lae_ small birds. Burnet is brown or red brown, and
rather bright at that. We have it in Chaucer's "Romaunt of the Rose"
[4756]:

"For also welle wole love be sette
Under ragges as rich rochette,
And else as wel be amourettes
In mournyng blak, as bright burnettes."

Consequently if the reader likes to guess (in default of knowledge) he
might do worse than think of the Robin Redbreast as a likely candidate.
He is called in Celtic Broindeag, is a small, friendly, crumb-eating,
and burnet bird, and behaves much as these ancient legends describe. The
name burnet still survives in Somerset.

Not only the burnet bird felt the fascination of the prior, but monks
drew towards Witham and men of letters also. Men of the world would
come to be taught the vanity of their wisdom; clergy whose dry times
afflicted them found a rich meal of Witham doctrine well worth the spare
diet of the place. The prior by no means courted his public, and the
Order itself was not opened at every knuckle tap. Even those who were
admitted did not always find quite what they wanted. We read of one man,
a Prior of Bath, who left the Charterhouse because he "thought it better
to save many souls than one," and returned to what we should call parish
work. Alexander of Lewes, a regular Canon, well versed in the
_quadrivium_ (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy), found the
solitude intolerable to his objective wits. He was not convinced of the
higher spirituality of co-operative hermitages. He found it too heavy to
believe that there was no Christendom outside the Charterhouse plot, and
no way of salvation except for a handful of mannikins. Alexander, with
stinging and satiric terms, left in a huff, followed by acrimonious
epithets from his late brethren. He became a monk at Reading, and filled
a larger part upon a more spacious stage, and yet would have most gladly
returned; but the strait cell was shut to him relentlessly and for ever.
Andrew, erst sacristan of Muchelney, was another who left the Order for
his first love, but his dislike of the life was less cogently put. It
was not exactly that the prior could not brook opposition: but he hated
a man who did not know his own mind, and nothing would induce him to
allow an inmate who eddied about.

The Charterhouse now had ecclesiastical independence. The bishop's power
ended outside its pale. Bruton Convent could tithe the land no more,
nor feed their swine or cattle there, nor c