Among an ignorant and an uncritical people the ancient Faith passed unquestioned—was it not the Faith of all those in authority? Its doctrines were supported less by teaching than by outward forms, ceremonies, pageants, splendours and traditional conventions. In every church the story of the Gospels was partly represented, but overlaid with stories of the Saints; the Christian virtues were never, even at the lowest point of Church History, forgotten, yet their practice had become crystallised; almsgiving was part of the Rule of every Religious Order, but it was indiscriminate; mercy towards the criminal had become a refuge for those who continued in their evil practices under cover of Sanctuary; the tradition of austerity no longer brought respect to the Benedictine; the tradition of self-sacrifice no longer brought love to the Franciscan: to the former, as to the College of All Souls, Oxford, the members were _bene nati_, and, I believe, for the most part _bene morati_ and _moderate docti_; in the more secluded religious communities discipline was relaxed and scandals had crept in; for a hundred years and more the people had been gradually ceasing to endow the Religious Houses with bequests. At the commencement of the sixteenth century they had wholly ceased the practice, formerly universal. Monk and Nun; Friar and Sister; Hermit, Anchorite, Anchress, now received no more bequests; of all the Religious Orders none had fallen into disrepute so hopelessly as the Franciscans: they were selling the lead off the roofs of their stately churches; they were selling their sacred vessels of silver gilt; their boxes, hung up in the shops—if the shopkeepers admitted them—received no more offerings; they were insulted in the streets; their numbers were dwindling daily. Now all these things were like an open book in which those who passed along the way might read daily, and did read unconsciously, so that their minds were moulded and directed, they could not tell why or how. As for the spread of the ideas called Lollardry, one knows not how far they survived the persecution under Henry V. and the disturbances of the Civil Wars. But such ideas, whose strength lies in the exercise of reason, so far as men can reason, do not easily die; the case of Richard Hun (p. 32) shows that they were still alive. The socialistic side of Lollardry had vanished, but some, at least, of the religious side survived.