churches remain partly in use as parish churches, viz. Dore, Holme Cultram and Margam: they were converted to this use at periods later than the suppression. On the other hand, the remains of nearly half the monasteries enable us to reconstruct the life which was led in them with great completeness. Pre-eminent among these is the magnificent ruin of Fountains. Kirkstall and Tintern are hardly less complete. Beaulieu, Buildwas, Cleeve, Croxden, Ford, Furness, Jervaulx, Neath, Netley, Valle Crucis and Rievaulx have singularly perfect remains of large portions of the cloister buildings, and to these may be added several other instances where churches or other buildings remain or may be traced by foundations. Traces of most of the Premonstratensian houses are left. The most perfect is the splendid abbey of St Agatha at Easby near Richmond. Part of one Premonstratensian church, that of Blanchland in Northumberland, has been converted into a parish church. Of Carthusian plans, as already said, much is known, and for completeness Mount Grace priory is not far behind Fountains. One Gilbertine plan, that of Watton in Yorkshire, has been recovered by excavation. Of houses of nuns the remains are somewhat scanty, but of Benedictine foundations St Radegund's priory at Cambridge, and of Augustinian houses Lacock abbey in Wiltshire deserve special mention; while the great Benedictine church of Romsey abbey remains entire. Fragments of friaries are left in many of our large towns: of their general arrangements much can be seen at the Dominican friary in Bristol and in the ruins of the Austin friary at Clare and the Carmelite friary at Hulne. The church of the Austin friars in London is still a place of worship: the quire of the Dominican friary at Brecon is the chapel of Christ college. Fragments of churches may be seen at Lynn (black friars) and Richmond (grey friars), while the church of the Dominicans at Norwich and that of the Franciscans at Chichester have been converted to secular uses. At Cambridge the colleges of Emmanuel and Sidney Sussex were founded on the sites of Dominican and Franciscan friaries. The Dominican buildings at Emmanuel were cleverly adapted to the plan of the new college, the hall of which, in spite of transformation, is substantially the church of the friary.