Of its internal life we know also but little; the _Liber de Hyda_ preserves most of its history, but we have no obedientiary rolls to chronicle its small beer. During much of its later history it had a hard struggle for existence. The Black Death all but brought ruin to it, though later on William of Wykeham did much to restore its prosperity. Its best-known abbot was Walter Fyfhyde, abbot from 1318 to 1361. Of St. Mary’s Abbey we have fewer details still. It enjoyed a considerable revenue from the tolls, or ‘octroi,’ on merchandise which entered the city at the East Gate. Far different from the life of monk or nun was that of the friar. In the fourteenth century he was firmly established as a Winchester institution. He was the active missioner, the revivalist, the preacher. He moved in the world, not in the cloister. He taught, he preached, he visited the slums; he was the Church-army worker or the Salvationist of his time, and if he wrought too much on the superstitious fears of his hearers, even if the relics which he permitted them to kiss were usually nothing but ‘pigges bones,’ like those of Chaucer’s ‘gentle pardonere,’ as often as not he would have been prepared to defend the fraud as a pious deception which did no harm to his listeners, while as a class the friars of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were undoubtedly the salt of the earth. All the four orders of friars were represented in Winchester--Black Friars or Dominicans, Grey Friars or Franciscans, White Friars or Carmelites, and Austin Friars. Their quarters were generally in the slums. The name ‘Grey Friars’ still lingers in ‘The Brooks,’ and ‘The Friary’ in Southgate Road preserves the memory of the Austin Friars, though the latter, strictly speaking, were rather canons than friars proper. Between the several types of ecclesiastics deadly jealousy existed, and if monk and friar agreed at all, it was probably in a common hostility to the ordinary parochial incumbent or parish priest. Besides these, many smaller religious or semi-religious houses of various types existed. Adjoining Wykeham’s College was the ‘Sustern Spital,’ a community of nursing sisters, fronting on to College Street; the little college of St. Elizabeth of Hungary stood near the boundary wall of ‘Mead’; and besides these were a number of others, of which Magdalene College was perhaps the chief. Mediaeval Winchester could certainly display ‘Pious Founders’ with any city of its day.