e value of these lies in their
end. No policy or science of charity can grow out of such a system. It
can produce innumerable isolated acts, which may or may not be
beneficent, but it cannot enkindle the "ordered charity." This charity
is, strictly speaking, by its very nature alike intellectual and
emotional. Otherwise it would inevitably fail of its purpose, for though
emotion might stimulate it, intelligence would not guide it.

There are, then, these three lines of thought. That of St Bernard, who
invigorated the monastic movement, and helped to make the monastery or
hospital the centre of charitable relief. That of St Francis, who,
passing by regular and secular clergy alike, revived and reinvigorated
the conception of charity and gave it once more the reality of a social
force, knowing that it would find a freer scope and larger usefulness in
the life of the people than in the religious aristocracy of monasteries.
And that of St Thomas Aquinas, who, analysing the problem of charity and
almsgiving, and associating it with definite groups of works, led to its
taking, in the common thought, certain stereotyped forms, so that its
social aim and purpose were ignored and its power for good was
neutralized.

Charity and social conditions in England.

We have now to turn to the conditions of social life in which these
thoughts fermented and took practical shape. The population of England
from the Conquest to the 14th century is estimated at between 1-1/2 and
2-1/2 millions. London, it is believed, had a population of about
40,000. Other towns were small. Two or three of the larger had 4000 or
5000 inhabitants. The only substantial building in a village, apart
perhaps from the manor-house, was the church, used for many secular as
well as religious purposes. In the towns the mud or wood-paved huts
sheltered a people who, accepting a common poverty, traded in little
more than the necessaries of life (Green, _Town Life in the 15th
Century_, i. 13). The population was stationary. Famine and pestilence
were of frequent occurrence (Creighton, _Epidemics in Britain_, p. 19),
and for the careless there was waste at harvest-time and want in winter.
Hunger was the drill-sergeant of society. Owing to the hardship and
penury of life infant mortality was probably very great (Blashill,
_Sutton in Holdernesse_, p. 123). The 15th century was, however, "the
golden age of the labourer." Our problem is to ascertain what was the
servic