within its wall the Countess de Montfort, we may take the words, per indulgentiam summi Pontificis, to mean that a pious and munificent princess was welcome, but that one who merely represented authority without gifts, could on no account be received. The other charge against the prior and cellarer of Beaulieu, for allowing the seculars to eat flesh at the Dedication, was also, probably, only a bit of affected purism. It could not be seriously supposed, even by the most ascetic of the White Brethren, that nobles and squires would come to do honour to their ceremonial without receiving in return the ordinary attentions of hospitality. We can only account for the fault found with the officials at Beaulieu, by imputing it to a desire to parade the professed strictness of the Order, and perhaps to excuse the visitors for the insult offered to the queen and prince, and through them to the king. We cannot gather from these annals that anything like a real and effective discipline was kept up over the Cistercian order in England. They gloried in their exemptions and immunities; they professed to aim at, and reach a higher standard than the ordinary religious. It is scarcely to be wondered at if they were not very ready to bring their short comings before the eyes of the profane laity, and there was certainly a strong temptation to the visiting abbots to palliate and excuse rather than to severely condemn any matters of which the outer world could be cognisant. And if the tendency of the exemption system was to impair discipline, it had also another effect which was most injurious to doctrine, and which, perhaps, more than any other one cause, was at the bottom of the strange growths of medieval religion. We read in these Annals of constant changes and developments in the religious services of the Cistercian order. At one time it is determined to adopt S. Francis as a saint of the order, then to patronise the 1100 virgins; again the Cistercians decide on having twelve lectios for S. Edmund of Canterbury; in another place we have a form of prayer against the Tartars, which the order were to use. Now this is altogether irrespective of what the Church may direct or approve the Cistercians were a Church of themselves. What to them were synods, canons, or bishops? They settled their own affairs, only in subordination to the pope. If they did not approve of a saint they would not take him any the more because the Church had adopted him. They claimed to select and judge for themselves. It was the same with the other orders which made specially strict professions. The Dominicans had one religion, the Franciscans another.

1

'Annales de Waverleiâ, 338, 351, 352.

None of these were bound by the general laws of the Church. They were above law and custom. Thus there were systems within systems, rival eclecticism, and rival developments, which tended to produce a strange congeries of doctrine and practice. The extreme claims made by the Cistercians for exemption from all interference, not only for themselves but also for all those with whom they were brought in contact, is well illustrated by an account given in the Waverley Annals:

'One Easter time, a certain young man, by trade a shoemaker, was taken into our shop to work. In process of time, it being known that he was kept there, a certain officer was sent from the king, with many attendants, to arrest him as guilty of homicide, and to bring him away. When then we heard that he was arrested, and that he was taken out of our shop and put in bonds, the Lord Abbot, with the seniors of the house, went to the officers and forbade them, under his anathema, to attempt an outrage of this sort, alleging our privileges, which make all our premises as free and secure as the altars of churches. They, however, without paying any regard to God or our holy religion, carried with them the young man bound in chains, and committed him to prison. We, therefore, were struck with amazement at such an enormous crime, especially on account of the danger which threatened our whole order (because if men could be thus arrested with impunity, in spite of the liberties of the order, and put in bonds in our monasteries or our farm-houses, there would henceforth be no difference between the premises of secular and religious men, but thus our houses would become a common place of entrance, like the courts of law in the State.) Wherefore, having held a consultation of the elder brethren our joy was straightway turned into grief, because the solemn rites of the Mass and the divine mysteries ceased in our abbey. With all speed the Lord Abbot went to the Legate, who at this time was in England, explained to him the outrage, praying him to protect our privileges, and to preserve the liberties of the order uninjured. But the Legate, only putting him off, and acting slackly in the matter, the Abbot went to the king, and brought before him his complaint, with many sighs and tears, showing that the liberty and peace of our holy church and our holy religion was disturbed, and that there could be no other satisfaction made to God and the Order, unless he who was scandalously and irreverently dragged away from our abbey, were by his command brought back and restored to the sacred place. This request the king could have granted at once, had not his council opposed it, and as men of great influence demanded it, the Abbot had a day assigned to him for bringing forward the privileges of the Order and the charters of our liberty. But when the king had heard of our suspension from divine offices, although he did not object to it having been at first resorted to in such a crisis, yet he would not have it to be continued. Accordingly, the Lord Abbot on the morrow, which was the day of S. Laurence, commanded the holy offices to be celebrated. The Abbot followed up the important cause in which he was embarked, and on the day appointed, and on other days after, exhibited our privileges and read our liberties before the king and council. Some there were, however, so perverse, as out of malice to interpret the apostolical writings not in favour of the order, but against it, so that the Lord Abbot, with great grief and bitterness of soul, had to contend for his liberty. At length, by God's mercy, after much toil and fatigue, some true and religious men who rightly understood our privileges, showed plainly to the king and his council that the enclosures of our abbeys and granges were

free by apostolical authority, and were as much quit from all entrance of wicked men as the altars of churches, and that all those who violated our premises were excommunicated by the chief pontiff. Upon hearing this, the king ordered by his high authority that the officer, with his attendants, should take back the man according to the privileges of the order, and should restore him to the abbey, to the honour of the order. This was done to the joy of the whole land, which gloried in our privileges. Afterwards, the violators of our abbey, as being violators of holy Church, were excommunicated, and were cited to the gates of the abbey by the letters of the Legate. Here, having first made satisfaction to God and the abbey, they were publicly scourged by the rural dean of the place and the Vicar of Farnham, and having been absolved from their sentence, and penance being enjoined to them, they went away, having been thus made for the future somewhat more civil to our Order.''

The chronicler might well triumph in the termination of the dispute, but an impartial judge of the matter will not fail to perceive the gross injustice, which first of all shielded a murderer on a mere pretence, and then gloried in inflicting punishment on men who were merely the official executors of a warrant. But the story is instructive, as it shows how completely the existence of such privileges as those claimed by the Cistercians rendered good government and impartial exercise of law impossible; and this claim, be it observed, was made not for the good of Holy Church. It was not like the claim of Thomas á Becket, or Bishop Grosseteste, that churchmen should be judged only by churchmen, and that it was necessary for the purposes of ecclesiastical discipline that the lay courts should not interfere. This was not the claim of the Cistercians. They did not concern themselves about the general interests of the church; they looked only to their own order. They would consider their privileges as much infringed by a pursuivant of the Archbishop as by a bailiff of the King. It was a purely selfish exemption for certain ends of their own convenience and advancement, for which they strove. Under these special privileges they claimed to be allowed to monopolize as much of the soil of England as they could obtain from the devotion of the benefactors of their order. And what did they give to Church or State in return. for these vast benefits. They lived in the midst of the land a life of watchful and suspicious antagonism to those around them, professing themselves to be more holy than their neighbours, but often contradicting their professions by their practice; affecting to despise wealth, yet accumulating it to a vast amount; with all their interests, their zeal, and their organization at the service of a foreign prince-an un-English and unpatriotic sect, which brought no energies to bear on the side of virtue against vice, of order against disorder, but, absorbed in

'Annales de Waverleiâ, p. 325, seq.

their own employments and their own schemes were simply a burden and a trouble to their Church and country.

Before leaving the Waverley Annals we desire to notice a few very interesting facts connected with the ecclesiastical history of the period, which are scattered up and down in their

pages.

Under the year 1181 we have a notice of the Carthusian brethren having occupied their first dwellings in England. These were a sect of religious who made even higher professions of asceticism than the Cistercians themselves, and we may add, held to them more faithfully, a circumstance which may serve to account for the fact of their not having spread and increased like the others. Of this order was Hugh of Burgundy, better known as S. Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln. In his life, as given in the Golden Legend, we are told, ' In that tyme Henry, Kynge ' of England, dyd doo bylde and founded an hous of Charter'hous in England, wherfore he sent into Burgoyn to the Charter'hous for to have one of them to have the gouvernaunce and 'rewle of it. And at the grete instaunce and prayer of the Kynge unnethe coude he gett this sayd Saint Hughe, but at the last, by the commaundment of his oueryst and request of 'the Kynge he was sente into the reame of Englond, and there 'made procurator of the same hous, and there lyved an holy and 'devoute lyf, lyke as he dyd before, that he stood so in the Kynge's grace that the Kynge named him to be Byssop of Lyncolne, which bysshoprycke the Kynge had holden longe in his honde, and was called thereto by the sayd chapytre, and the byssoprycke to hym presentyd.' S. Hugh was especially famous for his pious care in attending to lepers, and in burying the dead, and thus the chronicler tells us, 'Our Lord gaf and 'rendryd to hym by retrybucion condyngne honourable sepul'ture, for what tyme he departed out of this world, and the 'same day that his body was broughte to the churche of Lyncolne, it happed that the Kynge of Englonde, the Kynge of Scotland, and three archebyssoppes, baronnes, and grete 'multitude of peple were gadred at Lyncolne, and were present at his honourable sepulture.' The death of S. Hugh is mentioned in the Waverley Annals, but we learn from Roger of Wendover that not only were King John and King William of Scotland present at the funeral, but that they also acted as bearers of the corpse; yet it was at this very time that John exhibited such fury against the Cistercian abbots, and then in his caprice founded an abbey of the Order, as has been mentioned above. S. Hugh was the designer, and in part the

'Annales de Waverleiâ, p. 242.

2 Roger de Wendover, III. 162.

builder, of some of the most beautiful portions of Lincoln Cathedral, and this noble fane was soon afterwards polluted by a strange and horrible crime, the account of which is given in the Waverley Annals. In the year 1205, before the altar of S. Peter, in the Church at Lincoln, William de Bramford, subdean of the Cathedral, was murdered by a certain clerk, who had been vicar of that Church. We may conjecture that the unfortunate sub-dean had been instrumental in removing his assassin from his post, and that the act was one of revenge. The remainder of the story illustrates the savage manner of the period. The clerk was straightway in the midst of the same church torn limb from limb by the servants of the sub-dean ' and others, and then his remains were dragged out of the 'church, and hung up outside the city. All this was done on 'the Lord's Day of the Dominical letter B." Another interesting event, connected with the Church at Lincoln, is told in fuller detail in these Annals than in most others. Many notices are there of the cruelties practised upon the wretched Jews, but that story, by which a great many of those which followed it were pretended to be justified, is related as follows:

:

1255, the Jews, the enemies of the Christian name, having miserably afflicted with many and various torments a certain boy in Lincoln, named Hugh, at length, in insult and contempt of the name of Christ, fixed him to a cross, and killed him by a cruel death. Afterwards desiring to conceal so great a crime from the Christians, they took down the glorious body from the cross and threw it into the river to sink it, but the water not enduring so great an injury of its Creator, straightway threw it out on dry ground. Upon this, the enemies of Christ thinking vainly to hide it more safely and secretly under ground, buried the body; but on the morrow they found the body of the blessed martyr placed upon the ground as before. Astonished, as might be expected, at the strangeness of so great a thing, they were nearly driven to madness, not knowing what to do or whither to turn themselves. At last they threw it into a well containing water for drinking. Straightway so great a light shone upon the place from heaven, and so fragrant an odour filled the whole place, that all could perceive that something holy and wonderful was contained in that well. The Christians hastened to the spot, and seeing the venerable body float upon the water, with great devotion they drew it out. By the hands and feet pierced, by the head punctured in the form of a crown, and the other scars on the body, it was clear to all that the detested Jews were the authors of this crime. They carried the body, in procession, to the church, miracles being wrought by it on the way, and eighteen of the wicked Jews confessing their crime with their own lips, were dragged by horses through the streets of London, and afterwards hung.' 2

The sufferings of these eighteen unfortunates were however by no means the whole of the vengeance taken on the Jews for the supposed crime of the murder of little S. Hugh. Many a terrible onslaught on this unfortunate people during the middle

Aunales de Waverleiâ, p. 267.

2 Ib. p. 346, seq.