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RELIGIOUS LIFE AND ORGANIZATION 407
customs and statutes and be guided by resident chaplains of
their order. At the same time numerous houses of Augustinian
canonesses were coining into being and continued to multiply
throughout the thirteenth century. All these nunneries, it may
be noted, were of a single basic type, following the traditional
liturgical life, though with a certain freedom, in the absence
of a strict 'enclosure', unknown to their counterparts in the
modern world. There was as yet nothing ofthe austere, peni'
tential way of life later associated with the Poor Clares and
Carmelites, and the middle ages in England knew nothing of
the innumerable 'active' orders devoted to teaching, nursing,
and charitable works of all kinds that have grown up in such
profusion since the fifteenth century.
Finally, two orders of men, following a severe and quasi'
eremitical way oflife, appeared in England at this time. The one
was the order of Grandmont, a monastic institute with elabo/
rate constitutions ofan almost fiercely logical severity; its houses
in England were few, remote, and small. The other was the
more celebrated and long-lived order ofthe Chartreuse, which
at this epoch of its history was made up of two separate conv
munities the monks, who lived in small houses surrounding
a large cloister, and the lay brothers, who lived in a group of
buildings half a mile or so away. The Carthusians were, and
have remained, a strictly enclosed hermit group. They were
long in multiplying from their two earliest houses in Somerset
and never became numerous, but from first to last they were
something of a spiritual elite.
Three other classes of religious family must be mentioned to
complete the picture of the late twelfth century. There were,
first of all, a few colleges ofsecular priests living together. This,
as has been seen, was an ancient form of organization akin to
the groups of clergy at a cathedral, and existed here and there
at the Conquest. Its aims were realized and extended by the
regular canons, xvho had a great vogue from the beginning of
the twelfth century, but a few ofthe collegiate groups survived.
Some ofthem were relatively well endowed, with no obliga^
tion save that ofMasses and prayers for the founder and other