King Knut, we are told, greatly favoured the Abbey of Ely,
visited it, was entertained there, in fact restored it. But at
Cambridge there were no monks. No _real_ monks; a fact which
ought to be a significant hint to "all educated men," but which,
unhappily, is likely to be significant only to the few who have taken
the trouble to learn what a real monk professed to be. If there were
no monks at Cambridge, there was something else. Outside the walls of
the town there rose up, in the twelfth century, the priory of
Barnwell-a priory of Augustinian _canons_; and, moreover, a
nunnery-the Benedictine nunnery of St. Rhadegunda. Within the walls
there was another house of Augustinians, which was known as St.
John's Hospital; that is, a house where the canons made it part of
their duty to provide a spurious kind of _hospitality_ to
travellers, much in the same way that the Hospice of St. Bernard
offers food and shelter now to the wayfarer, and with such food and
shelter something more--to wit, the opportunity of worshipping the
Most High in peace, up there among the eternal snows. At St. John's
Hospital, as at St. Bernard's, the grateful wanderer who had found a
refuge would leave behind him his thankoffering in recognition of the
kindly treatment he had met with, and it might happen that these free
gifts constituted no small portion of the income on which the canons--
for the most part a humble and unpretentious set of men-kept up
their houses.
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