From Lanfranc to the close of the thirteenth century, was the summer-time of the English religious houses. The Cluniac or reformed Benedictines settled here about 1077. In 1105 the Austin Canons first planted a house in this country. The White Monks, another reformed Benedictine order, entered England in 1128, and in the course of four and twenty years founded fifty houses. Soon after, in 1139, the English Gilbertines were established, then came the White Canons, and in 1180 the Carthusian monks. The land was peppered with houses. In less than a century and a half, from the Conquest to about 1200, it is estimated that no fewer than 430 houses were founded, making, with 130 founded before the Conquest, 560 in all.[97] Many were wealthy: some were powerful, because they owned much property, and popular because, like Malmesbury, they were “distinguished for their ‘delightful hospitality’ to guests who, arriving every hour, consume more than the inmates themselves.”[98] The Cluniacs could almost be called a fashionable order.
During this prosperous age some of the great houses did their best work in writing and study. Thus to pick out one or two facts from a string of them. In 1104 Abbot Peter of Gloucester gave many books to the abbey library. In 1180 the refounded abbey of Whitby owned a fair library of theological, historical, and classical books.[99] About the same time Abbot Benedict ordered the transcription of sixty volumes, containing one hundred titles, for his library at Peterborough.[100] By 1244, in spite of losses in the fire of 1184, Glastonbury had a library of some four hundred volumes, historical books consorting with romances, Bibles and patristical works almost crowding out some forlorn classics.[101] Nearly half a century later
