conquest; and they rejoiced to see religion and liberty advancing
with, an equal progress. Nor were the monks in this time in anything
more worthy of praise than in their zeal for personal freedom. In the
canon wherein they provided against the alienation of their lands, among
other charitable exceptions to this restraint they particularize the
purchase of liberty[43]. In their transactions with the great the same
point was always strenuously labored. When they imposed penance, they
were remarkably indulgent to persons of that rank; but they always made
them purchase the remission of corporal austerity by acts of
beneficence. They urged their powerful penitents to the enfranchisement
of their own slaves, and to the redemption of those which belonged to
others; they directed them to the repair of highways, and to the
construction of churches, bridges, and other works of general
utility.[44] They extracted the fruits of virtue even from crimes; and
whenever a great man expiated his private offences, he provided in the
same act for the public happiness. The monasteries were then the only
bodies corporate in the kingdom; and if any persons were desirous to
perpetuate their charity by a fund for the relief of the sick or
indigent, there was no other way than to confide this trust to some
monastery. The monks were the sole channel through which the bounty of
the rich could pass in any continued stream to the poor; and the people
turned their eyes towards them in all their distresses. We must observe,
that the monks of that time, especially those from Ireland,[45] who had
a considerable share in the conversion of all the northern parts, did
not show that rapacious desire of riches which long disgraced and
finally ruined their successors. Not only did they not seek, but seemed
even to shun such donations. This prevented that alarm which might have
arisen from an early and declared avarice. At this time the most fervent
and holy anchorites retired to places the furthest that could be found
from human concourse and help, to the most desolate and barren
situations, which even from their horror seemed particularly adapted to
men who had renounced the world. Many persons followed them in order to
partake of their instructions and prayers, or to form themselves upon
their example. An opinion of their miracles after their death drew still
greater numbers. Establishments were gradually made. The monastic life
was frugal, and the governm