It must be remembered that in the great majority of the smaller monasteries, and indeed in any religious house where there were chaplains to do the routine work in the church, there was nothing to prevent an absolutely illiterate man or woman from becoming monk or nun. It was, however, impossible for a man to discharge the duties of his calling as a parish priest without some education and without at least a knowledge of Latin. I will not stop to argue that point; they who dispute the assumption have much to learn. Moreover it is only what we should expect, that while some were hardened and brutalized by the scenes through which they had passed, some were softened and humbled. The prodigious activity in church building--church _restoration_ is perhaps the truer term-during the latter part of the fourteenth century in East Anglia is one of many indications that the religious life of the people at large had received a mighty stimulus. Here, again, the evidence near at hand requires to be carefully looked into. In historical no less than in physical researches, the microscope requires to be used. As yet it has scarcely been used at all. History is in the empirical stage. Meanwhile, such hints as that of Knighton's are significant when he tells us that, as the parsons died, a vast multitude of laymen whose wives had perished in the pestilence presented themselves for holy orders. _Many,_ he says--not all--were illiterate, save that they knew how to read their missals and go through the services though unintelligently, they hardly understood what they read. Were they, therefore, the worst of the new parsons? Men bowed down by a great sorrow, bewildered by a bereavement for which there is none but a make-shift remedy, men whose "life is read all backwards and the charm of life undone," are not they whose sorrow usually makes them void of sympathy for the distressed. Nay! their own sadness makes them responsive to the cry of the needy, the lonely, and the fallen. Experience proves to us every day that among such men you may find, not the worst parish priests, but the best.
I wonder whether John Bonington, steward of the manor of Waltham, was one of those whom Knighton alludes to.