the parish. Moreover, there had gradually grown up a social as well as a religious separation between the monks and their neighbours. Fountains Abbey, for example, was built, as we have seen, by the benefactions of rich and noble persons. It was on that side an aristocratic institution. It differed in this respect from the parish churches which were erected and maintained by the plain people, and especially by prosperous citizens of the mercantile order. Mr. Micklethwaite has put the situation clearly in his paper on "The Cistercian Order." "To a citizen or a franklin," he says, "a monk was a dignitary, but the parish priest was his neighbour and friend, and the parish church was his own." This fact, that the great substantial middle class were no longer deeply interested in the abbeys, not only accounts in some measure for the indifference with which they witnessed their destruction, but for the difficulty which the
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