Though this arrangement was proposed about 1160, it was not finally settled until 1196; after which the two owners could proceed to reduce the old Norse freeholders to the condition of feudal tenants. A charter of John, afterwards king, at the end of the twelfth century, directs the removal of all tenants in Furness Fells who have not rendered due fealty to the abbot. By what threats or promises or actual violence this was accomplished we have no record; but we can see that it was a slow process, and we can infer that it was not done by way of extermination. For the Norse families, with their language and customs, remained in Coniston. They were a canny race, and knew how to adapt themselves to circumstances. Throughout Lakeland they evidently made good terms with the Norman lords, and kept a degree of independence which was afterwards explained away as the border tenant-right--but really must have been in its origin nothing less than a compromise between nominal feudalism and a proud reminiscence of their Norse allodial practice--the free ownership of the soil they had taken, and reclaimed, and inhabited for three centuries of liberty. V.--MONK CONISTON. The Furness monks were of the Cistercian order; which is to say, they were farmers rather than scholars or mere recluses and devotees. To understand them in the days of their power, we must put aside all the vulgar nonsense about fat friars or visionary fakirs, and see them as a company of shareholders or college of gentlemen from the best landowning families, whose object in their association was, of course, the service of God in their abbey church; but, outside of it, the development of agriculture and industries. They devoted their property and their lives to the work, getting nothing in return except mere board and lodging, and--for interest on their capital--the means of grace and the hope of glory. Some of the brothers lived continually at the abbey, fully occupied in the service of the household, in hospitality to the poor and to travellers, in teaching the school, in various arts and crafts, and especially in the office work necessary for the management of their estates. Their method was to acquire land, sometimes by purchase or exchange, more often by gift from those who had entered the community, or had received services from them; and then to improve these lands, which were generally of the poorest when they came into the abbey's possession. As the plots were widely scattered over Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Cumberland, it must have been no light labour to manage them. For this purpose a brother was sent to act as steward or bailiff at a grange or cell on the outlying estate.