334 TITHES 



to the inhabitants of outlying districts. Into the hands of the 

 Bishop or monastic bodies were paid all the offerings of the faithful. 

 The married clergy, outside the cloister, were slowly and with 

 difficulty obtained. They were for the most part ignorant, uncouth 

 men, recruited from the lower classes of native converts, entrusted 

 only with the humbler offices of the ministry. They taught the 

 Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed in remote hamlets, watched 

 by the bedsides of dying penitents, and in special cases administered 

 the rites of baptism. It is not strange that, on earth at least, their 

 lowly labours should have been ignored or forgotten. Very different 

 was the fate of the monastic bodies. To them fell power, riches, 

 credit. Kings were their nursing-fathers, queens their nursing 

 mothers ; the wealthy nobles vied with one another in the munifi- 

 cence of their endowments. In comparison with existing civilisation, 

 the monastic bodies attained a standard of wealth, refinement and 

 culture which was at least as high as that of later times. They laid 

 acre to acre, and field to field. For miles round their farms, barns, 

 flocks, herds, fish-ponds, and dovecotes dotted the country. They 

 entranced the senses by the beauty of their architecture, their 

 music, their ritual ; they commanded respect by their learning ; 

 they inspired awe by the austerities of their lives. They alone 

 could offer an inviolable resting-place for the dead, since there were 

 no parochial burial-grounds, and they practically monopolised 

 rights of sepulture. Thus in death, as well as in life, they appealed 

 irresistibly to the favour of the world. 



Till the closing period of the Anglo-Saxon Church, there were, 

 as has been said, no resident parochial clergy. Ecclesiastical 

 organisation proceeded downwards, not upwards. It was provincial, 

 diocesan, conventual, before it became local and parochial. The 

 cathedrals of the dioceses and the conventual churches of the 

 monasteries at first provided for the religious wants of the people. 

 Yet the material was ready for the introduction of the parochial 

 system. Townships suggested the necessary divisions, and village 

 communities, on the self-sufficing system of these agrarian societies, 

 had probably been accustomed to provide for their pagan priests. 

 From the first the rulers of the Church felt the need of continuous 

 local ministrations, though, probably, the earliest advances towards 

 a parochial system were forced upon the country by external causes. 

 From the ninth century onwards Danish invasions struck a series 

 of staggering blows at the monastic organisation. Monasteries 



