ever.

The official letters which reveal the condition into which the monastic
establishments had degenerated, are chiefly in the Cotton Library, and a
large number of them have been published by the Camden Society. Besides
these, however, there are in the Rolls House many other documents which
confirm and complete the statements of the writers of those letters.
There is a part of what seems to have been a digest of the 'Black
Book'--an epitome of iniquities, under the title of the 'Compendium
Compertorum.' There are also reports from private persons, private
entreaties for enquiry, depositions of monks in official examinations,
and other similar papers, which, in many instances, are too offensive to
be produced, and may rest in obscurity, unless contentious persons
compel us to bring them forward. Some of these, however, throw curious
light on the habits of the time, and on the collateral disorders which
accompanied the more gross enormities. They show us, too, that although
the dark tints predominate, the picture was not wholly black; that as
just Lot was in the midst of Sodom, yet was unable by his single
presence to save the guilty city from destruction, so in the latest era
of monasticism there were types yet lingering of an older and fairer
age, who, nevertheless, were not delivered, like the patriarch, but
perished most of them with the institution to which they belonged. The
hideous exposure is not untinted with fairer lines; and we see traits
here and there of true devotion, mistaken but heroic.

Of these documents two specimens shall be given in this place, one of
either kind; and both, so far as we know, new to modern history. The
first is so singular, that we print it as it is found--a genuine
antique, fished up, in perfect preservation, out of the wreck of the old
world.

About eight miles from Ludlow, in the county of Herefordshire, once
stood the abbey of Wigmore. There was Wigmore Castle, a stronghold of
the Welsh Marches, now, we believe, a modern, well-conditioned mansion;
and Wigmore Abbey, of which we do not hear that there are any remaining
traces. Though now vanished, however, like so many of its kind, the
house was three hundred years ago in vigorous existence; and when the
stir commenced for an enquiry, the proceedings of the abbot of this
place gave occasion to a memorial which stands in the Rolls collection
as follows:--[R]

Articles to be objected against John Smart, Abbot of the Mona