MYXCHIN BUCKLAND PRIOIliT. 55 



iniparted, we may hope that anxiety was removed in an 

 equal measure. The maintenance of their rights was in 

 stronger hands than their own; and the benefit was 

 theirs without the labour and danger which its defence 

 involved. The instance of the rector of Beckington is 

 exactly in point. When the payraent of his annual pension 

 was not forthcoming, as we have seen, in the year 1353, the 

 Prioress and Sisters had not to endure the ordeal of prose- 

 cutiug their snit in person against the defaulter, but it was 

 the great Prior of England who came to the rescue, and 

 obtained the remedy which the law provided. 



The daily life of these ladies in the privacy of their 

 conventual home had, we may be sure, little to disturb its 

 repose, save the occasional matters which we have had 

 detailed, in which they were brought iuto contact with the 

 noisy world without. They had little if any intercourse 

 with the adjacent Commandry ; as, in the first place, 

 the Statutes of the Order were imperative against the 

 admission of wonien to domestic offices; and, in the second, 

 the feeling existing between the two Societies was not such 

 as to conduce to intimacies of a higher character. For the 

 former position, indeed, their generally noble or gentle birth, 

 and for the latter, their attitude, always, as would appear, 

 antagonistic, equally disqualified them. Nor is there a 

 Single instance related of them (or I would have honestly 

 mentioned it, as my object has invariably been to present 

 as truthful an aspect as lies in my power of those Houses 

 and their inmates whose chronicles I seek to rescue from 

 oblivion), of any violation of the laws of morality. So far 

 as wo know — and we should be pretty sure to have 

 some evidences of the contrary fact had it existed 

 — the tongue of scandal itself was dumb. The blameless 

 Sistcrhood pursued its way of pcace, brokon only by 



