same as true Lords thereof, without impedimte of any man.” {240c} These successes, however, seem to have elated the spirit of the Abbots of this monastery, and to have led them, in the pride of power, not always to have due regard for the rights of others. As early as the reign of Edward I., it was complained, before Royal Commissioners, that the Abbot was guilty of sundry encroachments; that he obstructed passengers on the King’s highway; {241a} that he made ditches for his own convenience which flooded his neighbours’ lands; and that, from his power, inferior parties could get no redress; {241b} that he prevented the navigation of the Witham by any vessels but his own; {241c} that he trespassed on the King’s prerogative by seizing “waifs and strays” over the whole of Wildmore; {241d} that he had hanged various offenders at Thimbleby; had appropriated to himself, without licence, the assize of bread and beer. {241e} Further, he refused to pay, on certain lands, the impost called “Sheriff’s aid,” {241f} or to do suit and service for his land, either in the King’s Court or that of the Bishop of Carlisle at Horncastle. {241g} Against none of which charges does it appear that he returned any satisfactory answer. Yet, while thus acting with a high hand, he was not above worldly traffic on a considerable scale, as is shewn by certain Patent Rolls, {241h} where a note is given to the effect that, on May 1st, 1285, a licence was granted, at Westminster, for three years, “for the Abbot of Kirkstead to buy wool throughout the county of Lincoln, in order to satisfy certain merchants, to whom he is bound in certain sacks of wool, his own sheep having failed through murrain;” while it was further alleged that he carried on an extensive system of smuggling, whereby it was calculated that some £2,000 a year were lost to the corporation of Lincoln. Proceedings like these do not give us a very favourable impression as to the virtues of these spiritual lords, their charity, or their standard of morality. Yet, on the other hand, we have to make allowance for the times and circumstances in which they lived. I quote here a letter written by a Lincolnshire man who had viewed matters from the different standpoints of an Anglican and a Romanist. {241i} “You say ‘the monks were not saints.’ I have no doubt but a small proportion were. Yet, taking them as a whole, the wonder is they were as respectable as they were. It is not enough considered what the monastic life was for several centuries. It was the refuge of hundreds and thousands who could find no other occupation. There was no Navy as a profession; the Army was not, in the sense we understand it, a profession. Law and medicine were very restricted. What were men to do with themselves? How to pass life? Where to go to live? There was next to no education, no books hardly to read. How can we wonder that the mass of monks were a very common kind of men, professedly very religious,