Hitherto no plausible guess as to the author has been made. Simon of Ghent, who died in 1315 A.D., is manifestly out of the question. Bishop Poor (d. 1237) has been drawn in solely because of his connexion with Tarent (Dugdale, v. 619), of which he was the principal benefactor. From internal evidence it may be gathered that the writer was a disciple of S. Bernard (1091-1153), whom he quotes some twelve times expressly, and from whose Liber Sententiarum he says he takes most of his sixth book; ‘hit is almest Seint Beornardes Sentence,’ Morton, 348/14. He was acquainted with Ailred of Rievaulx and with the treatise which Ailred wrote for his sister the anchoress (Morton, 368), of which he made extensive use. He belonged to some monastic order, for he speaks of ‘vre leawede breþren,’ and ‘ure ordre’ (Morton, 24). He appears to have been acquainted with other anchoresses (Morton, 102, 192, 410). There is a note of weariness at the end of the book, as of one already advanced in years, and indeed the accumulated experience of a long life must have gone to its making. He was a widely read man; he quotes from many authors, of whom, after S. Bernard, S. Augustine and S. Gregory were the chief, but he drew on the Bible twice as often as on all the others put together. Finally, the Scandinavian element in his native speech was exceptionally large, and French was so familiar to him as to colour his English far more than that of any previous writer. There were two men living towards the end of the twelfth century who might answer to this description, Gilbert of Hoyland, Abbot of Swineshed in Lincolnshire (Dugdale, v. 336), and S. Gilbert of Sempringham. The former completed the treatise on the Canticum Canticorum begun by S. Bernard, in which the mystic interpretation is quite different from that which runs all through the Ancren Riwle. But for S. Gilbert (1089-1189) I think a good case can be made out. He was brought up in South Lincolnshire, where the Danish element was strong, and not far from the northern border of the Midland area, for Lincolnshire north of the Witham was more Northern than Midland. In later years his visitations took him often to his houses of Watton and Malton in Yorkshire. He received his early education mostly in France, and he probably visited that country often in later life; he spent more than a year there in 1147, 1148 A.D. To no other person would the recluses have been so likely to apply for a rule, since he was famous as the greatest director of pious women in England; ‘vir eximiae religionis, in feminarumque custodia gratiae singularis,’ says Trivet in his Annales; ‘vir plane mirabilis, et in custodia feminarum singularis,’ W. of Newburgh. His own foundation for women and men, the order of the Gilbertines, had its beginnings in an anchorhold which he built for seven maidens against the north wall of his own church of S. Andrew at Sempringham sometime about 1131 A.D. (Dugdale, vi, pt. 2, *ix).