And this brings us to the question of the moral condition of the monasteries. Bishop Stubbs has called the thirteenth century "the golden age of English Churchmanship." Subject to correction from the greatest of England's great historians--and subject to correction, too, from others, who, standing in a rank below his unapproachable eminence, are yet very much my superiors in their knowledge of this subject--I venture to express my belief that the thirteenth century was also the golden age of English Monachism. Certainly we know much more about the monasteries and their inner life during this period than at any other time. The materials ready to our hand are very voluminous, and the evidence accessible to the inquirer is very various. I do not believe that any man of common fairness and candour who should give some years to the careful study of those materials and that evidence could rise from his examination with any other impression than that, as a body, the monks of the thirteenth century were better than their age. Vicious and profligate, drunken and unchaste, as a class, they certainly were not. Of course there were scandalous brethren. Here and there--but rarely, very rarely--there was a wicked abbot or prior. Of course there were instances of abominations on which one cannot dwell; of course there are stories which are bad to read; stories which find their way into the chronicles because they were strange or startling; but these stories are always told with horror, and commented upon with severity and scorn. Excuse for wickedness or any palliation of it, you simply never find. On the other hand, the intense _esprit de corps_ of a convent of monks went beyond anything that we can now realize, and led to grave sins against truth and honesty. The forgeries of charters, bulls, and legal instruments of all kinds for the glorification of a monastery by its members was at least condoned only too frequently. It can hardly be doubted that the scriptorium of many a religious house must have been turned to very discreditable uses by unscrupulous and clever scribes, with the connivance if not with the actual knowledge of the convent, for such things were not done in a corner. If the forgeries succeeded--and that they often did succeed we know--the monastery got all the advantage of the rascality; no inquiry was made, and it was tacitly assumed that where so much was gained, and the pride of "our house" was gratified, the end justified the means.