112 PAPERS, ETC. 



means an eligible or safe Investment. Accordingly, the 

 domains which had in ancient times been given for the 

 Service of God and the benefit of the poor vrere squandered 

 upon the lowest, the vilest, and the most abandoned of 

 mankind. Greedy courtiers, renegades, mountebanks and 

 miscreants of all descriptions alone benefitted, if so it may 

 be called, by this wholesale sacrilege. And these new 

 possessors were obliged to no exercise of religion, no work 

 of compassion to body or soul for which the lands were 

 originally bestowed. The stately portal with its right noble 

 motto " Janua patet. Cor magis."*' no longer, as of old, 

 invited the wayfarer, and told hira that, great as were its 

 dimensions, the heart of its masters was greater still. No 

 Vesper bell sweetly whispered to the traveller that there 

 were but a few steps between him and the welcome and 

 repose that religion was glad to offer : no matin blessing 

 dismissed him to his labours, and sent him once more on his 

 way rejoicing and thankful. No aching bosom was hence- 

 forth there to be comforted, no wearied head to be laid 

 to rest, no ignorance to be illuminated, no prodigal to 

 be won to holier and better ways. They who, as these 

 at Taunton, had so often recclved others of all sorts and 

 conditions to hospitality and home, the King in his pro- 

 gresses, the great men of Church and State, the brother 

 from some distant house, the displaced Monks of Buckland 

 in the twelfth Century,! and the outcast and poor in every 

 age, were now cast adrift that others might succeed by 

 whom no such duties were held dear, and to whom mercy 

 and charity would plead in vain. It was a foul wrong, 

 without a sinffle redeemina; trait to set off its baseness. 



* Monast. Dioec. Eson., p. 293. 

 + Monast. Angl. Loud. 1661, ir. 550. 



