The monasteries continued to flourish in greater or less prosperity till the middle of Henry VIII.’s reign. But though the cloister monk himself might come but little in contact with the outer world, the aspects in which the monastery as a whole did so were numerous and important. Not only in its immediate vicinity did it serve as educator, general almoner, and physician, relieving want and sheltering distress, but far away also from its walls its word was law, its control all-sufficient. As landed proprietors on a widely extended scale the monasteries wielded enormous territorial influence. At their grange farms, such as the farm of the Augustinians at Silkstede, they maintained large bodies of farm hands, they reared sheep, they drove to market, they bought and sold. Nor was this all; all was fish that came into their net, and Church patronage not the least important or acceptable, so that more and more the duty of providing for the spiritual needs of neighbouring or outlying parishes fell to their share, along with the tithes or dues paid to support it, and in such cases tithe was no longer paid to the incumbent direct but to the monastery, who appointed a ‘vicar’ or deputy to carry out the spiritual duties,--a system satisfactory enough, perhaps, if faithfully followed out, but leading to every form of evil and neglect when laxity supervened, and selfishness replaced zeal; and so the system of ‘vicars’ as incumbents was inaugurated, while the frequent iteration and survival up and down the country side of such monastic addenda to the names of Hampshire towns and villages, as Itchen Abbas, Abbot’s Ann, Monk’s Sherborne, Prior’s Barton, to quote but one or two, is an eloquent testimony to the firm grasp which the monk had secured of the spiritual patrimony of the Church, and to this more than anything else is to be attributed the present poverty of the Church, and the lay patronage existing in so many rural English parishes to-day.