by which they were bound.

"Giraldus Cambrensis tells us "that on his return from abroad he dined with the monks of "Canterbury (this was in the twelfth century). Having

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eaten of their bread, he lifts up his heel against them and "maliciously exposes their bill of fare. It is a curious picture "of the times;-sixteen lordly dishes and upwards, besides a course of herbs-which latter, however, were not in much "request; fish of divers kinds, roast and boiled, stewed and "fried; omelets, seasoned meats and sundry provocatives of "the palate, prepared by cunning cooks; wines in ample "profusion, sicera, piment, claret, must, mede and moretum "(mulberry), anything and everything but ale, the boast of “England and more especially of Kent. What would Paul "the Hermit have said to all this?' thinks the splenetic "Giraldus to himself; or St. Anthony? or St. Benedict, 66 6 the founder of the order?'"*

As might be expected, the mitred Abbeys presently found rivals in the establishment of the mendicant friars, who were forbidden by their vows to hold any property, wandering from parish to parish, from town to town-having authority from the Pope to preach wherever they chose, whether the curate was willing or not. Their sermons were often diatribes against the secular clergy, against their ignorance and sloth; or contrasted their own poverty with the lordly establishments, the goodly estates and lavish expenditure of the monks. The friars, by their original rules, did not profess to own any property, but they might erect buildings, and many magnificent churches bear witness to their presence in this island. They cultivated learning with success. All the four orders of friars (Franciscans, or Friars Minor; Dominicans, or Black Friars; Carmelites, or White Friars; and Augustins, or Grey Friars) had flourishing houses at both Oxford and Cambridge. They filled the professors' chairs in the universities; searched

Blunt's History of the Reformation, p. 34.

out manuscripts and multiplied the copies, collected libraries at any cost.* If they laboured for the instruction of those around them, they did not forget that a great part of mankind would rather be amused than taught any kind of serious learning; and therefore the friars sought to divert the multitude by means of mysteries or miracle plays. From these representations of scripture scenes or moral allegories we have derived our British drama. The same century which witnessed the performance of these now forgotten plays also witnessed those marvellous productions of the genius of Shakspeare which will live for ever. Both monks and friars possessed sources of gain in the shrines and miraculous relics or images in their Churches. Our Lady of Walsingham, the shrine of St. Edmund at St. Edmundsbury, the tomb of St. Thomas of Canterbury drew crowds of pilgrims from all parts of the country, who beguiled their journey with amusements of divers kinds. It is stated that whilst no man brought his gift to the altar of his Saviour in Canterbury Cathedral throughout a whole year, offerings were made at the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket in the same place and during the same period, to the amount of nearly a thousand pounds.t

There was one custom, connected with some of the Cathedrals and larger conventual Churches, which I shall mention as a specimen of the mummery in which that age delighted, and also as a proof of the very large numbers of young inmates of these houses—I mean the election of the boy or barn bishop. It was an ancient custom in Churches which had Cathedral service, for the little choristers on the day of St. Nicholas, the patron saint of children, to elect one of their number to be the boy or barn bishop. He presided over the rest till Innocents' day, when, with great pageantry, he laid down his office. The statutes attending the investiture of the episcopus puerorum are prescribed by the statute of the Church of Sarum.‡

* Blunt's Hist. of the Reformation, p. 36. + Ibid, p. 73. At York he was to be handsome and well shaped.

The other children of the choir took the style and office of prebendaries and yielded canonical obedience to their youthful superior. He and his fellows performed an appointed service in the choir, according to a well-established usage. Traces of this curious custom are to be found in the records of several of the Cathedrals and public schools, and from it the now extinct Eton Montem is said to have originated.*

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I cannot conclude this short account of the monastic institutions of England without quoting the beautiful words of the late Professor Blunt on the benefits derived from them. "They had been the alms-houses, where the aged dependants "of more opulent families, the decrepid servant, the decayed "artificer retired as to a home, neither uncomfortable nor humiliating; they had been the county infirmaries and dispensaries-a knowledge of medicine and of the virtues. "of herbs being a department of monkish learning (as passages in the old dramatic writers sometimes indicate)"and a hospital and perhaps a laboratory being component parts of a monkish establishment; they had been foundling asylums, relieving the state of many orphan and outcast "children and ministering to their necessities-God's ravens "in the wilderness (neither so black as they had been repre"sented), bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh "in the evening; they had been inns for the way-faring man, "who heard from afar the sound of the vesper-bell, at once "inviting him to repose and devotion, and who might sing his "matins with the morning star, and go on his way rejoicing; they filled up the gap in which the public libraries have since stood; and if their inmates were not very desirous to eat of "the tree of knowledge themselves, they had, at least, the "merit of cherishing and preserving it alive for others."†

Rees's Encyclopædia: article "Boy Bishop." Hone's Every Day Book. + Blunt's History of the Reformation, page 141.

But their doom was fixed; a few short years destroyed or entirely altered the work, in some cases, of eight long centuries. It is only three centuries since their fall. In spite of it, during that time England has prospered in temporal and spiritual blessings as she never did before. The great abstraction of Church property at the time of the Reformation has been the source of much lamentation. No doubt it was at the time a grievous and a bitter trial; but such lamentations are now out of place. "Let the dead past bury its dead!"

The Church has been left with endowments ample enough to ensure her permanence, but not large enough to restrain her from enlisting the cordial sympathy and aid of the laity for her further progress and development. The clergy have been confined to the sacred duties of their office; many secular duties, once assigned to them, have been transferred to other and to fitter hands. Perhaps there may be a difference of opinion whether the relief of the temporal necessities of the poor should be entirely committed to those engaged in spiritual work. But there can be no difference of opinion as to whether our foreign negociations, for instance, about Italy or Poland, should be entrusted to a layman or to a bishop or a dean; as to whether the Great Seal should be committed to the charge of a monk or of a trained lawyer like Eldon or Lyndhurst or Westbury; as to whether it is not an advantage both for Church and State that the Treasury and the Home Office are no longer prizes which may be sought by those set apart for the cure of souls. With the Tudor monarchs arose that race of great statesmen who, from Burleigh and Walsingham to Pitt and Peel and Palmerston, have done so much to make England what she is. There can be no donbt that the charge of the infirmary is best intrusted to those who have made the study of medicine the chief object of their lives whilst the

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maintenance of bridges and highways may surely be left to the lay inhabitants of the district.

At the time of the Reformation only nine English Cathedrals were in the hands of secular canons. They are termed Cathedrals of the old foundation-namely, York, St. Paul's, Chichester, Exeter, Hereford, Lichfield, Lincoln, Salisbury and Wells. The four Welsh Cathedrals, which were very poor and incomplete in their appointments, were on the same footing. There were eight Cathedrals which at different times had passed into the hands of various monastic bodies, namely -Canterbury, Durham, Winchester, Carlisie, Ely, Norwich, Rochester and Worcester. It was proposed to found about twenty new sees from the large property abstracted from the Abbeys. This scheme was partially accomplished by the creation of the bishoprics of Gloucester, Bristol, Peterborough, Chester, Oxford and Westminster-the last of which only existed nine years. It appears that the other sees which Henry VIII intended to found were to have been at Waltham for Essex, at Saint Albans for Herts, at Burton-on-Trent, at Shrewsbury, at Colchester, at Bodmin, at Lancaster, at Saint Jermyn and at Fountayne for the archdeaconry of Richmond in Yorkshire. This scheme had really been proposed eight hundred years before by the Venerable Bede, who earnestly exhorted Egbert to endeavour to increase the number of sees, by converting Monasteries into Cathedrals.*

The changes made at this period were generally most incomplete, a curious instance of which is shewn in the evidence given by the chapter of Lincoln in 1854. They state that their statutes were embodied previous to the year 1440 and, therefore, during the prevalence of the Roman Catholic religion in this kingdom. The duties detailed in the statutes relate to the forms and proceedings during Divine service in the Cathedral, in accordance with that form of worship. * Cathedral Commission, 1854, Report, p. xxxix.