clergy from the lower priesthood and from the people went far to paralyze the constitutional influence of the Church.  Anselm stood alone against Rufus, and when Anselm was gone no voice of ecclesiastical freedom broke the silence of the reign of Henry the First.  But at the close of Henry’s reign and throughout the reign of Stephen England was stirred by the first of those great religious movements which it was to experience afterwards in the preaching of the Friars, the Lollardism of Wyclif, the Reformation, the Puritan enthusiasm, and the mission work of the Wesleys.  Everywhere in town and country men banded themselves together for prayer:  hermits flocked to the woods:  noble and churl welcomed the austere Cistercians, a reformed offshoot of the Benedictine order, as they spread over the moors and forests of the North.  A new spirit of devotion woke the slumbers of the religious houses, and penetrated alike to the home of the noble and the trader.  London took its full share in the revival.  The city was proud of its religion, its thirteen conventual and more than a hundred parochial churches.  The new impulse changed its very aspect.  In the midst of the city Bishop Richard busied himself with the vast cathedral church of St. Paul which Bishop Maurice had begun; barges came up the river with stone from Caen for the great arches that moved the popular wonder, while street and lane were being levelled to make room for its famous churchyard.  Rahere, a minstrel at Henry’s court, raised the Priory of St. Bartholomew beside Smithfield.  Alfune built St. Giles’s at Cripplegate.  The old English Cnichtenagild surrendered their soke of Aldgate as a site for the new priory of the Holy Trinity.  The tale of this house paints admirably the temper of the citizens at the time.  Its founder, Prior Norman, built church and cloister and bought books and vestments in so liberal a fashion that no money remained to buy bread.  The canons were at their last gasp when the city-folk, looking into the refectory as they passed round the cloister in their usual Sunday procession, saw the tables laid but not a single loaf on them.  “Here is a fine set out,” said the citizens; “but where is the bread to come from?” The women who were present vowed each to bring a loaf every Sunday, and there was soon bread enough and to spare for the priory and its priests.

[Sidenote:  Thomas of London]

We see the strength of the new movement in the new class of ecclesiastics whom it forced on to the stage.  Men like Archbishop Theobald drew whatever influence they wielded from a belief in their holiness of life and unselfishness of aim.  The paralysis of the Church ceased as the new impulse bound prelacy and people together, and at the moment we have reached its power was found strong enough to wrest England out of the chaos of feudal misrule.  In the early part of Stephen’s reign his brother Henry, the Bishop of Winchester, who had been appointed in 1139 Papal Legate for the realm, had striven to supply