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made, the Visitors were to be respectfully lodged and en- 

 tertained, all questions which they proposed were to be 

 faitbfully answered, and their office was to be regarded as 

 pre-eminently distinguished. On their parts they were 

 most strictly enjoined to discountenance all undue expen- 

 diture on their account, to act in their examination with all 

 moderation and kindness, and to cherish a solemn sense of 

 their responsibility, so that they might receive of God a 

 worthy reward of their labours. Notwithstanding these 

 excellent and considerate regulations, we have abundant 

 proof that the visitations were oftentimes conducted with 

 the greatest severity, and that the conduct of the inqui- 

 sitors not unfrequently prevented the attainment of the 

 object which was professedly in view. The troubled 

 Community set itself against the troubler, and sometimes 

 mastered him. In the Monumenta Franciscana, just pub- 

 lished, there is an account of the afflictions endured by the 

 Houses of that order through the Visitation of a certain 

 brother Wygmundus, a great friend of Cardinal Otho, at 

 that time the legate in England. He looked so sharply, 

 as it appears, into the affairs of bis brethren, and behaved 

 with such intolerable arrogance, that the communities rose 

 in open rebellion and put their persecutor in righteous 

 alarm. He was obliged to quit the field of his exploits, 

 and in undisguised fright to betake himself, having done 

 his work, to his native Germany, carrying the engine of his 

 torture with him, " omnibus turbatis, turbatus et ipse non 

 modicum, rediit in Alemanniam, secum habens seriem suas 

 visitationis." The whole affair recals to our mind the story 

 told by Matthew Paris, of the troubles of an official of the 

 Archbishop of Canterbury, a certain Master Eustace de 

 Len, who was pounced upon, much to his disgust and as- 

 tonishment, just as he was sitting down to dinner, and put 



