They used their churches in ways that may seem strange to us; but they looked upon them as their own, and were evidently in many cases proud of them. Each parish annually chose its churchwardens, who had charge of the buildings and the furniture, and these were responsible to the bishop, as well as to the people of the parish. Every now and then the bishop visited the parish, or sent someone to do so in his name. Enquiry was made as to how the priest and the people carried out their duties towards each other. Complaints were heard, and attempts made to set matters right. Some of the reports which were made on such occasions have come down to us, and show often much disorder, and at times much that was evil. But we must not forget that good was also being done then, which was not talked much about. "The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones." CHAPTER XXX Clerks Changes took place much more slowly in the Middle Ages than they do now. First of all, the population was very much smaller, and hundreds and hundreds of acres now covered by big manufacturing towns were then unoccupied land. At the time of the Norman Conquest the whole population of England only numbered about two million people; and in the time of King Henry VII it was only four millions; so that in the course of four hundred years the population had only doubled itself. The people were not crowded into the towns. For instance, in the time of King Edward III, Colchester was one of the large towns, yet it had only three hundred and fifty houses, in which three thousand people lived, all told. There were only nine larger towns in the country at that time. The bulk of the people were living in the villages, in the various manors, not in the towns. Many things prevented the population from growing very rapidly--disease, famine, and war kept it down. Death was the punishment for a very large number of offences, so that it is not to be wondered at that the population did not increase very fast. The population was divided into two distinct classes--those who were clergy, or clerks, and those who were not. By "clergy" we understand, in these days, "ministers of religion"; but the word had a very different meaning in the Middle Ages. In early Saxon times religion and learning were very closely related. Colleges and monasteries were centres of learning, and bishops, abbots, priests, and monks took the lead in matters in which a knowledge of reading and writing was required. Folk who had a leaning towards learning naturally became connected with colleges or monasteries. They began as scholars, and then were admitted, or ordained, to one of the lower orders of the ministry--often when they were still only boys. [Illustration: _A Scriptorium, from a miniature painted in an old manuscript (written in 1456) in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It depicts a clerk writing._]