By Rev. Chr. Wordsworth, M.A. 25.^ 



The Gilbertines were the only order of purely English origin and 

 province, though the more famous and more widely spread Cistercian 

 order owes at least half its being to our St. Stephen Harding, of 

 Sherborne {cir. 1110). His younger contemporary and admirer, 

 who was Becket's elder and staunch supporter, was St. Gilbert of 

 Sempringham, son of Sir Joceline, a Lincolnshire Norman knight 

 and a Saxon mother. He lived not indeed to the age of the patri- 

 arch Moses, nor of that aged subject to whom our King sent a 

 birthday present a month or two ago, but he lived from about 

 1083 to 4th February, 1189, and was formally canonized in 1202, 

 having received his aureole as confessor by popular consent some 

 years before. In 1135 he founded a religious house at his native 

 place, Sempringham, in Lincolnshire, which was one of his rectories, 

 and followed it up with twelve subordinate houses, mostly in 

 Lincolnshire and Yorkshire ; and one as far off' as Chicksand, in 

 Bedfordshire ; on a plan suggested, perhaps, by that of Blessed 

 Robert of Arbrissel (Arbresec), at Fontevraud (1099), who converted 

 Bertrude, the lovely daughter of Simon de Montfort. Ame'sbury 

 nunnery was a cell of Fontevraud for at least two hundred years. 

 Gilbert became a friend of William of Eievaulx, Ailred, Bernard 

 of Clairvaux, Mala.chy of Armagh, and Becket. St. Gilbert's 

 institutions for his order are printed in Dugdale's Monasticon 

 (vi., *xix — *xxii.) He began by instructing seven women, his old 

 parishioners. They took the vows of Cistercian nuns, though when 

 it came to the point subsequently the Cistercian authorities declined 

 to be responsible for St. Gilbert's houses. Next he persuaded the 

 countiy women, who performed some menial services for the nuns, 

 to become lay-sisters. As a further step, he attached to the house 

 some field labourers, churls, and run-away serfs, as lay-brethren or 

 conversi to do the work of the farm ; but of coui'se he assigned them 

 buildings entirely detached and separated from those of the nuns 

 and sisters. Fourthly and finally, he associated with his convent 

 some clerks or regular canons of the Order of St. Augustine, to be 

 spiritual counsellors and ministrants to the nuns, and to maintain 

 the services in a sort of double chapel, which the latter attended 

 while rendered invisible to the clergy (and vice versa) by a walled 



