york00orns

—
THE CARTHUSIANS.
not the teaching which their lips proclaimed. The
picture which Chaucer painted in unfading colours of
the country parson of this very period was surely no
imaginary portrait. It must have had its prototype
in more than one parish in England
:
This noble example to his shepe he yaf,
That first he wrought, and aflcrwanls he taught.
Out of the gospel he the wordcs caught,
And this figure he added yet thereto,
That if gold rustc, what shuld iren do ?
For if a preeste be foule, on whom we trust
No wonder is a lewed man to rust.
Well ought a preest ensample for to yeve,
By his clenenesse how his shepe shulde live.
The great monastic houses of Yorkshire must have
furnished a text for many a denunciation on the part
of the Lollaid preachers against the self-indulgence
and secularity of their inmates. Protests of another
kind were not wholly wanting against the scandal
which was caused by the decay of piety and the
rela.xation of discipline in those great communities.
To a protest of this kind against the irregularities
which prevailed in St. Mary's Abbey at York the
Cistercians of Fountains, it will be remembered, owed
their origin. The grey walls of the ruined Priory of
Mount Grace, and the tower of its small church, yet
survive to bear silent witness to the austerity of the
Carthusian rule, which, like that of the Cistercians in
a bygone age, sought to call men's minds, if it might
be, from all secular distractions, and fix them wholly
upon the contemplation of things unseen and eternal.