munities and thousands of monks under his rule; nay, no monk could be professed among them save in the great abbey church of Cluny itself, or at the hands of the abbot or his representative. The system was marked by the good and evil results which centralisation necessarily brings with it. In England, at any rate, it was found to work unsatisfactorily when the relations between this country and France grew strained; and several Cluniac monasteries-Lenton, the parent house of Kershall, among them-made themselves "denizen,' and henceforth were ranked among the houses, and sent their representatives to the general chapters, of the English Benedictines.10 foot. V. CARTMEL PRIORY, 1188. VI. CONISHEAD PRIORY, 1189. Meantime, a new religious movement was on The monastic orders, extending on every side, growing in numbers, wealth, and influence, were yet for the most part only indirectly concerned with matters external to their own walls. Within their precincts, indeed, life was busy enough-what with the frequent and solemn services in their 10 See "Les Monastéres de l'ordre de Cluny du XIII au XV siècle," in the Revue Bénédictine, March, 1893. Lewes Priory, the principal Cluniac foundation in England, was, with its five dependencies, naturalised in 1351. The genealogy of the Cluniac houses may be of interest : From Cluny sprang Lewes, Lenton, Montacute, and Thetford. From Lewes Castleacre, Stanesgate, Clifford, Hor.on, Prittlewell, and Farley. From Castleacre - Bromholme, Mendham, Flushain, and Normannesberch. From Lenton-Roche and Kersall. From Montacute - Careswell, Holme, S. Caroc, and Malpas. From Thetford-Wangford and Herkele. The great house of La Charité sur Loire was the mother house of Wenlock, Bermondsey, Northampton, and Pontefract. Wenlock in turn founded Dudley, Preme, St. Helens, and Paisley. From Paisley was founded Crossraguel. The Devonshire priories of Barnstaple, St. Clair, and St. James, at Exeter, were colonised from St. Martin des Champs, at Paris. churches, the work of teaching going on in school and cloister, the labour of study and the transcription of books, the duties of hospitality, and the management of their estates, the monks must have had but little time to spare. Before the eleventh century the attractiveness and power of community life had been practically confined to the monks; the new movement, which resulted in the foundation of the canons regular of St. Augustine, was to extend those advantages to priests, whose duties were primarily to the faithful in the world. Colleges of secular canons had long been known; and the idea embodied in the work of Ivo of Chartres, as in the earlier efforts of St. Chrodegang of Metz, was to combine the main features of monastic observance with the due fulfilment of the more public duties of the ministry. The canons regular then came in to bridge over the gulf between the monks and the secular clergy, "medium genus;" Erasmus calls them" inter monachos et canonicos quos "sæculares appellant." " From the priory of SS. Julian and Botulph in Colchester, their first and principal" house in England, founded in 1105 (or 1107), the institute, aided by the influence of St. Anselm and the good character of the canons themselves, spread itself all over the country, till their monasteries numbered 175 in England and Wales. Bound by the vow of stability to their respective houses, the canons regular imitated the Benedictines also in the free system of government which prevailed among them; their local and diocesan character rendered the centralisation of Cluny or Citeaux foreign to their ideal. Besides their mode 11 Peregrinatio Religionis ergo. 12 Pope Pascal II decreed that it was to rank first among the English houses of canons. ration in fasting and divine psalmody, they were still further marked off from the monks by their devotedness to preaching, confessing, and baptising, as well as by their readiness to accept the care of such parishes and public chapels as might be entrusted to their management. 14 Contemporary writers are loud in their praise. A Benedictine of Canterbury contrasts their life with that of his own brethren and of the Cistercians, and points out the advantages of the new institute. The canons, he tells us, were spared the long choral duties, the sharp reproofs, the stern discipline of the black monks; they were not bound to the spartan simplicity in vesture and diet of the fieldworking Cistercians." And a chronicler of their own enlarges on the same theme in words which have been often quoted.16 Such were the men who were called in to people three of the Lancashire foundations of the last decade of the 12th century. The noble church of Our Lady at Cartmel still stands to tell us of the generosity and piety of William Mareschall the elder, Earl of Pembroke, its founder; Conishead, a poorer house, dedicated like the preceding to the 13 Nigellus Wireker, Speculum Stultorum. 14 "Quum autem huic ordini a patribus nostris dispensatio verbi Dei, predicationis officium, baptismus, reconciliatio penitentium semper credita fuit." Bull of Pascal II. 1116. 15 Nigellus Wireker, Speculum Stultorum. 16 The passage occurs in the "Llantony Chronicle" in the Monasticon. The writer is speaking of the hermits of Llantony :-"Concilio ergo inito "cujus ordinis cujusve professionis instituta arriperent, nigri monachi non eliguntur, ne labe superfluitatis, quæ eos singulariter inficere dicitur, aliquatenus notarentur: nec etiam Cistercienses, singulariter enim incedere dicuntur et aliis religiosis parum communicare, et præterea rebus augendis cupida satis "sollicitudine inhiare. Tandem competenti quadam mediocritate subnixi, "canonici regulares fieri præeligerunt, tum quia illo adhuc tempore propter "caritatem cariores habebantur, tum quia leviori et modestiori contenti impensa, tanta rerum varietate non indigeant tum quia habitus satis sit elegans, neque nimium nitidus, neque plurimum abjectus, unde plerumque solet 'superbia nutriri, vel sanctitatis ficta suscitari."-Ib., vj, 130. 66 Blessed Virgin Mary, owed its origin to Gabriel de Pennington and William de Lancaster, Baron of Kendal. Burscough Priory, founded in honour of St. Nicholas, by Robert Fitz Henry, Lord of Lathom, and enriched by divers great men of the county," was the third and last of the houses held by the Austin canons in Lancashire. That none of these houses were raised to abbatial rank was probably owing to the wishes of the founders; indeed it was a special condition of the Earl of Pembroke that the house of Cartmel should always remain a priory. A passage from the history of the Benedictine house of Walden, in Essex, brings out clearly the difference which in feudal times was understood to mark off the two grades of monasteries. Reginald, second of its priors, had procured the abbatial dignity for himself and successors, in the absence of their founder's son, Galfrid de Say. On Galfrid's return, the newlycreated abbot and two of his monks went out to meet their benefactor, and to invite him to visit their church and brethren; never a word said Galfrid, but in black anger turned his back upon the monastic deputation. Mastering his temper somewhat, he so far relented as to enter the church, scowling on all around, saying no prayers, speaking to nobody. Coming at last to the door of the chapter-house, his anger found expression in words. Turning to the abbot and brethren he exclaimed, "Oh, my lord abbot, you and your monks have 17 Burscough Priory held the weekly market on Tuesdays, at Ormskirk, by grant of Edward I. An annual fair of five days, beginning on the eve of the decollation of St. John Baptist (Aug. 29); the churches of Ormskirk, Huyton, and Flixton, various estates up and down the county at Wrightington, Chorley, Scarisbrick, Parbold, &c. In 1285 Henry de Lascy, Earl of Lincoln, gave the canons "locum qui dicitur Ruddegate," on condition that a leper from his fief of Widnes should be there supported for life. 1118 "disinherited me; for you have turned my priory "into an abbey, and rejecting me have entirely placed yourselves under the king's power. When the suppression of the religious houses was imminent, the claims of the claims of the "founders" of "priories were constanly being urged, and sometimes not in vain, on the rapacious Tudor. The distinction is one which should be borne in mind, when we would find an explanation for the apparently humble rank which so many rich monasteries were contented to maintain. VIII. COCKERSAND ABBEY, 1190. These two houses, of the Præmonstratensian order, show us how the ideal and system of the Canons Regular were spreading and developing. St. Norbert, Archbishop of Magdeburg, had, before his promotion to the episcopate, given a new impetus to the "canonical" life, infusing into the houses founded by him a greater strictness of observance than was generally followed by the Austin canons. The Præmonstratensians, in fact, may be regarded as standing in the same relation to the main body of regular canons as the Cistercians to the Cluniacs; a greater austerity prevailed among them in the earlier days, and the external duties were more restricted." The abbey of St. Mary at Cockersand, established in 1190, on the site of a priory and hospital of the black canons, was in point of annual revenue the third among the Lancashire monasteries. St. Wilfred's 18 Qui prioratum meum in abbatiam convertistis, meque abjecto potestati regiæ omnino vos subdidistis. (Monasticon Anglicanum, iv, 146.) 19 Founded in 1120, by St. Norbert, the Præmonstratensians settled in England in 1140, and founded in all thirty-five houses. |