This multiplication of rules, this attention to trifles, these childish diversions, prove, if any proof were wanted, the deadly dullness of the monastic life, unless it was lit up by spiritual fervor. The ordinary mind cannot dwell continually upon things spiritual, yet it must be occupied with something; therefore, when the monks were not engaged in services or in the Refectory, although they were ordered to work at some bodily or intellectual pursuit, most of them occupied themselves with trifles; they amused themselves with childish shows; they admonished and corrected each other with boyish discipline. We need not ask why Westminster produced no great scholars: it was not the real business of the Abbey to produce scholars, but to sanctify the life of the monk, and to sing so many services a day for the good of the Brethren first and of those outside afterward. Now comes the question, How much of the Rule was obeyed in the latter days, just before the Dissolution? The discipline varied from House to House. It is very certain that the Carthusian Rule was strictly observed at the Charter House, and that
A PILLAR NOW STANDING IN MR. THYNNE’S GARDEN AND FORMING PART OF THE RUINED CHAPEL OF ST. CATHERINE.
the Benedictine Rule was observed with laxity at the Priory of the Holy Trinity. Chaucer’s jolly monk has horses in the stable; he can go abroad as he pleases; he is not dressed as a monk. Again, there is one of the stories concerning Long Meg of Westminster which seems to show that the monks went about in the taverns outside the Abbey. Yet the holding of certain offices gave permission to go outside the Abbey.
JERUSALEM CHAMBER, ABBOT’S RESIDENCE, WESTMINSTER.
There is every kind of evidence to prove that luxury and pride and laziness had become a common charge against the monks long before the Dissolution. Was there a voice or a hand raised in London or Westminster to save the Houses? Why, had there been even a small minority in London by whom the Houses were respected, Henry had not dared to touch them. He beheaded those who opposed his will. True, the great nobles he beheaded, but not the crowd, who, had they cared for the Houses, could have defended them against all the power of the King. But the scanty memoir of Hugh de Steyninge, which has been collected painfully from various sources, does not enable me to state with any exactness how far the Rule was still observed.
There exists no portrait of this, or any other, Brother. He lived in the Abbey, whose walls he never left till he died, full of years, and with the reputation of having been a good monk. He was buried in the cemetery close to St. Margaret’s Church, with his brethren of a thousand years: of them, and of their works, the name and the memory have long since perished. Although no portrait remains of Hugh, in Religion Brother Ambrosius, we can discern his face after the manner of the photographer who produces a type by superposition. There are thirty generations of Westminster monks passing in procession before us. Here and there one perceives the keen eye and the aquiline nose of the administrator. Such a brother will become Abbot in due course. One observes here and there the face of a scholar: such a brother is moody and irritable; he cannot, even after forty years, reconcile himself to the wearisome iteration of services. Here and there one observes an ascetic, thin, pale, fiery-eyed; here and there the face of a saint—the kind of face which you may see on the marble tomb of Westminster’s greatest and noblest Dean. The rest are like our friend Hugh de Steyninge: they are dull and heavy-eyed; their faces express the narrowness of their lives; they are not alert, like other men; they have no craft or guile in their eyes; in worldly things they are ignorant; you have only to look at them to discover this. But Hugh de Steyninge never became a hypocrite, nor was he ever a sensualist; at the worst