I have already spoken of that inveterate tendency to pluralities, and consequently to non-residence, which was the bane of the mediæval Church, and which brought to nothing so many fair schemes of discipline and reform. This had already begun to extend itself to cathedral foundations. We may be sure that in early times the whole body of Canons were constantly resident. Gisa at all events, we may be sure, would allow of no absentees from the common refectory and the common dormitory. But the changes made by Robert would certainly tend to make non-residence possible. A Canon was no longer a mere member of a body which, even as a body, had hardly any corporate rights. His prebend had now been made a distinct benefice, as independent, as far as its temporal possessions went, as a Bishoprick or a rectory. The feudal ideas which, as I before said, came to be applied to ecclesiastical benefices, would come to be applied to a prebend no less than to a Bishoprick or a rectory. It would come to be looked on as a benefice, which a man might, as in the case of any other benefice, hold along with any other preferment, and, as in the case of any other benefice, its holder would deem his conscience discharged if its duties were discharged by deputy. The non-residence of Canons became a matter of complaint in the twelfth century. It was a favourite subject for monkish writers, who naturally found in it a fruitful field for declamation against their secular rivals. Thus Richard of Devizes, one of the most amusing writers of that or of any age, holds forth on the superiority of the monks who praised God with their own mouths, while the Canons praised Him only through the mouths of their Vicars. He goes on to draw a grotesque picture of a stranger coming to ask alms at the door of a rich Canon. The door is opened by a poor Vicar, who bids the wayfaring man go away, as the master of the house is not at home.[42] Then, at a somewhat earlier time, in the Life of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, we find how the man whom he sent over with a bull of excommunication against the Bishop of London went to high mass in Saint Paul's Cathedral on so great a festival as the Ascension, and found the officiating priest to be neither Bishop, Dean, nor Canon, but only a Vicar.[43] An incidental notice of this sort speaks volumes.