The monasteries were not only centres of culture, but were also the great distributing centres of charity, the nuns being looked upon as the especial friends of the poor. We hear little of complaint against the character of these houses at this time, and it is clear that the rules for their direction had become efficacious for the establishing of a discipline sufficiently rigid, on the whole, to ensure exemplary character. Many penances and mortifications were imposed on the nuns, besides others which were voluntarily assumed. In a book of rules published at this time appears the following, which seems to indicate that even sunshine savored too much of worldliness for the occupants of the religious houses: "My dear sisters, love your windows as little as you may, and let them be small, and the parlor's the narrowest; let the cloth in them be twofold, black cloth, the cross white within and without." It may be, however, that it was not too much sunlight that was to be avoided, but men, who sought to converse with the nuns at their windows. This indeed appears to be the true meaning of the recommendation, as is indicated by another enjoinment: "If any man become so mad and unreasonable that he put forth his hand toward the window cloth, shut the window quickly and leave him."
Besides the nuns, whose office dedicated them to acts of charity, many of the noble ladies found pleasure in alleviating the afflictions of the poor. In their care of the distressed they were incited to acts of humility by the very high value that the Church placed upon the performance of such deeds. Matilda, the good wife of Henry I., had the training of the monastery in developing her benevolent instincts, and set an example to the ladies of her court by establishing the leper hospital of Saint Giles; there she herself washed the feet of lepers, esteeming such lowly service as done unto Christ. In a hard and cruel age, the gentler sentiments common to womanly nature, especially when under the influence of Christian feeling, poured themselves out in a wealth of affection upon those who were stricken and left helpless by the hardness of the times.
There was an almost total lack of central authority or of legal restraint throughout the land during the long conflict between Stephen and Matilda, wife of the Count of Anjou, whom the feudal party, in violation of their vows to Henry I., refused to accept as queen; and to the other terrors of war were added the depredations of a host of mercenary soldiers brought over from the continent. To quote the chronicler William of Newburgh: "In the olden days there was no king in Israel, and everyone did that which was right in his own eyes; but in England now it was worse; for there was a king, but impotent, and every man did what was wrong in his own eyes." The Petersborough continuation of the _English Chronicle_ gives as dark a picture of the state of affairs: "They filled the land full of castles and filled the castles full of devils. They took all those they deemed had any goods, men and women, and tortured them with tortures unspeakable; many thousands they slew with hunger--they robbed and burned all the villages, so that thou mightest fare a day's journey nor ever find a man dwelling in a village nor land tilled. Corn, flesh, and cheese there was none in the land. The bishops were ever cursing them, but they cared naught therefor, for they were all forcursed and forsworn and forlorn.... Men said openly that Christ slept and His saints. Such and more than we can say we suffered for our sins," Such grim experiences of unlicensed feudalism did much for the social education of the English people, and similar lawlessness was never repeated in the history of the country. Out of the furnace through which England passed, the English character emerged, purified of some of its dross of Anglo-Saxon sluggishness and Norman arrogance, and finely representative of the tempered elements of both peoples. A sense of solidarity was awakened.