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 RELIGIOUS HOUSES Warden * to do his penance ; the choice would scarcely have been made if the house had been in an unsatisfactory state of disci- pline. Again, towards the end of the same century, when there seems to be no doubt that the abbey of St. Alban's was in excellent order under Thomas Delamere, and the general faithfulness to rule bore indeed its natural and proper fruit in the desire of a few to ' live more perfectly,' one of those who left the house with the abbot's permission to follow a more ascetic ideal went ' to the white monks at Warden.' 3 This is not proof, but it furnishes at any rate a strong probability that the Cistercian rule was really well kept at Warden at this time, and that the restoration of the monastic buildings had been followed, as it should be, by an increase of fervour with- in the monastery. Such notices as we possess of the life of the house just before the dissolution are far from happy ones ; at the same time they form an interesting illustration of the effect produced by the royal visitors and their injunctions upon a monastery where ' true religion and sound learning ' no longer flourished. The royal visitors, Legh and Ap Rice, 3 delivered the injunctions at War- den, where the abbot, Henry Emery, was well inclined to the new learning, and had only lately' been elected by the influence of the Duke of Norfolk. 6 It was probably not long after the departure of the visitors that he wrote a letter 6 to Cromwell, complaining bitterly of the conduct of the brethren, and desiring to resign his office. The injunctions 7 1 Line. Epis. Reg., Memo. Dalderby, 194 (131 1). 8 Matth. Paris, Cesta Abbatum (Rolls Series), iii. 416. 3 Named in the abbot's letter. Warden was Augustine (London). At his resig- nation he went to live at Woburn, and seems to have had most sympathy with the old learning (Depositions of the Abbot of Woburn, L. and P. Hen. VIII. [P.R.O.], xiii. pt. i. 981). 5 Norfolk himself says so in a letter to which allusion must be made presently. • Wright, Suppression of Monasteries, letter xxi. PP-53-5- 7 The injunctions are fully described in Canon Dixon's History of the English Church, i. 378-81. Some of them only enforced the ordinary rules of community life : but others, like this one of enclosure, and the order that the divine office should be said and not sung, and that in a low voice, could not have been framed except with a view to making the religious life less attractive — especially when delivered by such men as Legh and Layton. So also with the order that each rule should be tested by Holy Scripture, which looks which seem to have caused most discontent were those which enjoined ' that no monk or brother of this monastery by any means go forth of the precincts of the same' — a re- striction which had never been customary amongst English monks ; and that which ordered a lesson of Holy Scripture to be read and expounded daily to the assembled convent. His brethren, said the abbot, told him that he was the cause of their being shut up in this way : as for the lecture, he seldom now at- tempted it, for they would not come and hear it. Dan Thomas London, whom he had appointed to read it, had substituted the book of Ecius Ome/ies which were 'all carnal and of a brutal understanding, and entreat of many things clean anenst the determination of the Church of England.' The abbot, discovering this, sent Dan Thomas up to London to Dr. Legh, and made his own brother lecturer instead ; but then few or none would attend. Thinking this might be ignorance, he bought every one a grammar book, but only two were willing to be in- structed. He could not even enforce obedi- ence. One monk who had been sent out on business and had stopped away a whole night (in an alehouse, the abbot said) refused to be corrected on his return, and said the abbot had no authority to rebuke him ; further than this, he stirred up all the rest to such violent opposition that the abbot was afraid for his life and had his door guarded by servants for three nights. Besides these offences against order all but four out of the fifteen monks were in • total ignorance of their rule ' and the statutes of their order ; five were ' com- mon drunkards ' ; one, the sub-prior, was guilty of immorality with the connivance of others. It was a case where an abbot might well be willing to resign : whether his accu- sations were true or false, he had fairly proved himself incapable of governing the house. But his evidence loses something of its value in the light of subsequent events. The surrender of the house did not immediately well enough at first sight. Saint Benedict's rule is largely drawn from Holy Scripture and would stand the test well, but the point to con- sider was the effect among the religious of such criticism. All real reformers of the religious fife have found their best success in appealing to the rule itself and the high ideals of holy founders, and contrasting these with the degenerate practice of later days — never in depreciating the rule, or the institution itself. As an attempt to reform the monasteries such injunctions were foredoomed to failure, and their results are excellently shown at Warden. Wolsey's efforts to reform the Augus- tinians were planned on very different lines. 363
 * At the Convocation of 1529, the abbot of