persed a numerous colony into Ireland, and thence to Jona and the Hebrides*. It was naturally supposed that the pious and humble monks, who had renounced the world to accomplish the work of their salvation, were the best qualified for the spiritual government of the Christians. The reluctant hermit was torn from his cell, and seated amidst the acclamations of the people on the episcopal throne. The monasteries of Egypt, of Gaul, and of the East, supplied a regular succession of saints and bishops, and ambition soon discovered the secret road which led to the possession of wealth and honours +. The novice was tempted to bestow his fortune on the saints, in whose society he was resolved to spend the remainder of his life; and the pernicious indulgence of the laws permitted him to receive, for their use, any future accessions of legacy or inheritance ‡. From this foundation it is no difficult task to trace the extent of monastic institutions, and monastic influence, in our own island. As the Christian faith began to spread itself amongst our ancestors, the donations of the lords and great landholders became more numerous and more liberal, and their visits to those pious residences more frequent and more fruitful. Still, however, the revenues of the clergy were not very considerable; but King Ethelwulph, anno 855, made them a grant of the tithe of all his dominions, which increased them to that degree, that it gave cause to some of his successors to lament in vain the good monarch's liberality. (Rapin has preserved a copy of this grant, and there is another in the Monasticon, p. 100.) 1 6 Gibbon, 238, and seq. 1 Camd. Brit. 666. + Ibid. 247. Ibid. 258. In those times of dark and ill-judging superstition, the austerity of self-devoted wretchedness often reduced human nature to its last verge of existence, or plunged it into horrors, from which the mild and persuasive ehortations of Christianity offered in vain to lead the fanatic. In the absence of that serenity of heart which true religion inspires, the forlorn and miserable forgot their own virtues, their domestic and public duties, their regard to society, and the tender calls of conjugal or filial ́ affection; and, rushing into an unbrotherly solitude, devoted their possessions to build altars, hospitals, and monasteries, and to burn incense. to appease the vengeance which their heated imaginations alone had conceived to be hovering over them: thus they incurred new sins, by an external service to that Being whose favour had been more acceptably or successfully implored, by directing the same contrite zeal to the performance of the duties of the station in which he had been pleased to place them. If so much zeal ever really actuated any of the founders of monasteries, yet I am afraid superstition and some share of ostentation were not often silent in their persuasions to so eminent an exhibition of public regard! Thus from the rapid increase of charitable and pious donations, arose the splendour of cathedrals and churches, not now easily to be conceived. In every part England was planted with monastic establishments: in London stood the mitred abbeys of St. John, and of Westminster, in addition to the convents of nuns, and the abodes of monks and of friars, black, white, and grey. The increasing resources of invention kept pace with the increasing spirit of religious homage. Auricular confession, indulgences, and masses for the dead, with innumerable other means of amassing wealth, became the 1 Godwin's Chaucer, 45. 1 Godwin's the distinguishing mark of monastic and ecclesiastical revenue. The orders of regular priests were distributed under two heads, those of monks and friars. The great basis of distinction between these classes, as derived from the principles of their original institution, was, that the monks were forbidden to possess any private property, but had all things in common; while the friars abjured the possession of all property, whether private or common. The monks, therefore, soon came to possess, from the donations and bequests of the pious, immense revenues. They inhabited stately dwellings; the very ruins of which, in the eye of the man who loves to transport himself into the times of old, are still among the ornaments of the lands in which they lived. St. Augustine, the first who undertook the conversion of our Saxon progenitors to the Christian faith, was a Benedictine monk; all the abbeys in England, previously to the Northern Conquest, were filled with the votaries of this order; and down to the reformation, all the mitred and parliamentary abbots of England, except the prior of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, were Benedictines. The friars, through all their denominations and divisions, were universally mendicant. The universities, among the various causes of their rise and flourishing condition, owed much to the decline of reputation in the monastic orders, As the monasteries grew rich they became luxurious. The ill fame and popular aversion which then began to be directed against the monastic orders had the most fatal effect upon their morals. Finding they were no longer venerated, as they had lately been, they speedily declined into the realising those vices, which at first malice and envy had only Chaucer, 190. whispered against them. When When the churches came to have fixed revenues allotted to them, it was decreed that at least one-fourth part thereof should be applied to the relief of the poor; and to provide for them the more commodiously, many houses of charity were built, which are now denominated hospitals. They were governed wholly by the priests and deacons, under the inspection of the bishops. In the progress of time, separate revenues were assigned for the hospitals, and peculiar appropriations for their endowment. When the church discipline began to relax, the priests, who until then had been the administrators of these institutions, converted them into a kind of benefice, which they held at pleasure, without rendering any account, reserving the greater part of the revenues to their own use, The evil became so general, and the fraud so notorious, that the council of Vienne expressly prohibited the gift of any hospital to secular priests, in the way of a benefice, and directed the administration to be given to sufficient and responsible laymen, who should take an oath similar to that of tutors or guardians, for the faithful discharge of their trust, and to be accountable for it to the ordinary. This decree was afterwards executed and confirmed by the council of Trent, which was held by several adjournments from A. D. 1543 to 1552. In England, hospitals were founded, as appears by 2 Henry V, St. I. c. i. A. D. 1414, for the relief of impotent men and women, lazers, men out of their wits, and poor women with child; and to nourish, relieve, and refresh other poor people. But the abuses in the management of these charitable establishments had so much increased, and their revenues been so misapplied, that many poor men and women had died in great misery for want of assistance and support; and, therefore, the Dowers Henry VIII. powers of visitation were first granted to the ordinary to enquire, and reform them. These hospitals were thus instituted, as the word hospitium denotes, for the reception, relief, and entertainment of the poor, aged, infirm, sick, and otherwise helpless; and are, in this respect, distinguished from alms-houses, which are merely for the reception of the indigent and necessitous*. It is most reasonable to conclude, that the new and enlightened principles which every where burst forth at the reformation, were the source of that happy alteration in the minds of opulent and charitable persons, which directed their liberality to the relief of the afflicted poor, when its channel was diverted from the support and contribution of papal craft, dissimulation, and idolatry. However grievous the ravages of a regal tyrant might have been to some recluse and sincere orders of monks, yet they swept away a multitude of inordinate vices, and purified the land from the severer dangers of sedition, hypocrisy, and pride: the professed servants of pious delusion had grown opulent on the ill judged offerings of their trembling penitents; they first presumed to be masters of their consciences, and then insultingly jested at the large tributes which, by terrifying denunciations of future heavenly vengeance, they extorted from their alarmed imaginations. But, thanks be to God, the restraints, which it was necessary for the legislature to impose on these devices, by the several statutes of visitation and of mortmain, at first proving ineffectual and inadequate to subdue the cunning and artifice of monastic * Aurengzebe being asked why he did not build hospitals, said, "I will make my empire so rich, that there shall be no need of hospitals." He ought to have said, I will begin by rendering my empire rich, and then I will build hospitals. Sir J. Chardin, vol. VIII. 2 Sp. Laws, c. xxix. subtlety, |