There remains one question which may suggest itself to our minds as it has often suggested itself to others. From what class or classes in society were the monks for the most part taken? This is one of the most difficult questions to answer. The late Dr. Maitland, who perhaps knew more, and had read more, about monks and monasteries than any Englishman of his time, professed himself unable to answer it; and my friend Dr. Luard--whose labours in this field of research have gained for him a European reputation, and whose wonderful industry, carefulness, and profound knowledge, qualify him to speak with authority on such a point, if any one might pronounce upon it--hesitates to give a decided opinion. The impression that is left upon my own mind is, that the thirteenth-century monk, as a rule, was drawn from the gentry class, as distinguished from the aristocracy on the one hand, or the artisans on the other. In fact, _mutatis mutandis_, that the representatives of the monks of the thirteenth century were the Fellows of Colleges of the nineteenth before the recent alteration of University and College statutes came into force. An ignorant monk was certainly a rarity, an absolutely unlettered or uneducated one was an impossibility, and an abbot or prior who could not talk and write Latin with facility, who could not preach with tolerable fluency on occasion, and hold his own as a debater and man of business, would have found himself sooner or later in a very ridiculous and very uncomfortable position, from which he might be glad to escape by resignation. * * * * * * *