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Updated: May 31, 2025
After his marriage John went back to England for the coronation of his queen, which took place on October 8. At Lincoln he received the homage of William of Scotland and made peace with the Cistercians, and then went on a progress through the north as far as Carlisle.
Clare Abbey, a mile from Ennis, was founded for the Augustine Friars in 1195, and here also the tower still stands, dominating the surrounding plain. Three miles further south, on the shore of Killone Lake, was yet another abbey of the same period, while twenty miles to the north, at Corcomroe on the shore of Galway Bay, the Cistercians had yet another home.
Bernard seized the moment when laxity of observance of the rule had produced its bitterest fruit to break out in remonstrances and warnings, as well to his own Cistercians as to the Cluniacs, on the decline of the genuine monastic spirit. The invective of what he calls his "Apology" spares neither the softness, nor the ostentation, nor the avarice, of religious houses.
I am not prepared to say they were true to their first principles no corporate society ever was, and least of all a religious corporation but at starting the Cistercians were decidedly opposed to the alienating of tithes and appropriating them to the endowment of their abbeys, and this was probably one among other causes why the Cistercians prospered so wonderfully as they did during the first hundred years or so after their first coming here; people believed that the new order was not going to live by robbing parsons, as the older orders had done without remorse.
The Cistercians certainly drove hard bargains, and insisted on their rights to the uttermost farthing. In reading the history of any of these Cistercian houses the history, say, of Margam by Mr. Trice Martin one's first feeling is one of disappointment: it is nearly all about property. When one looks through to find evidences of spiritual influence one finds instead prosecutions for poaching.
Bernard, in his ample white habit, with his keen intellectual face, is about to write in a great book, and looking up to the Virgin for inspiration. The picture was originally painted for the Cistercians. The Virgin and Child enthroned between St. Augustine and his mother St. St. Antony the abbot is a favourite saint in pictures painted for the Augustine hermits.
Mention has been made once or twice in the course of this history of the Grey Friars school, where the Colonel and Clive and I had been brought up, an ancient foundation of the time of James I., still subsisting in the heart of London city. The death-day of the founder of the place is still kept solemnly by Cistercians.
And as, when three years previously, and on entering the fifth form at the Cistercians, his father had made him a present of a gold watch which the boy took from under his pillow and examined on the instant of waking: for ever rubbing and polishing it up in private and retiring into corners to listen to its ticking: so the young man exulted over his new delight; felt in his waistcoat pocket to see that it was safe; wound it up at nights, and at the very first moment of waking hugged it and looked at it.
All classes, clerical and feudal, burgess and peasant, were compelled to contribute according to their revenues, the rule being one-fourth of the income for the year, and the same proportion of the movable property; all privileges and immunities of clergy and churches as well as of laymen were suspended; the Cistercians even who had a standing immunity from all exactions gave up their whole year's shearing of wool, and so did the order of Sempringham; the plate and, jewels of the churches and monasteries, held to be properly used for the redemption of captives, were surrendered or redeemed in money under a pledge of their restoration by the king.
Henry was at this time seriously ill, and Becket therefore did not include him under the sentence; the others were excommunicated, and this so exasperated Henry, that he intimated to the monks at Pontigny that he should seize all the possessions of the Cistercians in England, if they continued to harbor his enemy.
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