By Sir Charles Eobhouse, Bart. 219 



bed, and especially was he required to comb his hair, and to wash 

 his face, hands and clothes, and lavatories, towels and troughs were 

 set apart for these purposes. 



Children, including those of good families, were educated at the 

 monastery, serving as choristers, and wearing the habit of the order. 

 Charity to the poor, especially in Lent, was practised in profusion, 

 and the remains of the bread and wine served in the refectory were 

 given to poor travellers. 



Such were the main rules of the order; but if the Supplicatio 

 Cluniacensium, exhibited before Edward III. in Parliament at 

 Winchester, was not — as it may, perhaps, have been — a document 

 made to order, these rules were at one time little observed. 



The domus, the supplication set forth, was ill-governed, as well 

 in spiritualities as in temporalities. Where there should have been, 

 thirty to forty monks there were not one-third of that number. 

 Goods, that should have gone to sustain the monks, were wasted or 

 exported. There were no Anglican archiepiscopal or episcopal visi- 

 tations. No elections were held, and persons were made pastors 

 who were at once unlearned and unthrifty. Any monk speaking of 

 order or religion was banished one hundred leagues away. Parlia- 

 ment had directed that the Prior of Lewes should receive professions 

 and determine complaints, but some never professed. The aliens were 

 preferred and spent everything, whilst the Anglicans wanted even 

 decencies, were made subject to the aliens, and were sometimes forty 

 years in the order before receiving any profits. 



This supplicatio was thus endorsed : — " That Abbots and Priors 

 of the said Order under the patronage of the King in England, do 

 quickly reform these abuses at their peril lest the King visit them 

 in some severe manner." 



I have given this gravamen in detail, lest any reader should com- 

 mit the uncommon error of believing any community of monks to 

 be perfect ; but it seems to me that the gist of the gravamen lay in 

 the last passage of it, and that it was not so much that the com- 

 munities were corrupt, as that the Anglicans were jealous of the 

 aliens, and had a shrewd suspicion that this jealousy, not un- 

 lighteously, was shared by the monarch. 



VOL. XX. — NO. LIX. Q 



