The Cistercian Order was another revision of the Benedictine rule. Instead of relaxing the strictness of the original rule, the Cistercians aimed at increased austerity and simplicity. In the reign of Stephen a small company of recluses fled from the anarchy and lawlessness around them to Radmore, in the recesses of Cannock Chase. For some years they lived, men and women, independently of any of the recognised Orders, but the place was too remote and the state of the country too disorderly for such a defenceless position. They soon had to join one of the great Orders. By the advice of the Empress Matilda they chose the Cistercian and dismissed the women. But food was difficult to obtain, the foresters made frequent depredations, life became impossible even for Cistercians, and they had to remove to Stoneleigh, in Warwickshire. The Cistercians, whose rule ordered _in civitatibus, castellis, villis, nulla nostra construenda sunt cenobia, sed in locis a conversatione hominum semotis_, had to wait another generation before they could obtain a footing in the county. They must follow, not precede, order and police. The establishment of a Cistercian house, therefore, is an evident token that law reigned in the district where it arose. The Cistercians aimed at being, not scholars and statesmen such as the Benedictines had become, but farmers, and this feature commended them to all who desired the cultivation and civilisation of the waste tracts into which the Benedictines had never penetrated. The latter had become great landowners, with numerous flourishing towns belonging to them, and wide estates well cultivated. The land unoccupied by the Benedictines was wild and rough, but offering opportunities for pasturage. To pasturage, therefore, the Cistercians devoted themselves; and the growth of the wool trade, which arose almost at the same time as they came into favour, made them masters of the most profitable branch of English industry.