to which the monks were obliged to subscribe, he makes them say that they had given all these things willingly and freely to their beloved and venerable lord, John, King of England,' and that no one was to presume to call them exactions or extortions.1 We do not gather from the chronicle that the Cistercians ever obtained restitution of what had been taken from them. John's reparation to the Church was slow and evasive; only the chief prelates succeeded in getting any considerable portion of their losses. The bitter expressions which the chronicler uses of Richard de Marisco, John's chief agent for ecclesiastical exactions, of whose appointment to the bishopric of Durham he says, that an ape in the court was made a priest in the church,' 2 seem to show that the Cistercians had not much to thank him for.

Having suffered so much at the hands of John, the Cistercian order would naturally be anxious to stand well with his successor. Accordingly we find, that on the confirmation by Henry III. of the charters extracted from his predecessor, when a fifteenth was granted to the king, the Cistercians, as well on account of the liberties as to secure the favour and kindness of the king,' gave voluntarily 2,000 marks of silver. This was a politic contribution. Henry III. was soon afterwards a guest at Waverley Abbey, was present at the chapter of the monks, and was made an honorary member of their society. We may be sure that the Cistercians were not exempt from the tax of a tenth levied in England by their great patron the pope (Gregory IX.), for his crusade against the Emperor Frederic. This transaction, so scandalous to all concerned in it, was the natural consequence of the permitted intrusion of a foreign prince on English ground. The weak king, with no proper sense of the dignity of his office, did not venture to oppose it. He coveted similar powers for himself; and the pope, not ungrateful, allowed the exempt orders to bear the burden of the subsidy demanded by Henry in the year 1232.4 Whether this allowance was very well received by the order may be doubtful. Certainly there are traces in the chronicle that Otho, the Cardinal Legate, was not in high favour with the Cistercians. When he held his council in London, very few indeed' of the abbots of the order attended him; and in a matter touching the privileges of Waverley, the writer says, 'he used dissimulation, and acted remissly.5

6

The fact of their having contributed, with the rest of the land, to the royal Exchequer, was one which the Cistercians were by no means desirous of having drawn into a prece

1

Annales de Waverleiâ, p. 268.. 4 lb. p 310.

2 Ib. p. 288.
5 Ib. pp. 318-326.

8 lb. p. 301.

dent. Accordingly, when in 1256, the king, hardly pressed for money, had, by the pope's permission, exacted a tenth from all the ecclesiastics in England who were not specially exempt, and was eagerly desirous to add the Cistercians to the number of the contributors, the order boldly resisted. Another pope was now in office, and he had, in his permission to the king to tax the spiritualty, formally excepted the Cistercian order. If, however, these privileged ones could be induced voluntarily to renounce this exemption, and to contribute, as they had done before, the same end might be gained. But the Cistercians now stood in a different position from that which they occupied at the beginning of the reign. They had contributed then voluntarily, but since then they had been taxed with the rest. If they should now give, they would seem to confirm the king's right to amerce them. Accordingly they resisted stoutly. The king being ' vehemently indignant that the Cistercians contributed to him ' nothing of their goods, tried to bring them to do this, first by 'blandishments, and then by threats, that at least they should 'collect some money among themselves, and thus make, as it were, a spontaneous gift, although, at the same time, he 'swore that he would not take less than 25,000 pounds from 'them. But they feared lest by satisfying so heavy an exaction, as it were of their own accord, the custom should arise of their ⚫ being compelled to do this even against their own will, as often as the king pleased, and that thus they should lose the ancient 'liberties of their order, and offend the chief pontiff, who, in his 'special affection, had exempted them from the tax. They, therefore, all confederated together, and like a firm army, resisted the attempts of the king by this answer, saying, that 'without the leave of their chapter-general and all their abbots, they could not dare to do such a thing. The king seeing their 'firmness, and that he could not advance in his purpose, was 'seized with fury, and with threats and abuse bade them depart from his court. Therefore the unity and the firmness of the 'Cistercian order was everywhere spoken of, praised, and ad'mired, and in the opinion of many, there was not an order ' under heaven to be compared to it, in form, unity, and in zeal 1 for religion.' This, indeed, was a signal triumph for the Cistercians, but whether it was due more to the weakness of the king, or to the admirable organization of the order, may be doubted. From the next grant of a tenth, in the year 1266, the order was again specially exempted. It was otherwise, however, when the son of King Henry, a prince of a different stamp, succeeded to the throne. In the year 1276, by the grant

1 Annales de Waverleiâ, p. 348.

2 Ib. p 373.

1

you

of the Parliament, a fifteen of all temporal goods, both of clerks and laity, levied in an unheard-of manner, even to the most extreme point, was by the king's command taken and confiscated." To this levy the Cistercians contributed, as well as the rest of the nation. The exemptions, indeed, on which they so much prided themselves, were now being vigorously assailed. In 1281 Archbishop Peckham held a council at Lambeth, summoning thereto all the bishops and representatives of religious bodies, both non-exempt and exempt, the latter being summoned on the ground of the non-exempt churches which they held. The privileged orders, however, did not attend, whereupon the archbishop published a letter, severely censuring them for their contumacy. "They think themselves free,' he writes, 'like the 'wild ass's colts, and have but little care for the troubles of their mother, to whose bowels they are rather a burden than an honour, being like Hagar, despisers of their mistress. We, 'however, desiring to correct such audacious presumption, strictly enjoin you, with regard to all the churches in your dioceses, which, being non-exempt themselves, are appropriated to exempt monasteries of any order, that you at once seques'trate them and keep them with the utmost strictness until 'hear again from us.' Against this, of course, the Cistercians appealed to Rome; but we gather from the chronicle that the appeal was not very skilfully prosecuted, and the Archbishop would appear to have been in a great measure successful in enforcing obedience. He had, indeed, the strongest ground to stand upon with regard to the churches annexed to the monasteries. It had been one of the original professions of the Cistercian order, that they would appropriate no tithes. 'For'asmuch as they did not read, either in the rule or the life of S. Benedict, that that doctor had possessed churches, or altars, or oblations, or tombs, or tithes, or bakehouses, or mills, or farmhouses, or labourers, nor that women were allowed to enter his monastery; therefore they abjured all these things, saying, that Benedict testifies that a monk ought to be estranged from 'all secular acts. They said also, that tithes were divided by 'the holy fathers, whose statutes it is sacrilege to transgress, into four parts, namely, one part for the bishop, one for the 'priest, one for hospitality and charity, the fourth for the repair of the church. In this calculation they did not find anything 'for the monk; and therefore they refused unjustly to claim for 'themselves these things which belonged to others. A curious

เ

1 Annales de Waverle, p 386.

2 Ib. pp. 395–397.

Instituta Monastorum Cisterciensium Monasticon, vol v. p. 224.

comment upon the above is supplied by the history of the order, almost all the abbeys of which had large numbers of subject churches, whose tithes they enjoyed. The multiplication of altars also in the conventual churches is one great topic in the monastic annals. At Waverley we read of as many as five being dedicated at once. These were all for the purpose of attracting oblations, by putting forward the more popular saints, such as S. Thomas and S. Edmund of Canterbury, S. Francis, S. Robert, &c.

The institution of vicarages began in the thirteenth century. The chief author of this salutary arrangement seems to have been Hugh de Welles, bishop of Lincoln. His roll is still preserved, in which a large number of apportionments of vicarial tithes is to be found. This was vigorously followed up by his successor, Grosseteste, and became general throughout the country at this period; but until the bishops effectually interfered, the monks were the great swallowers up of the tithes throughout the land, and in a short time would have got everything into their hands. For those who were thus encroaching on the rights of the Church to refuse to be amenable to diocesan discipline, in respect of the churches which they had appropriated, was a grievous and unbearable presumption, and we fully sympathize with Archbishop Peckham in his attempts to put it down. The Cistercians, indeed, were no lovers of bishops, and their chroniclers do not lose any opportunity that presents itself for saying a hard thing of the heads of the church. Neither are they remarkable for being lovers of kings, and we shall find their writers almost universally (as, indeed, the majority of the monkish chroniclers,) taking the popular side on all questions. The Waverley chronicler is as strongly on the side of the barons as against King Henry, in which we can fully sympathize with him, and supplies many interesting details of the Barons' War.

The Cistercians asserted that the requirements of visitatory discipline were satisfied by the regulation that all their monasteries were to be visited by abbots of their own Order. We have already quoted the testimony of the Abbot of Savigny, that this plan of visiting themselves was in reality a mere farce; and we know from Bishop Grosseteste's letters how bitterly he felt the evil of this obstruction to all good discipline, and how earnestly he strove at Rome to get the anomaly removed, but without success. We are bound, however, to produce from the Waverley Annals any traces which we can find of the reality of this discipline over the order in England. In the year 1187, Henry, the second Abbot of Waverley of that name, was dismissed from his office, it does not appear for what cause. In his time, the chronicle tells us, there were seventy

monks and one hundred and twenty lay brethren of the house.1 Probably there may have been at this period some general complaints of slackness or want of discipline among the English Cistercians, for in the same year there appears to have been a general visitation of their houses, by visitors sent by the Chapter, held at Citeaux. In this visitation two abbots were removed, William, abbot of Tintern, and William, abbot of Bordesley; and it is very remarkable that, twelve years later, the successor of the latter abbot was also removed, which would seem to indicate that there was some scandal in the house difficult to abate.2

There is also an instance recorded in the Waverley Annals of a punishment inflicted upon a monastery for an offence against the Cistercian rule of not suffering a woman to enter a house of the order. S. Bernard was so strict an enforcer of this rule that he would not suffer his own sister to come within the walls of Clairvaux, and we must say that, in the instance we are about to mention, only the most exaggerated strictness could find anything to blame in the conduct of the monks. It appears that in the year 1245, the Church of King John's Abbey of Beaulieu was consecrated, and Henry III. with his Queen Eleanor, and the young Prince Edward, were present at the ceremony. Immediately on its conclusion the young heir apparent was taken dangerously ill, and his mother, doing the duty of an affectionate nurse, stayed with him in the abbey for the space of three weeks. For this hospitality, which, indeed, was almost forced upon them, the prior and cellarer of Beaulieu were deposed, as they had consented to the Queen remaining in the abbey, it being further objected to them that at the feast of the Dedication they had allowed laymen to partake of flesh." Was this churlish and Pharisaic strictness a real and genuine exercise of Cistercian discipline, or was it a piece of petty spite against the king, who claimed contributions from the favoured Order, and does not appear to have been very liberal in his donations towards them? It is very remarkable, that, just before this is told us, we are informed that the Princess Eleanor, wife of Simon de Montfort, had, with her husband, her two sons, and three female attendants, been staying at Waverley; but then this princess was a good benefactress to the abbey, and accordingly she is recorded to have lodged there by the indulgence of the chief pontiff.' Now, as it is quite impossible that a message could have been dispatched to Rome for the express purpose of knowing whether Waverley Abbey might receive.

'Annales de Waverleiâ, p. 244.

2 Ib. pp. 244, 245, 252. 4 Ib. p. 336.

3 Ib. p. 337.