clergy from secular life and compelling them to live together under a common rule of discipline. For at least two centuries evangelising zeal, piety and devotion, charity and faith, religious idealism and aggressive enthusiasm in the Christian Church took one or other of these forms. The instinct which created a celibate and separate Christian life, as a protest against the abuses of the time, has its modern parallel in the instinct which commends abstinence from alcohol as the only cure for the drunkenness which degrades modern English life. Most of the arguments which justify the one can be used to justify the other. None of those who took part in this great Reformation could possibly have foreseen that the time would come when the life-blood of Christian zeal and character would depart from the monastic system and the canonical rule, and that then men would try to embalm a carcass which cumbered the ground. The mistakes of later days ought not to hide from us the fact that in their time, and for their time, these two institutions stood for a great religious and moral reformation.

In that reformation Alfred took his full share. He founded monasteries at Athelney and Shaftesbury. The New Minster at Winchester, which became Hyde Abbey, was his foundation. He took a lifelong interest in the work of raising the

character and standing of the ordinary clergy, both on the secular side by seeing that they got their dues, and on the spiritual side by constant effort to elevate the character of men in holy orders. Asser's account of his aims, and his difficulties in carrying them out, illustrates well the conditions of the problem which confronted a Christian king.

"For whereas he often thought of the necessities of his soul, among the other good deeds to which his thoughts were night and day turned, he ordered that two monasteries should be built, one for monks at Athelney, . . . and in this monastery he collected monks of all kinds from every quarter, and placed them therein. For at first, inasmuch as he had no one of his own nation noble and free by birth, who was willing to enter the monastic life, except children, who could neither choose good nor avoid evil in consequence of their tender years, because for many previous years the love of a monastic life had utterly decayed from that nation as well as from many other nations, though many monasteries still remain in that country; yet, as no one directed the rule of that kind of life in a regular way, for what reason I cannot say, either from the invasions of foreigners which took place so frequently both by sea and land, or because that people abounded in riches of every kind and so looked with

contempt on the monastic life1; it was for this reason that King Alfred sought to gather monks of different kinds to place in the same monastery.

"First, he placed there as Abbot, John the priest and monk, an old Saxon by birth, then certain priests and deacons from beyond the sea; of whom, finding that he had not as large a number as he wished, he procured as many as possible of the same Gallic race, some of whom being children he ordered to be taught in the same monastery, and at a later period to be admitted to the monastic habit. I have myself seen a young lad of pagan (Danish) birth who was educated in that monastery, and by no means the hindmost of them all."

Alfred's plan was good, but he had to work with poor material. Asser goes on to tell what happened under Abbot John's régime. "There was also a deed done once in that monastery, which I would utterly consign to oblivion, although it is an unworthy deed. . . . For once upon a time, a certain priest and deacon, Gauls by birth, and two of the aforesaid monks, by the instigation of the devil and excited by some secret jealousy, became so embittered in secret against their Abbot, the abovementioned John, that, like Jews, they circumvented

1 The nobles were rich and would not become monks. The poor were too poor and would not be received, as they could not give anything in exchange for their keep.