Into all this work and superintendence the true monk brought the spirit, and often the actual direction, of his rule. Not only did the monk learn to do field and garden labour as part of his training, but to enter upon it as a conventual or common work under the direction of the prior or one deputed by him. The Cluniacs and the Cistercians gave a dignity to their work by certain defined usages. When the brethren were gathered for work, the abbot himself, in a Cluniac house, was expected to meet them at the cloister door, saying, _Eamus ad opus manuum_, “Let us go forth to the work of our hands.” Thence they went in procession, saying a psalm, to the assigned place, and when there, certain suitable collects with the “Our Father” and versicles were said ere the work was begun, the superior taking his share. Wide and general as was the dispersion of England’s religious houses, it was as nothing compared with the number of their granges, and to every grange a chapel was attached. These chapels were divided by a screen; the choir was for the brethren, professed and lay, and the western part for the tenants and labourers. That so vast an amount of land came by benefaction into the hands of the monasteries throughout England in mediæval days may have had certain economic objections; but one result, at all events, was achieved through that fact, namely, the removal to a great extent of any idea of the degradation of manual toil, and the linking together of labour and worship. It was impossible in old days to go many miles in any direction without alighting upon a humble chapel specially built for those who tilled the soil. In a single midland county where there were only seven religious houses (apart from hospitals), traces, either in stone or records, have been found of upwards of twenty grange chapels. The mere worldling will doubtless view with some contempt this association of Divine service and the weary round of agricultural toil; but for such we are not writing. Those who have any faith in the reality of religious joy will realise the blessing of such opportunities, which were so largely multiplied by the monks of England, not only for their own spiritual advantage, but for those who worked under and with them. The great opportunities that the native tenants or villeins had of securing their freedom, for Holy Orders or otherwise, on the monastic estates, and the general advantages of all such tenants in the matter of education, must be left for another chapter, as they both demand more extended treatment than can be given in a single paragraph or two. The only other point to be now briefly dealt with is the question of the tenants of nunneries. Though their numbers were not large, and many of the houses quite small, still the houses of religious women suppressed by Henry VIII. were nearly one hundred and fifty.