charity and courtesy with the monasteries around. In the beginning the external authority, which in later times was reserved to the Pope or entrusted to the general chapter of the order, lay in the hands of the bishop of the diocese in which the monastery was situate. The earlier Benedictine monasteries were thus strictly diocesan institutions; they were of the locality, local; the monastic life was a phase of the Christian life, safeguarded by the same authority as that which governed the rest of Christendom. Exemption from episcopal visitation, a privilege much sought for in after years, came at length to be the common law as regards monastic communities of the older orders. The question is an involved one, and must not detain us. The pros and cons of exemption have been hotly debated; much of the piquancy of the monastic chronicles turns on this subject. Here we need only say that one result of the policy of the Holy See in granting such exemptions was seen at the Reformation, in the dogged unwillingness of the monks of the greater abbeys to throw off their allegiance to the head of Christendom and to take upon them instead the heavy yoke of Henry VIII and his nominees in the English episcopate. But to return to Penwortham. That it was never raised to higher rank than that of a priory, nor ever became an independent house, was owing in part perhaps to the slenderness of its endowments, in part to the unwillingness of the brethren there to cut themselves off from their mother house of Evesham. Where the monks of a dependent cell were bent on freeing their house from its allegiance to some distant community, they generally found means of doing so, as we find in the cases of Binham and Wymundham, once subject to St. Alban's; but for the most part the advantages of incorporation with an old and honoured house, and P the ties of that religio loci which bound the monks to the home of their early choice and profession, outweighed the somewhat unsubstantial privilege of managing their own affairs without let or hindrance. And in the case of priories dependent on "exempt" monasteries like Evesham, the choice between obedience to their abbot and obedience to the diocesan was one which, human nature being what it is, the monks could have made but in one way. So Penwortham and Evesham were never parted; and their interests could scarce have clashed. To the Worcestershire abbey its Lancashire cell proved convenient in many ways; it kept alive that connexion with the north which had begun not many years before in the restoration of the abbeys of Whitby, Lastingham, Wearmouth, and Jarrow; it had its uses as a source of income,+ as a new recruiting ground, as a place of change for the sick or ailing, occasionally too as a convenient provision for such impracticable people as ex-abbot Roger Norreys, on his expulsion from the monastery of Evesham by the papal legate in 1213. It was useful, too, in other ways: doubtless some of its monks, who had grown accustomed to the more trying climate of our northern shire, were among the brethren of Evesham who went to Denmark in 1174 to found the monastery of Odensee; its value as a training ground for future prelates was shown in the case of Prior Thomas, of Gloucester, who was taken thence to govern Evesham, where he was abbot from 1243 to 1255. Nor were the advantages all on one side; the monks who administered the Penwortham property were doubtless men of some experience, pioneers perhaps who brought into Lancashire the more 4 Penwortham supplied the Evesham refectory annually with "una summa "salmonis et dua millia allecium." Salmon must be scarce in the Ribble now-a-days. advanced methods of farming which they had learnt in the favoured valley of the Severn. Through Penwortham and similar places the language, the ideas, the manners, of one district made their influence felt in distant parts, Worcestershire and northern England were drawn closer together in feeling and interests; narrowness and provincialism no longer ruled supreme. There is another thing to be said about Penwortham. Among the gifts bestowed upon it were the churches of St. Mary, at Penwortham itself; St. Andrew's, at Leyland; St. Cuthbert's, at North Meols; with the chapels of Meols and Farington. I should not have drawn attention to this had not a facile and interesting writer of our own times' denounced the impropriation of churches to religious houses as a grave scandal. The system, like most systems, was, of course, liable to abuse, but on the whole Í suppose there was no more intrinsic wickedness in it in the middle ages than there is now; and it has yet to be proved that the impropriated churches fared worse at the hands of the monasteries than do those which are now-a-days assigned to colleges or universities. "The monks build churches!" exclaims Dr. Jessop; "I could not from my own "knowledge bring forward a single instance in all "the history of England of a monastery contri"buting a shilling of money or a load of stone for "the repair, let alone the erection, of any parish "church in the land." This is a little too bad, if we are to rely on the statements of those who have treated of these things. I know not how the case stands with the churches belonging to our Lancashire houses; but elsewhere throughout England there is clear and ample proof of the care which the monks extended to the parish churches assigned 5 Rev. Augustus Jessop, D.D., The Coming of the Friars and other Historic Essays. London, 1889, pp. 157, &c. to them. I cannot allow Dr. Jessop's words to pass without a protest, though I must content myself here with giving, in a note, some few cases in point, which have come under my notice in the last few weeks." A more recent remark of Dr. Jessop's also demands some notice. Lecturing at the Royal Institution, he said that "St. Benedict had one "weakness. He looked with suspicion upon culture, "regarding it as mischievous, and discouraged 66 6 Consult, for instance, An account of the churches in the division of Holland, in the county of Lincoln. Boston Morton, 1843. "The abbot of Croyland erected a church at Whaplode, which is unquestionably the earliest "of the existing fen churches." Gedney: according to Stukeley, "This "church was built by the abbots of Croyland, who had a stately house on "the north side of it and vast possessions in the parish." St. Guthlac's, at Fishtoft, was another church built by the monks of Croyland. One of the four Long Sutton churches was built by the abbot of St. Mary's, York, in emulation of the work of his Croyland neighbours. Of Cowbit we read that it was repaired by Thomas de Multon, prior of Spalding, whose arms appear also in the parish church of Moulton. Of SS. Mary and Nicholas at Spalding it is written: "The building of this church is said to have been commenced "by a prior of Spalding monastery, named William de Littleport, in the latter "part of the 13th century.' Speaking of Heckington Church, in the same county, Murray's Handbook says: "The reason for the astonishing magnificence of this church, in a place which never was more than a village, is "that in 1345 the great abbey of Bardney, which already possessed a chantry "here, obtained a royal license to appropriate the church to its own use. The "work was at once begun," &c. Of Southwold, in Suffolk, "a chapel was first "erected here in the reign of King John, by the monks of Thetford." (Excursions in the county of Suffolk, 1819, vol. ii, p. 127.) Elsewhere it is the same story. Abbot Bere, of Glastonbury, was proverbially a builder of churches (see Digby's Mores Catholici, iii, 458); Abbot Robert, of St. Edmunsbury, built the tower of Ixworth Church, Suffolk, in 1470; an abbot of Westminster built the chancel of St. Margaret's (see Stow's Survey of London, ed. Morley, 1890); the completion of the parish church of St. Eustace, at Tavistock, Devon, "is assigned to abbot Culling, A D. 1384, the tower having been begun by his predecessor" (Handbook to Devon, &c.) ; the canons of Cirencester bore the greater part of the costs of the parish church (Browne Willis, History of Abbeys); thirty abbots or priors contributed to the building of St. Mary's Church, Cambridge (Documents from MS. Library cccc, p. 8. London: Parker, 1838). The chancel of the church of St. Nicholas, Great Bookham, Surrey, was built by abbot Rutherwyke, of Chertsey, in 1341, as appears from an inscription cut deeply upon a stone in the east wall: "Hæc abbate fuerat constructa Johanne De Rutherwyke, decus ob sancti Nicolai, Primo, Christus ei paret hinc sedem requiei." The chancel resembles that of Egham, rebuilt by the same abbot, where is also an inscription in precisely similar characters. "learning." Can the learned doctor ever have read St. Benedict's rule? Here are a few passages for his consideration. "Lectiones sacras libenter "audire," is one of the "Instruments of good "works," in cap. iv. Public reading during meal time and before compline, is provided for in cap. xxxviii and cap. xlii. The times for study and manual labour are assigned in cap. xlviii. Three or four hours' daily reading is enjoined on all; in certain seasons the time is prolonged; the hours devoted by some to manual labour must be given to intellectual work if circumstances require it. Sunday was to be devoted to study. Almost from the beginning of the Benedictine order the manual work for the lettered brethren took the form of writing and copying manuscripts. "Learning," then, was amply provided for, and the whole tendency of the summary of Christian life and duty embodied in the rule was to encourage the highest type of real "culture" in all who embraced the monastic life. II. LANCASTER, alien Priory of St. Mary. The next house to be noticed is the little priory of St. Mary at Lancaster, founded by Roger, Earl of Poitiers, in 1094. Like Penwortham, it was a dependent priory; for the prior and five monkswho (with three priests, two clerks, and servants) formed the establishment-were to be drawn from the Norman abbey of St. Martin de Seez. It thus affords us an instance of the practice, so common during the years of French supremacy in England, of planting colonies of French monks up and down the country, on lands which had been granted to them by the conquerors. The system must have worked fairly well-from a French point of view— else it had not been so widely followed; what was |
