And now we must direct our attention once more to the religious houses, which, after all, occupied the most prominent place in the society of the Middle Ages. With the exception of the universities, they were almost the only centres of learning and the fine arts, which they kept alive during the dark ages, whilst the country was either distracted by civil war or depopulated to raise armies for foreign conquest. They were refuges, too, from the tyranny of the feudal lords, many of whom they awed and controlled by the threat of the Church’s displeasure; and whilst the clang of arms resounded through the land, and robbery and violence were the order of the day in the secular world, in their cloisters the hymn of praise ascended on high, and round about their sacred precincts the arts and industry continued to flourish. But all human institutions are liable to debasement, and even those devoted to the noblest ends and sanctioned by the highest authority did not escape the general corruption. As in the present day in mountainous and thinly peopled countries, so in the Middle Ages the monasteries were the chief inns for travellers. But they were _hospices_ in the true sense of the term, no charge being made to wayfarers during their sojourn, which was, however, limited to a certain number of days. Each convent had attached to it a guest-house, which was under the superintendence of a guest-master, whose duty it was to provide wayfarers with food and to economise the expenses. So we find, for example, that “Abbot Sampson found the cellarer in debt £50” (a very large sum at that time, A.D. 1197), “and he said the debt was incurred through excess in feasting in the prior’s inn by the assent of the prior and cellarer, and superfluous expenses in the guest-house by the carelessness of the hospitaller [guest-master]; and he took the cellary and charge of the guests into his own hands, appointing two monks to act for him.”[250] Thus it will be seen that at a very early period already the guest-houses and other places attached to the convents were made the resorts of drinking; this soon extended to the refectory or dining-hall, and at length to every part of the convent and its surroundings. Guests were hospitably received, especially if they were persons of distinction; and when there was a tendency to intemperance on the part of the monks, they were tempted to indulge in excesses in which the latter joined, and drinking is said in some cases to have been kept up until midnight. The refectory itself was adorned with a great variety of drinking vessels, amongst which the most prominent was the “grace-cup,” out of which the monks drank all round, “and another larger one, with smaller within, where stood the mazers, of which each monk had his peculiar one.”[251]