[32] An abbot presided over monasteries--sometimes independent of the bishop--sometimes (in a degree) subject. Priors also had presidence over some religious houses--but theirs was usually a delegated authority. An æsthetic abbot or prior was always building--or always getting new colors for the _missal_ work in the _scriptorium_: hunting abbots were thinking more of the refectory. At least six religious services were held a day, and always midnight mass. It was easy, but not wholly a life of idleness. A bell summoned to breakfast, and bells to mass. Of a sunny day--monks were teaching boys one side of the cloister--artistic monks working at their missals the other; perhaps under such prior as he of _Jorvaulx_ (Scott’s Ivanhoe) some young monk would be training his hawks or dogs. An interesting abstract of the Rule of the Benedictines may be found under Monachism, _Br. Ency._, Vol. xvi. [33] College Statutes of Merton date from 1274; those of University from 1280; and of Balliol from 1282. Paper of GEORGE C. BRODERICK, _Nineteenth Century_, September, 1882. [34] The story of the Black Prince meets with revival in our day, by the recent publication of “_Le Prince Noir, Poeme du Herault d’Armes Chandos_,” edited, translated, etc., by FRANCISQUE MICHEL, F.A.S. Fotheringham: London, 1884. The original MS. is understood to be preserved in the Library of Worcester College, Oxford. [35] Precise dates are wanting with respect to Langlande. Facts respecting his personal history are derived from what leaks out in his poem, and from interpolated notes (in a foreign hand) upon certain MS. copies. Of three different texts (published by the _E. E. Text Soc._) Mr. SKEAT dates one about 1362--a second in or about 1377, and the third still later. The first imprint has date of 1550. [36] Not that he is specially free from foreign vocables: MARSH (_Lec. VI., Eng. Language_) gives his percentage of Anglo-Saxon words in _Passus XIV._ at only 84. See also SKEAT’S _Genl. Preface_, p. xxxiii. [37] In saying this I follow literal statement of the poem (_Pass._ xviii., 12,948), as do TYRWHIT, PRICE, and Rev. Mr. SKEAT, whose opinions overweigh the objections of Mr. WRIGHT, (_Introduction_, p. ix., note 3, to WRIGHT’S _Piers Plowman_.) The Christian name William seems determined by a find of SIR FREDERIC MADDEN on the fly-leaf of a MS. in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. _Piers Plowman’s Creed_, often printed with the _Vision_, is now by best critics counted the work of another hand.