licence, and granted away to others (Additional MS. Brit. Mus. 6359, fol. 15).
The house at Michelham[1] was designed for the use of the Augustines, or Black Canons, as they were called, from the colour of their habits. The canons were an intermediate class, between the monks or regular clergy, and those called secular, because resident on cures, and managing their temporalities, as well as exercising spiritual functions. To a certain extent they adopted the mode of life usual in monasteries, having a common dwelling and table, an abstemious dietary, accompanied with the abnegation of many ordinary comforts, and stated hours for the joint performance of divine service; they had sometimes also churches committed to their pastoral care. Unlike the monks, however, they did not renounce the possession of private property, nor take upon themselves a formal vow of celibacy; but appropriated to their own use the proceeds of benefices belonging to them as individuals, and retained at first the right to marry, though from their habits of life it was probably but seldom exercised. And whereas monks universally adopted the tonsure, canons suffered their beards to grow, and wore caps upon their heads.
In the eleventh century, having fallen into some disorder, they were themselves divided into secular and regular; the former continuing upon their original plan of freedom from monkish vows, but observing the decree then made by Pope Nicolas II (a.d. 1059) for their better discipline; the latter devoting themselves to perpetual chastity and poverty, and adopting in its full extent the austere mode of life for which monasteries in the first ages were remarkable.
Proposing as a pattern the strict rule of Augustine, they acquired the title of regular canons of that celebrated saint. Their dress consisted of a white rocket, over a long black cassock, with a black cloak and hood.
This order of Black Canons regular of Saint Augustine, introduced into England in the time of Henry I, by his confessor, Adelwald, had so far increased that fifty-four priories belonged to them in the reign of Edward I; and at length
- ↑ Michel (retained in the Scottish "mickle;") signifies in Saxon "great," whence some suppose that this place, as one of his possessions, derived its name from the first Gilbert, who is said to have been styled Gislebertus Magnus, or Gilbert Michel.
