Having said thus much we will pass on to the corporation
itself--that which strictly was called the convent; and for
convenience and distinctness it will be as well if we use that word
_convent_ in the more accurate sense and employ it only as
signifying the corporate body of persons occupying those buildings of
which I have been speaking, and which in their aggregate were called
a _monastery_.
Once more I think it necessary to start with a caution. Not only do I
propose to take no account here of that large class of conventuals
which comprehended the mendicant order or friars as they are called,
but I must needs pass by with little or no notice the various orders
of regular canons-_i.e._, canons living under a rule. The friars
came into England first in 1220. During the thirteenth century they
were, so to speak, upon their trial; and from the first the monks and
the friars were essentially opposed in the ideal of their daily
lives. So with the very numerous houses of canons regular up and down
the land. They and the monks did not love one another, and when I
speak of monks and their houses it will be advisable to exclude from
our consideration the friars on the one hand and the canons on the
other, and, in fact, to limit ourselves to that view of conventual
life which the great English monasteries under the rule of St.
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