And the reason why the fashion of bequeathing money to anchorites suddenly ceased was that by the end of the fourteenth century the mind of London was saturated with that part of Lollardy which scoffed at hermits, friars, and monks. At the time when the House of Commons was petitioning the King to suppress all Religious Houses of every kind, the rich men of the City left off, as if by common consent, as if by a kind of conspiracy or secret resolution, the bequeathing of money to friars, hermits, and anchorites. A broad black line is drawn. No more money shall be left to these people. It would be interesting, if it were possible, to learn what became of the anchorites and the hermits. Some of them, no doubt, survived till the Reformation. Can we imagine, with the Dissolution of the Monastery, the suppression of the Anchorite? Can we imagine the old man, with his grey hair, his beard flowing to his waist, scarcely clad decently in the rags which he has worn for fifty years, with sunken cheeks and haggard face and wild eyes blinking at the light, and wondering why after so many years he is dragged out once more into the sunshine and the sight of his fellow-men? CHAPTER V PILGRIMAGE Pilgrimage, never so great a craze in London as in the country, or in England as in France, plays an important part in the mediæval life. The earliest pilgrimage was, of course, to the Holy Places of Jerusalem: it began in the second century with a journey to the site of the Ascension. The other sites multiplied with the increase of pilgrims and the demand for sites and sacred relics and associations. The desire to go pilgrimaging grew and spread with great rapidity among all classes. In the century before the Crusades the roads to Palestine were black with swarms of pilgrims: we have the history of many early pilgrimages, including that written down by the Abbot Adamnanus of Scotland from the lips of the shipwrecked pilgrim Arnulfus, and that of Willibald the English pilgrim who started with his father and sister Walfunga, his brother Wunibald, and a large party of followers and servants: in Italy the father died and the brother and sister went home: Willibald persevered and reached Jerusalem safely.