york00orns

STATE OF THE MONASTIC ORDERS. 151
as early as 1227. In that year there is a grant from
Henry III. to the Friars Preachers of a portion of land
called Kingestoftes by York. In the following year
another grant is made to them. At this period the
great monastic societies of the Benedictine and Cistercian
orders had, to a great extent, lost their hold
upon the affections of the people. Whatever amount
of science and learning existed, had, no doubt, been
preserved by them. They had cultivated the arts of
peace ;
they had encouraged architecture ;
they had
"built bridges ;
they had made roads ;
they had fed
the poor. The Cistercians, in particular, had brought
great intelligence to bear upon the cultivation of land,
and had promoted habits of industry amongst the tillers
of the soil, but they could no longer be recognised
as the self-denying teachers of a pure morality or as
setting before the eyes of the people a visible standard
of exalted holiness. The enthusiastic devotion and
ascetic lives which distinguished the earlier monks of
Fountains and of Rievaulx, and which won the affections
and commanded the veneration of a whole
people, had given place to more mundane characteristics.
Munificent benefactors had, in days gone by,
given them wide tracts of land which their untiring
industry had tilled, and whose hill-sides and pastures
their care had covered with exceeding many flocks
and herds. They were famous as wool-growers, and
made large consignments to the merchants of
Flanders. The monastic barns which still exist here
and there give some idea of the amount of agricultural
produce which they laid up in their garners.
The monks were enterprising in another way also.