But to pray for them alone would not perhaps have been so very admirable, and so the Church took the care of the roads on itself in a very special sense. It granted indulgences to those who by their gifts or their bodily labour helped to repair the highways, and licensed hermits to receive tolls and alms from travellers over roads and bridges constructed by the brethren, those revenues going towards the upkeep of the ways. Benefactors to the Church frequently left lands and houses, whose proceeds were to be applied for the same purpose; and for many years this trust was respected, and all the road and bridge building and repairing was done by the religious. By degrees, however, this trust was, if not betrayed, allowed to gradually fall into neglect. False hermits set up in remote places, away from the eyes of the bishops, and living idle and dissolute lives on the alms they received, allowed roads and bridges alike to fall into decay. These vicious, unlicensed hermits were great stumbling-blocks to the godly in those times. They were often peasants or workmen, who had observed how fat and idle a living was that gained by those among the licensed who had betrayed their trust and fared sumptuously on alms unearned, and so went and set up in the eremitical profession for themselves. They fared well on bacon, had “fat chekus,” toasted themselves before roaring fires in their too comfortable cells, and lived “in ydelnesse and ese,” frequenting ale-houses and even worse places. Accordingly many of them were eventually removed, or suffered various punishments, and the neighbouring monasteries placed others in their stead. By this time, however, the bishops and abbots, whose broad acres had often come to them in trust for the welfare of the traveller, began to forget their obligations. It was, of course, a natural process: the possessions of the religious houses had grown enormously, but so also had their hospitality to all and sundry. Travellers had increased, and as it was a rule of conduct with the great abbeys to not only relieve the poor, but also to entertain the great in those days before the rise of the roadside hostelry, their resources must have been well exercised. Meanwhile the statutes of the country had gradually been imposing the care of the roads upon the laity, and at the time when the greater and lesser monasteries were dissolved, in the reign of Henry the Eighth, parishes and landowners were chiefly concerned in endeavouring to comply with their new and strange obligations in keeping their ways passable. Of course they did not succeed, and equally of course, because it was impossible that they could, the pains and penalties threatened for foul and dangerous roads were not enforced.