s in the same manner. The latter,
however, not having numerous ecclesiastics to support, laid out more of
their funds than the former were enabled to do, towards the
entertainment of strangers, and towards the maintenance of the poor. Now
it must be observed, that, when these two kinds of monasteries existed,
the people were at liberty to pay their tithes to either of them as they
pleased, and that, having this permission, they generally favoured the
latter. To these they not only paid their tithes, but gave their
donations by legacy. This preference of the lay abbies to the
ecclesiastical arose from a knowledge that the poor, for whose benefit
tithes had been originally preached up, would be more materially served.
Other circumstances too occurred, which induced the people to continue
the same preference. For the bishops in many places began to abuse their
trust, as the deacons had done before, by attaching the bequeathed lands
to their sees, so that the inferior clergy, and the poor became in a
manner dependent upon them for their daily bread. In other places the
clergy had seized all to their own use. The people therefore so
thoroughly favoured the lay abbies in preference to those of the church,
that the former became daily richer, while the, latter did little more
than maintain their ground.

This preference, however, which made such a difference in the funds of
the ecclesiastical, and of the lay monasteries, was viewed with a
jealous eye by the clergy of those times, and measures were at length
taken to remove it. In a council under Pope Alexander the third, in the
year 1180, it was determined, that the liberty of the people should be
restrained with respect to their tithes. They were accordingly forbidden
to make appropriations to religious houses without the consent of the
bishop, in whose diocese they lived. But even this prohibition did not
succeed. The people still favoured the lay abbies, paying their tithes
there, till Pope Innocent the third, in the year 1200, ordained, and he
enforced it by ecclesiastical censures, that every one should pay his
tithes to those who administered to him spiritual things in his own
parish. In a general council also held at Lyons, in the year 1274, it
was decreed, that it was no longer lawful for men to pay their tithes
where they pleased, as before, but that they should pay them to mother
church. And the principle, on which they had now been long demanded, was
confirmed by th