To a certain extent, then, we have to note among the causes of change in rural districts the failure of the monasteries to discharge their old function of agricultural leadership. In other respects, also, these communities had fallen from the high standards of earlier days. Discipline was lax. Visitations instituted by Cardinal Morton revealed the presence of gross immorality, not only among the very small houses, but in so great an institution as the Abbey of St. Albans, where the highest officials were guilty of the gravest misbehaviour; and the correspondence seems to imply that the disapprobation was by no means in proportion to the offences, from which it is fair to infer that no high standard was normally expected. The most to be looked for was an absence of flagrant misconduct. The clergy were much more particular about ceremonial observances and ecclesiastical privileges than about the morals either of themselves or of their flocks. But as yet there was no sign of a coming Reformation. Lollardry, it is true, had never been killed; its anti-clerical propaganda was by no means inactive. But it worked beneath the surface, and could not be taken to indicate an approaching convulsion. The greatest Churchmen of the day, Morton, Warham and Fox, were absorbed--albeit reluctantly--in affairs of State. Blameless, even austere in their own lives, patrons of learning, sincerely pious, they lacked the Reformer's passion, without which it was vain to combat the _vis inertiae_; generated by long years of clerical sloth, and of the formalism by which the highest Mysteries were vulgarly distorted into superstitions and Faith into ceremonial observances. [Sidenote: Henry and Rome] The first Tudor himself was a pious man, as piety was reckoned: punctual in observances, commended and complimented by Popes. His chapel in Westminster Abbey is evidence of his zeal in one direction; he gave alms with a business-like regard to their post-mortem efficacy. Throughout his reign the Popes made much talk of a new crusade, and Henry seems to have been the one European monarch who took the idea seriously. It is true that when Alexander VI. appealed in 1500 for funds to that end, the English King preferred to be excused; but the polite irony of his refusal was more than justified by his confidence that if the Pope got the money it would not be expended for the benefit of Christendom; moreover, he did actually hand over four thousand pounds. In fact, he took the Church as he found it. There was but one almost infinitesimal curtailment of ecclesiastical privileges in his reign, necessitated by political considerations and accepted by the Pope, whereby the right of Sanctuary was withdrawn in cases of treason. [Sidenote: Learning and letters]