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RELIGIOUS LIFE AND ORGANIZATION 435
peatedly taken to Rome, and that ofhis successor halfa century
later, John Dalderby, went there too; these failed, but popular
veneration made oftheir tombs a place of pilgrimage as it did
also ofthe tombs ofWilliam ofWells, Roger ofLondon, and
Walter of Worcester. The shift of popular sentiment was not
misplaced nor accidental, for it was in this century that a race
of great bishops laid the foundations of the parish life of Eng^
land that was to be a notable religious and social force in the
following age.
The fourteenth century saw neither monk nor friar nor
bishop canonized. The one canonized saint was, significantly
enough, the obscure prior of a house of the Austin canons at
Bridlington, and his rival in popular devotion was Richard
Rolle, the hermit ofHampole. Each in his way was connected
with what is the most remarkable external manifestation of
English religion at this time, the growth ofan attraction to the
contemplative life and to a mystical approach to the problems
oftheology and conduct. This phase ofsentiment is seen in the
of the Charterhouses when other orders had ceased to
spread
multiply, and in the deeply introspective outlook ofthe poets of
the age, such as William Langland and the author of The
Pearl, and above all in the group ofwriters, ofwhom Rolle was
one and the Austin canon Walter Hilton another, known as
the English mystics. In the fourteenth century the monastic
spirituality, the theology of the schools, the preaching of the
friars, and the reforming labours ofthe bishops bore fruit in the
lives ofa multitude ofmen and women up and down England.
Both Hilton and Rolle wrote for layfolk, who were served also
by a number ofnew collections ofprayers and devotions. Nor
must we forget
that new earnestness of thought of which
Lollardy is an indication, the first recognizable appearance
of
that urgent, untutored, racy, fiercely independent, half/sour
religious zeal that was to become, under many changing
names, such a powerful and characteristic force in English
history. But ifwe set aside the mystics and the zealots, we can
find no clearer evidence ofthe penetration of every aspect
ofre^
ligion into the consciousness ofthe people
ofthe time than in