being withdrawn, ran into excesses and fell into the mire; some haunted taverns, to the disgrace of their former calling. But of suffering or privation I cannot discover that there was much, if any, either for monks or nuns. It is pretended that the pensions were irregularly paid. The evidence seems to me insufficient; in regard to the nuns of St. Helen’s, we have positive evidence pointing in the opposite direction. The greatest sufferers were, as we have seen, the friars. For them there was no pity; for them there were no pensions; no one believed in them any longer; their day was done. There appeared, a short time ago, a book written by one who had been for twelve years a friar: he came out of the House; he laid down his frock and renounced his vows; and he wrote a book in which he described the life of his late brethren. It is not an exaggerated or an ill-natured book; it is simply a plain statement of the manner of life led by the friars of these days. Looking through its pages one begins unconsciously to consider the friars of the early sixteenth century—the friars in their last days—by the light of this revelation. Now the modern friar is a man of some education and some culture. Take away his education and his culture in order to get at the friar of the Tudor time. Place him in a time much rougher and coarser in manners; give him nothing to do: no work either of mental or physical kind; and to the general futility and unreality of life in a modern friary add the temptations, almost irresistible to the uneducated mind of the ordinary friar, of the world around him. In this way one may succeed, perhaps, in understanding the reasons for the unpopularity of the friars. [Illustration: The North Prospect of Westminster Abbey From an engraving by G. Collins. A. Rischgitz’ Collection.] It is generally stated that riches flowed in upon the friars as a consequence of the respect in which they were held. That is not the case: they were never rich. They owned a few houses built within the limits of their own precinct, the rent of which went to maintain the fabric of the church, and the service. For themselves the friars possessed no great buildings, except the Church, the Library, and the Hall: and they lived on charity at the end of their time as at the beginning. Wyclyf makes much of their churches. “Freres bylden mony grete churches and costily houses, and cloystris as hit were castels and that withoute nede. Grete houses make not men holy, and onely by holiness is God wel served.” The friars were not rich, but they were proud: they arrogated power and sanctity for their very robe. Those who died in the Franciscan habit could never, they said, be carried away by the devil. Walsingham, who had, perhaps, the jealousy of a monk, thus wrote of them:—