seems only to have contained the prior and one monk, who did not live
with much strictness, though Gerald of Barry says the Cluniacs here
were better than they were abroad, and not nearly so bad as the
Cistercians. The life of monks in these outlying cells, where they
were not under any supervision, and where there was no "public
opinion" of the monastery to keep them straight, was generally very
lax; they lived liked laymen, looking after the estates (generally
wasting them), and without much regard to their vows: "they lived like
beasts," says Gerald. Thus the Lord Rhys had to eject the monks from
one cell, because of the charges brought against them by the fathers
and husbands of the surrounding district, who declared that they would
leave and go to England if the evil was not stopped.

Another class of houses were those founded as priories or cells of
English abbeys. Thus the Priory at Brecon was a cell of Battle Abbey,
founded by Bernard of Newmarch, and largely endowed by the Braoses;
Ewenny, founded by Maurice de Londres, was a cell to St. Peter's,
Gloucester. All these of course, like the alien priories, were founded
by the Norman conquerors, and for two purposes: Firstly, for the souls
of the founder and his family, a very necessary provision; the Normans
were in their way a devout people and made sacrifices to win the
favour of heaven. William de Braose used to give his clerks "something
extra" for inserting pious expressions in his legal documents.
Secondly, these houses also served as castles and stations for
garrisons. Take, for instance, Ewenny; it is much more like a castle
than a religious house, with its great embattled walls and towers, and
magnificent gate-house furnished with a triple portcullis and
"shoots," or holes in the roof above for pouring molten lead on the
assailants' heads. The De Londres family were businesslike as well as
pious; Ewenny's prime object was to help them to gain heaven, it also
helped them to gain the earth. The close and constant connection which
these houses maintained with their mother abbeys in England and abroad
always kept them Anglo-Norman in sympathies--foreign garrisons. But
while recognising this aspect of the monastic houses in Wales, one
must avoid exaggerating it, as, _e.g._, Mr. Willis Bund does. He
regards all the monasteries as founded solely with this political
object: "to represent," he says, "a Welsh prince as founder of a
religious house in South Wales af