The enthusiasm, effort, and excitement which had marked the period of Henry III’s reconstruction of Westminster Abbey had now died down. Mediaeval man, though zealous and full of ideas, was seldom persistent. It is a commonplace of history that when the first impulse of fervour that attended a new order or a new foundation had passed away, religious activity was followed by a strong reaction. The great period of the monastery at Westminster had been during its reconstitution under Henry III, but that time of energy had now worked itself out, and the abbey had gone to sleep. The work of reconstruction had stopped from lack of funds; the royal favour as well as the royal presence was withdrawn gradually from the abbey. Moreover, a few years earlier a disastrous fire devastated the monastic buildings, and only just spared the chapter house and the abbey church. It looks as if the monks had to camp out in half-ruined buildings till their home could be restored. All this naturally relaxed the reins of discipline, the more so since the abbot, Walter of Wenlock, was an old man, whose hold on the monks was slight, and some of the chief officers of the abbey, the _obedientiaries_, as they were called, were singularly incompetent or unscrupulous persons. It followed naturally that many of the fifty monks became slack beyond ordinary standards of mediaeval slackness. It was both from obedientiaries and common monks that John Shenche and William of the Palace secured the companions for their unseemly revels. There now comes upon the scene a new figure, in fact, the hero of the burglary, Richard of Pudlicott.