be paid to him alone. Not till 1195 was it transferred to “the Canons.” Such an arrangement illustrates the distinctive feature of the Austin Canons. They lived in modified seclusion. They were parish priests living in community. The rule of St. Augustine represented an attempt at monastic reform by the method of compromise. Other Austin Priories were: Rocester, founded in 1146 by Richard Bacon, nephew of the Earl of Chester; Calwich, given to Kenilworth by Nicholas de Gresley Fitz Nigel; St. John’s, Lichfield, built by Bishop Roger de Clinton when he raised strong walls round the Cathedral close in the reign of Stephen; Ronton, founded by Robert Fitz Noel, who had obtained an estate in Staffordshire through his marriage to the daughter of Bishop Robert de Limesey (1086–1117), as a cell to Haughmond; and St. Thomas’s, Stafford. The origin of the last was particularly interesting. Richard de Peche, Bishop of the Diocese, was one of the friends of Becket. He took part in his consecration, and soon after the murder he dedicated a priory at Stafford to the memory of St. Thomas the Martyr, on land given by a wealthy burgess. When he felt his own end approaching, soon after, he resigned the bishopric and retired to the priory, where shortly after he died and was buried (1182). The relations between the Austin Canons and the parishes were close, as we have seen. Portions of their houses were often used as parish churches. Just as the Vicar at Trentham became the head of the priory also, so at Stone the priory absorbed the church. At Rocester there was such doubt in the fourteenth century as to the proper place at which the parishioners ought to make their Easter Communions that the matter had to be referred to Bishop Norbury, and he left the matter undecided. At the dissolution of the Priory the parishioners were able to secure three bells for their own use on the plea that these had wont to be rung for parochial services as well as for those of the Canons. When the bishop cited to his visitations the churchwardens and synodsmen (“sidesmen”) of the churches served by Austin priories, he wrote to the Convents. It was often the practice, for instance at Rocester, for the senior canon, next after the Prior, to hold the vicarage. The Cluniac Order was a revision of the Benedictine rule. Its object was to bring reform; but the abolition of the obligation to perform manual labour, which formed so excellent a feature of the original Benedictine system, merely increased opportunities for idleness. The earliest Cluniac house in Staffordshire arose at Canwell, in the reign of Stephen. It was the foundation, in 1142, of the widow of Justice Geoffrey Ridel, who had perished twenty years before in the disaster to the _White Ship_. Another Cluniac house was built at Dudley, as a cell to Wenlock. It was founded by Gervase Paganel, Baron of Dudley (1161), in fulfilment of his father’s intentions.