At the period we are speaking of monastic life had assumed a character entirely different from what it had borne in Saxon and Norman days. Poverty, obedience, chastity, and toil had been not only the motto, but actually the practice, of the earlier monk. He had not only prayed and wept, and denied himself ease and creature comforts--his life had been one unceasing round of severe bodily labour. His own efforts had sufficed for his daily wants, and in ministering to them, he had taught the savage people round him the arts of agriculture, he had reclaimed the waste lands, and had literally made the wilderness to blossom like the rose. But this active, simple phase had passed away. Monasteries like St. Swithun’s or Hyde now performed important ceremonial and social duties of an official character. The Prior of St. Swithun’s kept lordly state; the Abbot of Hyde wore a mitre. These monasteries controlled extensive interests, swayed large estates, held much church patronage, and extended generous hospitality to high and low alike. The simple organisation of earlier times now no longer sufficed, and a considerable retinue of lay brothers was considered necessary for the domestic service of the monastery, while the more purely spiritual duties alone were performed by the monks themselves. The monk was thus left free to pray and study, to perform his regular offices, and keep his ‘hours’ strictly, and only the more responsible of the domestic duties or those of supervising the several departments of activity were assigned to those who had taken the vow. The lay brethren or retainers performed the menial duties, and were so completely separate from the brethren in orders that they were even excluded from their churches. Thus the little parish church of St. Swithun perched above Kingsgate was set apart for the lay servants of the Priory, and the parish church of St. Bartholomew, Hyde, in like manner for those of Hyde Abbey. Probably few at that day could have foreseen that the churches built for the lay retainers would prove more enduring than the great monasteries themselves. Thus, spiritually speaking, the monasteries were, if not actually dead, at least moribund. Shut in from the world outside they affected less and less the stream of general spiritual life, and gradual atrophy of spiritual powers followed inevitably on the failure to exercise them.