to glorify
the great house, and to raise its church tower, or beautify the west
front, or fill the windows with stained glass, or erect the splendid
pulpit in the nave--a miracle of art.

It would be a very great mistake to conclude that all this lavish
expenditure implied the enjoyment of large rents from land. The revenue
derived from the tenants of the Abbey and the profits of farming were no
doubt considerable; but that revenue could never have sufficed alone to
defray the cost of keeping up the establishment. In point of fact, when
a monastery, great or small, depended wholly upon its landed property,
it invariably got into debt; sometimes it got hopelessly into debt. It
is clear that before the Dissolution a very large number of the
religious houses were insolvent. The striking paucity in the number of
'religious' at the time of the suppression--for hardly one house in ten
had its full complement of inmates--is by no means wholly to be
attributed to the reluctance on the part of people in general to take
upon themselves the monastic vows. Where a monastery was financially in
a critical condition, the brotherhood resorted to the expedient which is
at this moment being carried out at more than one College in Oxford and
Cambridge. Now, when times are bad, we temporarily suppress a
Fellowship; then, on the death of a brother of the house, they chose no
monk into his place.

The income from landed estates at St. Alban's was probably at no time
equal to what may be called the extraordinary income. The offerings at
the shrines of SS. Alban and Amphibalus, the proceeds of the offertory
at those magnificent and dramatic functions in which the multitude
delighted, and the _douceurs_ that were always expected and almost
always given in return for hospitality, which only in theory was
free,--these and many another source of profit, which the universal
habit of giving money for 'pious uses' supplied, all made up a sum
total, in comparison with which the proceeds of the rent-roll were
insignificant. In the taxation of Pope Nicholas (A. D. 1291) the whole
revenue of the Abbey from rent and dues in the liberty of St. Alban's is
set down at 392l. 8s. 3-1/4d., a sum which in those days would go as far
as 5000l. a-year now. Even granting that this was only half the net
income derivable from the Abbey's estates, which were widely
distributed, an expenditure of 10,000l. a year would go in our own time
a very little way towards meet