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MORALS OF THE CLERGY. 247
find, for example, a strict injunction given by Archbishop
Lee to the treasurer of the jNIinster of Ripon,
at a visitation held there little more than a twelvemonth
after these visitors had made their round, by
which he was required at once to dismiss a certain
Joan Calverlcy from his house, and to abstain from
her company. Grave scandal had evidently been
created by her living under his roof
Special injunctions
were given at the same time to the vicars-choral
of Ripon, who were bidden to eschew alehouses,
cards, and dice, and, above all, to forbear " suspect
company of women." The Ripon Chapter Acts contain,
moreover, many instances of penances being
assigned to priests for offences springing out of the
system of enforced celibacy.
But there can be little doubt that the case was made
as bad as it could be against the monks. The general
condition of the religious houses was better probably
than was represented. In some cases the visitors
themselves were constrained to express their admiration
of the holy, useful, and industrious lives of the
inmates of some of the smaller establishments (which
yet, almost in the same breath, they had denounced as
incurably corrupt), and suggested that it were well
that these should be maintained for the benefit of
their respective neighbourlioods. It is scarcely
credible, moreover, that if the monasteries were such
sinks of iniquity as it was sought to make them out,
the gentry throughout the country would have
cultivated the friendly and neighbourly relations with
abbot and prior and monk which they unquestionably