In a word, what we find in these glimpses of monastic life is that it is all so human—so intensely human. Did we expect anything else? Yes, the Rule demands a life that is superhuman: therefore the Rule breaks down. Its weakness is that men cannot endure it; yet they have taken the vows; they cannot break free from the Rule; but they may introduce alleviations and palliatives—in every Monastic House there was the Misericordia, where indulgences were granted and conferred. So we begin with prejudice and with contempt, and we end with sympathy and pity. After so many years we no longer feel, though we may understand, the exasperation with which the abuse of the Monastic system came to be regarded: the accumulation of vast estates in the hands of a multitude who toiled not neither did they spin: who professed an austere Rule and lived a luxurious life: who despised wealth but enjoyed all that wealth could give: who pretended to pay no regard to birth yet admitted into their ranks none but those of gentle blood: with whom the difference between profession and practice was monstrous and scandalous. I have said that when the Rule was too hard for men to obey, they made for themselves alleviations. There was one Rule at least where, so far as one can learn, no alleviations were practised; in this Rule men had to conform or be broken in the attempt. It was the Rule of the Carthusians. It was so austere as to seem well-nigh impossible of observance; but it was observed; nay, it was loved: Sir Thomas More lived with the brethren for a time and practised all their austerities; he would have continued to live with them; he desired nothing better than to live and die under a Rule which repressed all natural desires, but the brethren would not receive him: they sent him out into the world to do a nobler work among the people of his age and of the generations to come. CHAPTER II ST. MARTIN’S-LE-GRAND This foundation, by reason of its antiquity and religious objects, should have been venerable, but it became, by its claims, privileges, and position, an institution hateful and detestable, long before the Monastic Houses fell into disrepute. It had its origin certainly before the Conquest, but how long before cannot be ascertained. Tradition made Wythred, King of Kent, its founder in the seventh century. We need not trouble ourselves with the reasons which make this tradition impossible. Safe ground is touched about the year 1056, when St. Martin’s was either founded, or endowed, by Ingelric and Girard [Edward], two brothers, for a Dean and Secular Canons. In 1068 a Charter was granted to the College by William:—