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unselfishness needed for conventual life, until his vocation tested 
by a year’s probation, he would then be admitted to profession 
and received into the ranks of the community. This would be 
under the priorship of Thomas Haithwaite. Likely enough he 
would then be sent to complete his studies at one of the Universi- 
ties. The regular orders had the custom of sending their more 
promising youths to study there, the Austin canons having a 
famous house at Oxford, St. Frideswide’s, afterwards the cathedral 
of that city. I have not found any record that Senhouse did 
actually study at Oxford, but the practice is certain; and we may 
well suppose that one who afterwards became prior of his house 
was in his younger years amongst its more promising members. 
Returning home, his days would pass by in the peaceful round of 
conventual duties, engaged in teaching and private study, in 
priestly work among the people, and above all, in the punctual 
performance of the daily service, the stately ritual of the cathedral 
church. So passed quietly by the uneventful life of our hero, until 
the day when on the death of Prior Gondebour, in 1507, the votes 
of his brethren called him to the highest position within their gift, 
and he was duly installed Cathedral Prior of Carlisle. 
Carlisle Cathedral was not then the fragment, beautiful but 
mutilated, which we know it now. The church is only about half 
the size that it was in Prior Senhouse’s time. The Norman nave 
was standing then as Ethelwald had built it four hundred years 
before—a miniature Durham, with its simple, massive piers, its 
plain rounded arches, and its barbaric dog-tooth decoration. Our 
old enemies the Scots destroyed this as well as many of the 
conventual buildings in the 17th century; and only two bays are 
now left to suggest to antiquarian eyes its former grandeur. But 
of the monastery which Senhouse governed considerable portions 
remain, nearly all of which are in some way connected with him. 
The later Priors of Carlisle were not idle rulers. They had all 
the Churchman’s fondness for architecture ; and their works show 
them to have been liberal patrons of all the arts. It has been 
remarked that ‘the half-century preceding the destruction of the 
monasteries witnessed a great revival of architectural activity.” 
