Then, _thirdly_, there were the Religious Houses. Fitzstephen says that in his day (_temp._ Henry II.) there were thirteen conventual churches and 126 parochial. Some were of pre-Norman times, like the Collegiate Church of St. Martin's-le-Grand, founded by one Ingelric in 1056, and confirmed by a charter of William the Conqueror in 1068. Though this stood in the heart of the city it was independent of civic control; the Mayor and Corporation often endeavoured in vain to exercise authority over it. Criminals on their way to execution now and then managed to slip within its boundaries, in which case they were safe in sanctuary. It was from this church that the Curfew Bell for London tolled out each evening, a signal for closing the city gates, as well as the taverns. An event of vast importance in the religious life of this nation was the great Cistercian movement in the beginning of the twelfth century. This is not the place to tell the history of the origin of it, the mighty endeavour to reform the decadent Benedictine order made by Robert of Molesme, who settled himself in the hamlet of Citeaux (Cistercium), near Dijon, and set up the first reformed monastery. The movement soon found its way to England, the first Abbey being founded at Waverley, near Farnham; and before long it had its devotees in London, the most noteworthy of whom was Gilbert Becket, a wealthy trader in Cheapside. It was the excitement of this which was upon the Londoners when, as we have already had to note, they chose Stephen for king against the supposed irreligion of the House of Anjou. Under the influence of this religious revival a new impulse seemed to come upon the Church, which bound it closer than it had ever been before in the affections of the people. Gilbert Becket's son, Thomas, became known to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Theobald, for his intense religious earnestness, became his right hand in administration, guided him unfalteringly through the troubles which came out of the dreadful civil war between Stephen and Matilda, and finally gave peace to distracted England. How the eager young Londoner himself became Archbishop, and how he came for many a year to be regarded as the very chief of English saints, we need not tell here. And this new religious impulse told in the city to the extent of changing its very aspect. The Cathedral which Bishop Maurice had begun seemed for a while to be languishing. Now barges came up the river with stone from Caen for the great arches which excited the popular wonder. Rahere, the king's minstrel, raised his noble Priory of St. Bartholomew in Smithfield, of which enough still remains to make it the finest Norman building in London. Alfune, in 1090, built St. Giles's, Cripplegate. The dissolution of the Cnichten Guild (a body of thirteen knights as old as King Edgar, which continued to hold land on fanciful tenures down to 1115) was followed by the bestowal of their property on the Priory of the Holy