18 Malmesbury. 



King's relatives don't go to ragged schools. We may therefore 

 without extravagance venture to claim on behalf of Maldulf, the 

 character of an accomplished and respectable Missionary from 

 Ireland ; and further, that 1200 years ago, Maldulf 'sbury was (to 

 use a familiar phrase) the crack school of the kingdom of Wessex. 

 The youths educated there were attached to their teacher : they 

 grew up into a sort of college, and the next step was to live under 

 rules of discipline. The ground about the fortress happened to 

 belong to the Bishop of Wessex, Eleutherius; he gave it for the pur- 

 pose, and this was the beginning of the famous Abbey of Malmesbury. 

 Before we go any farther, let me call your attention to one 

 point Vi'hich it may be useful to bear in mind. The edifices now 

 commonly called Malmesbury, Westminster, or Bath Abbey, were 

 only the Abbey-cAwrc^es.. An Abbey is properly the domestic 

 buildings occupied by the monks. Of the real Westminster or 

 Bath Abbey not one stone is left upon another. It is only the 

 Abbey-church that we see. There is just the same difference at 

 Oxford and Cambridge between a College and a College-chapel. 



And whilst making distinctions, there is a second which it may 

 be useful to understand. You read of the secular clergy and the 

 regular clergy, and moreover that they were not always such good 

 friends as they might have been. The difference in the meaning 

 of the names is simply this. We parish clergymen, are secular 

 clergy, because we live in scbcuIo, i.e., in the world, in general 

 society. The regulars were the monks, who lived, not in parishes, 

 but shut up in monasteries, ad regulam, i.e., according to the regu- 

 lation and discipline of their order. The monks had nothing 

 whatever to do with the spiritual care of parishes. If, as was very 

 often the case, they possessed the tithes of a parish, they employed 

 some secular clergyman, out of their house, to do the parish duty 

 and work ; and him they called their vicar, or representative. 



The Monastic Order living apart by themselves and under rules 

 of their own, always desired to escape from the authority of the 

 Bishops, who were the heads of the secular clergy. They wished 

 to depend only upon the Pope : and in this they very often suc- 

 ceeded. But it was a cause of continual jealousy in the dioceses : 



