But when there was no appeal case going on--and an appeal was too expensive an amusement to be indulged in often--there was always a good deal of exciting litigation to keep up the interest of the convent, and to give them something to think about and gossip about nearer home. We have the best authority--the authority of the great Pope Innocent III.--for believing that Englishmen in the thirteenth century were extremely fond of beer; but there was something else that they were even fonder of, and that was law. Monastic history is almost made up of the stories of this everlasting litigation; nothing was too trifling to be made into an occasion for a lawsuit. Some neighbouring landowner had committed a trespass or withheld a tithe pig. Some audacious townsman had claimed the right of catching eels in a pond. Some brawling knight pretended he was in some sense _patron_ of a cell, and demanded a trumpery allowance of bread and ale, or an equivalent. As we read about these things we exclaim, "Why in the world did they make such a fuss about a trifle?" Not so thought the monks. They knew well enough what the thin end of the wedge meant, and, being in a far better position than we are to judge of the significance and importance of many a _casus belli_ which now seems but trivial, they never dreamed of giving an inch for the other side to take an ell. So they went to law, and enjoyed it amazingly! Sometimes however, there were disputes which were not to be settled peaceably; and then came what University men in the old days used to know as a "Town and Gown row."