§ 25.
There can be no doubt, however, that during
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the life of
monks and canons regular became generally more lax
and easy, while the numbers of those who embraced
the monastic life decreased. In the twelfth century
the monasteries had been full to overflowing: each
newly-founded house was a sign that the parent
monastery had no more room. In the middle of the
thirteenth century the numbers were still large but
not unwieldy. Such numbers as we have indicate
that the monasteries were kept up to the complement
of inmates required by their statutes, but that there
was no general increase. In Cistercian abbeys the
number of
conversi swelled the total of inmates: at
Louth Park during the same period there were 66
monks, while the
conversi numbered 150
[5]. Such
numbers, however, decreased greatly within the next
hundred years. In 1349, the year of the great
pestilence, there were 42 monks at Meaux, but only
seven
conversi: 32 monks and all the
conversi died.
The pestilence worked similar havoc in other houses.
In the small nunnery of Wothorpe, near Stamford,
only one nun was left: Greenfield priory in Lincolnshire
remained without a head for three months.
There can be little doubt that the religious houses as
a whole never recovered from the pestilence: there
were not enough recruits from outside to compensate
for the sudden decrease in numbers. Alnwick's visitations
in the middle of the fifteenth century shew that
the monasteries of his diocese were far from full.
Later visitations in the diocese of Norwich strengthen
the conclusion that even in important houses like the
cathedral priory of Norwich a number of from 40 to
50 monks was exceptionally large. In 1492 there were
only 17 canons in the wealthy priory of Walsingham.
In the largest Premonstratensian houses, during the
last quarter of the fifteenth century the numbers
seldom exceeded 25. The distinction between the
various orders was no longer clearly marked. After
1349
conversi ceased to form a part of most Cistercian
monasteries. Within the next fifty years they disappeared
altogether, and the monks, like the Benedictines,
administered their estates by hired labour.
At the suppression of the monasteries the number of
monks at Furness, where the accommodation was
unusually large, was only 30. In Bury St Edmunds,
one of the largest Benedictine abbeys, there were
about 60.
