the latest entered, the name of bishop Henry of Blois, the long continued feud with whom occupies so considerable a place in the history of the monastery. A page or two before, among royal personages, occurs his mother Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror, as "monacha." For the present we leave the Newminster book, hoping to examine its most interesting contents by and by in another number of the Downside Review, and now return to that of Durham.

We have said that with the establishment of that Cathedral monastery the admissions greatly multiply. The entries of the twelfth century must comprise at least 2,000 names; many must be priests or clerics, the bulk are evidently lay persons. There are several monks, but we have only been able to find one entire community, that of Worcester at some time during the episcopate of bishop Sampson (1096-1112). We at once recognise Hemming, who compiled the Worcester Cartulary, and the chronicler Florence; the name which immediately precedes him, Columbanus, may suggest how it was that the chronicle of Marianus the Irishman, so soon found its way to Worcester. Indeed, the list, generally, seems to afford evidence that many different nationalities were represented in that community.22 Among twelfth century names which we should hardly expect to find, is Walter Mapes,23 but perhaps he reserved most of his dislike of monks for display in his books, and for the Cistercians; he seems to have come to Durham in company with St. Thomas's faithful friend and follower Herbert of Boscham, whose name immediately precedes his own. We are less surprised to meet here that constant pursuer of good works, the great Justiciar Ranulf de Glanville, 24 a confrater whose good offices, as in duty bound, must many a time have eased the community of Durham from anxiety. Indeed there seem to be many indications that the lawyers were pretty strongly represented in our old Benedictine confraternity books.

To have a picture to the life of the good turn which some of these powerful lay brethren could do the vowed religious, we may turn to an incident in the life of Ranulf's master, King Henry II. In June or July 1184, Henry stopped at St. Alban's; on the morrow of his ar

22 By some mischance twenty or more names belonging to the Worcester community forming the third column in this page of the Ms. have been omitted in the print of the Liber Vitae. p 14 ; the names there printed as col. 3, are marginal entries of later date, unconnected with Worcester. The omitted names are (after Ambrosius); Maurus, Henricus, Ageluuinus, Gilebertus, Freauuinus; Martinus, Afuuius, Aegelricus, Freauuinus ii., Clemens, Nicholaus, Vincentius, David, (this name is touched up with red like Mauricius), Arnulfus, Athelelmus, Gregorius, Alduuinus, Patricius, (the four following are in a slightly later hand) Aldredus, Germanus, Laurentius, Rogerius.

23 Liber Vitae, p. 19.

24 Ibid,, p. 17.

rival he asked leave to enter the Chapter-house, "to pay a visit to my brethren" he said, declaring himself a confrater of the community. He entered in humble guise, followed by a great train of nobles, among whom was Walter of Contances, bishop of Lincoln. The King was set in the abbat's chair, the bishop on his left, the abbat on his right, then bowing to the monks on either side, he with great instance begged their prayers. It seems an odd moment for the bishop to choose to renew an old complaint of his predecessors against the great exemptions and privileges granted to the monastery by the partiality of Adrian IV. to which they had never been able properly to accommodate themselves. Now, however, bishop Walter again raised the question. The abbat was ready; placing his hand on the king's knee he cried out, "Behold my peace," as though, says the chronicler, he had said, “Behold the witness of that compact of peace and amity struck and confirmed between you and us." The king's turn on the bishop of Lincoln, as reported, could not have been pleasant; and he added by way of general advertisement: "Whoever shall shew hostility to this abbat and community will have to deal with me."25 It was a regal rough way, in days when kings were rough, of recognising that, when a monastery granted fraternity, the grantee on his side, was bound to protect the interest, to maintain the honour, of his monastic brethren.

This view is very clearly expressed in the forms of admission, of which two occur in Consuestudinaries of St. Augustine, and another in that of Westminster.26 The Mss. are of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but the practices they prescribe, though differing in some small details, are traditional and were in vogue a hundred or two hundred years before. We may take the formula of admission from the earlier, the ceremonies from the later, St. Augustine's form as the most concise. A prelate or legate of the Holy See received special honour. Introduced into the Chapter house, he was placed in the abbat's seat, he himself said Benedicite, and might prefer his request for admission to "society "sitting. The prayer granted, he was at liberty either to sit or stand, whilst holding his hand outstretched on the gospel book, the abbat formally admitted him in these words: "On the part of God, and holy Mary, and Saints Peter and Paul, and Saint Augustine and his companions, and of St. Benedict and of the Saints we grant to you, that you be henceforth partaker of those good things which God has given us to accomplish, in mass and in matins, in vigils and in prayers, in fastings and alms, and of all the good works which shall be done in this house for ever. And

25 Gesta abb. S. Albani, I. 197-8.

26 Cotton Ms. Faustina C. xii. f. 2. (imperfect at the beginning); Ms. Vitellius, D. xvi. f. 3; Ms. Otho C. xi., f. 122-3.

you on your part shall grant to us a participation in those good things, which God has granted you to perform." Whereupon the prelate kissed the gospel book; the abbat kneeling kissed his hand, and afterwards his face. If he had been hitherto standing the abbat signed to him to sit, and the whole community came forward one by one, beginning with the seniors, and saluted him as the abbat had done. Lay magnates, and clerics, and knights and men and women, of lower degrees, all received fraternity kneeling; if the petitioner was a person of high rank, a distinction was made in his favour, in so far as a place was assigned to him near the seniors of the monastery, or on the steps at the abbat's feet. After the words of admission, the confratres kissed the abbat, and then went to kiss all the brethren, beginning with the youngest on the right hand side. Consorores kissed the gospel book. The abbat afterwards assigned them their places and bade them sit down; then addressing them, he pointed out how henceforward they were bound to help the house, in word and in deed, and that what they had perhaps hitherto done in this kind out of mere good will, had now become a matter of duty. The chapter was then closed in the usual way.

In days of social upheaval, like the present, when the highest interests are sometimes made to subserve petty and trivial ambitions, and the effort is made to counteract in some measure at least, the evil by a grading and ranging of pious associations, it may be salutary to look to days when, because they were Christian, worldly distinctions formed no bar to Christian equality, and brotherhood in the ways of Holy Church, was not abused to gratify an unworthy worldy vanity. To-day the Chapter house is filled with a brilliant company, whilst an offshoot of the royal house, potent beyond his peers, 27 forgetting his worldly rank and dignity, comes to commend himself to the prayers of the poor of

27 See for instance, the letter of fraternity of John de Warenne the last Plantagenet Earls of Surrey in Hist., Dunelm., Scr. tres, pp. cxii-xiii, see other fraternity letters, in the same volume, p. ccclvii, ccccx, ccccxvii; in Raine's Priory of Coldingham, p. 90, and in Stevens II. App. and pp. 144-5. In the Durham Letterbook, Cotton M. S. Faustina A. vi. f. 37-9, are six letters which are evidently inserted as specimens or precedents for letters of this kind, issued during the priorship of William De Tanfield (1309-13). The first three are letters of fraternity properly speaking i. e., grants to persons who had petitioned for such admission, the first and an always essential condition: 1. a littera generalis couched in such general terms as would apply to the majority of confratres, (the actual grantee here was W. de Brokesby, probably the Exchequer official mentioned in Hist Croyl. contin. p. 482); 2. a littera specialis, that granted to John de Warenne just mentioned, specifying certain quite personal details; 3. a letter of “sorority.”—The other three are merely concessions made mero motu conventus, of a share in good works, without question of fraternity, to a nobleman, a lady of high rank, and a faithful servant, who had in their several ways earned the gratitude of the community.

Christ, and to be numbered among them; accustomed to precedence and command, like the least of his servants he makes petition and suit, and has to take here a lowly place. To-morrow it is a nameless band: but all alike seek and obtain the same gift of brotherhood, in and through the house of St. Cuthbert, or St. Augustine, or St. Alban.

The introduction of the mendicant orders does not seem to have lessened or checked the admissions to fraternity of the Benedictines, which kept on in a regular and steady flow. The Durham Liber Vitae must contain about seventeen or eighteen thousand names, spread over eight hundred years. Documents published by Mr. Riley, in the series of St. Alban's chronicles, give more exact data for some years of the fifteenth century. In 1421, seventeen persons were admitted to fraternity at St. Alban's28; in 1423, twenty, among whom was that special friend of St. Alban's Humfrey, "the Good" Duke of Gloucester29; in 1428, sixteen persons30; in 1429, thirty-four31; in 1430, the precise number is not stated, but it cannot have been less than between twenty and thirty.32 Stevens printed 33 from a now much damaged Evesham register two lists, evidently admissions to the fraternity of that monastery in the years 1444, and 1450; the earlier comprises nearly fifty persons, the latter, more than eighty. All classes are represented, seemingly in just proportion, neighbouring rectors, London merchants, judges, townspeople of Evesham and inhabitants of the neighbouring towns and villages (generally husband and wife together), knights and country gentry, the greater nobility, and members of the houses of both York and Lancaster.34

Mr. Shepherd, who in his account of the Canterbury Christ Church conventual registers in the appendix to the Ninth Report of the His

28 Amundesham, vol. I. p.p. 65-6.

29 Ibid, p.p. 66-7.

30 Ibid pp. 21, 22-3, 24-5. If the admissions, pp. 67-8 actually belong to 1428 a large addition would have to be made to the number in the text.

31 Ibid, pp. 36, 40, 41, (evidently a fraternity list).

32 lbid, pp. 51, 56.

23 Two Add. Volume to the Monasticon, II, App. p. 145.

34 It would seem that most of the members of the royal family were confratres or consorores of one or other of the great Benedictine monasteries in the 15th century; At St. Albans besides Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester, we find the Duchess of Clarence (Amnudesham, I. 41). At Croyland: Henry VI; Margaret, Duchess of Somerset ; and Margaret, Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII, Hist., Croyl, contin., pp. 530, 539-40).—At Canterbury Cathedral: Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter; Cordinal Beaufort; Anne, Duchess of Exeter, sister of Edward IV. ; Anne, Duchess of Buckingham, his aunt; his Queen, Elizabeth; Richard, Duke of Gloucester, (Richard III); Cecily. sister of Elizabeth of York, the wife of Henry III., (Hist. Mss. Comm. 9th Rep. I., 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 118.)-At Evesham : John, Duke of Bedford; Cecily, mother of Edward IV., (Stevens, ubi supra). A little research would probably discover many more.

torical Mss. commission, mentions several letters of fraternity, remarks in regard to the last extant register, 1506-32 (there is a gap in the records from 1532 to 1541), that it "begins to drop reference to spiritual and almost to ecclesiastical matters, deeds preponderating enormously. In the early part of (this) register, a few letters of confraternity are found, granted mostly to obscure men and their wives,-to bailiffs of the conventual manors, London citizens and the like,-very few of which have any historical significance. Towards the end of the volume these become fewer and fewer."35 It is not improbable that the new men who came to the fore, even in the early part of the reign of the second Tudor, cared little for such benefits. But one of the very last confratres of the Canterbury Cathedral community, of whose admission there is record, is surely one of the most illustrious; in 1530 a letter of fraternity is granted to Thomas More, knight, Lord Chancellor of this most flourishing kingdom of England. Mr. Shepherd makes this further and most significant remark in reference to the register quoted: “There is one kind of lease which first makes its appearance in the early portion of this volume -the deeds by which rectories were let to farm; these appear to increase in numbers in the direct ratio of the decrease of letters of confraternity. Some families of no mean rank may be traced in the registers, beginning as officials of the convent or the archbishop, then becoming lessee of the whole or part of a manor or of a rectory, their descendants finally emerging after the Reformation with the position of freeholders."

36

The day is past when the subject of the suppression of the monasteries, can be treated in such a style as that adopted by Burnet, or when such a perversion can pass current among educated men as fact. Whilst the suppression is recognised as a social resolution, it is becoming recognised too that it was a revolution that brought heaviness to most English hearts, and cast a cloud over men's daily life. If the monastic churches and treasuries were rich with the accumulations of ages, the enjoyment of them lay with the public at large, all over the land, on feast and gaudy days. If many of the monasteries were like palaces, or as Leland says of St. Edmundsbury, like "a city," in its "incomparable magnificence," with the exception of a comparatively small part reserved for the use of the monks themselves, they practically belonged to the public also, to poor and to rich, who came in and went out much as they liked. It was little consolation to most people to reflect that if the treasuries were rifled and the monasteries pulled down, a great show was being made with the spoils of the first a long way off at Court and out of their sight, or that from the materials of the second new nobles built big houses for 6 Ninth Rep. I. p. 119. 36 Ibid p. 121.