[Footnote 220: The beds were stuffed with hay, which the Camerarius was bound to change once a year, at the annual cleaning of the dormitory.] [Footnote 221: The remaining "Short" Offices were probably said, Sext after High Mass, and Nones at mid-day (whence our word Noon).] [Footnote 222: In this earliest type of crucifix Christ was royally crowned and robed (as in the famous _Volto Santo_ at Lucca). See p. 288.] Once in six weeks each monk had to undergo the _Minutio sanguinis_, or blood-letting, supposed in those days to conduce to health; and this drove him into the infirmary, where he had to spend about a week along with a batch of his brethren undergoing the same treatment. This custom, which sounds to us so unreasonable, tended at least to break the monotony of monastic life. Those who could stand it all, and gain good by it, must have been men of iron both in mind and body. Such was the discipline through which those men had to pass who built Ely Minster, and dwelt and worshipped there for close upon nine hundred years. The "Liber Eliensis" tells us "There was one Rule for all; the chief requirement was obedience, love of sacred worship, and a full resolve to maintain the honour of God's House." In words that form part of their Rule, they could say "We believe that the Divine Presence exists everywhere, but above all when we attend Divine Service." In the year 1539 the Monastery was dissolved by Henry the Eighth, and reconstituted as a Chapter of Dean and Canons. As we read this the question forces itself upon our minds "What became of the monks thus disbanded?" At Ely the monastery could, it is true, hold seventy monks, but the full roll were seldom, if ever, in residence at one time. After the Black Death (in 1349) the number fell to twenty-eight; and in the year 1532, seven years before the monastery was dissolved, there were only thirty-six monks on the spot, besides the Prior. Father Gasquet, a most diligent searcher into the history of that time, allows that, in spite of all his labour, "hardly any detail of the subsequent lives of those ejected from the dismantled cloisters of England is known to exist." It is, however, recorded that three of the Ely monks, being noted as good choir men, received a pension of L8 a year (equivalent to about L80 now) besides an office. But such traces are scanty indeed; some monks who were priests were appointed to the cure of souls; others lived on the pensions allotted to them which were usually equivalent to about L50 a year, paid as a rule fairly and punctually; some received on quitting the monastery a grant of money; we hear that one band of monks went out into the world each with a sum of twenty-six shillings and eightpence in his pocket (barely L15 at the present value of money). Such was the fate of the inmates of the Abbeys that submitted to the demands of the King, as did Ely under Goodrich, the last of the Abbots. Where "voluntary surrender" was