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in 1456) the abbey fell into "commendam." The rise of the Cistercians and the mendicant orders were contributory causes, and also the difficulties experienced in keeping houses in other countries subject to a French superior. And so the great system gradually became a mere congregation of French houses. Of the commendatory abbots the most remarkable were Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin, who both initiated attempts to introduce reforms into the Cluny congregation, the former trying to amalgamate it with the reformed congregation of St Maur, but without effect. Martene tells us that in the early years of the 18th century in the monastery of Baume, one of Berno's original group of Cluny houses--indeed the parent house of Cluny itself--no one was admitted as a monk who had not sixteen quarterings in his coat of arms. A reform movement took root in the Cluny congregation, and during the last century of its existence the monks were divided into two groups, the Reformed and the Unreformed, living according to different laws and rules, with different superiors, and sometimes independent, and even rival, general chapters. This most unhappy arrangement hopelessly impaired the vitality and work of the congregation, which was finally dissolved and suppressed in 1790, the church being deliberately destroyed. Cluniac houses were introduced into England under the Conqueror. The first foundation was at Barnstaple; the second at Lewes by William de Warenne, in 1077, and it counted as one of the "Five Daughters of Cluny." In quick succession followed Thetford, Montacute, Wenlock, Bermondsey, and in Scotland, Paisley; a number of lesser foundations were made, and offshoots from the English houses; so that the English Cluniac dependencies in the 13th century amounted to 40. It is said that in the reign of Edward III. they transmitted to Cluny annually the sum of L2000, equivalent to L60,000 of our money. Such a drain on the country was naturally looked on with disfavour, especially during the French wars; and so it came about that as "alien priories" they were frequently sequestered by the crown. As the communities came to be composed more and more of English subjects, they tended to grow impatient of their subjection to a foreign house, and began to petition parliament to be naturalized and to become denizen. In 1351 Lewes was actually naturalized, but a century later the prior of Lewes appears still as the abbot of Cluny's vicar in Eng
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