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 (called ‘almsgiving’) was universal, and beggars swarmed everywhere. If no one else would feed them, the monks always would, and I fear they made little difference between those who were really in need and those who preferred begging to working. Washing was almost unknown. Even in the King’s household, while there were hundreds of servants in the cooking departments, there were only four persons in the laundry. Horrible diseases like leprosy were common, and occasionally pestilence swept away whole villages and streets of people.

Life then was undoubtedly shorter, and its conditions harder, than to-day; but I think it was often merrier. Holidays were much more frequent; for the all-powerful Church forbade work on the very numerous saints’ days. Religion influenced every act of life from the cradle to the grave. All the village feasts and fairs centred round the village church and were blessed by some saint. The Norman bishops at once woke up the sleepy Saxon priests and abbots, taught them to use better music, more splendid and more frequent services, cleaner ways of life. Stone churches replaced the wooden ones, and those mighty Norman cathedrals, so much of which remains to-day, began to grow up. The zeal for monkery continued right into the thirteenth century, although a pious Norman gentleman seldom went into a monastery himself till his fighting days were over. In the Church a career was open to the poorest village lad who was clever and industrious, he might rise to be abbot, bishop, councillor of kings, or even Pope. All schools were in the hands of churchmen, and Latin was the universal language of the Church throughout Western Europe.

In King William's ‘Great Council’, which took the place