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“Emollit mores nec sinit esse feros;”

but these monks and nuns never saw one another except at some very occasional service in chapel; even at Mass, though they might hear each other’s voices in the canticles, they were parted by a wall and invisible to each other, and as they thus had no communication with one another they might, one would think, have just as well been in separate buildings. Gilbert thought otherwise. He was a great educator, and especially had given much thought to the education of women, at all events he believed that the plan worked well, for he increased his houses to the number of thirteen, which held 1,500 nuns and 700 canons. Most of these were in Lincolnshire, and all were dissolved by Henry VIII. Gilbert was certainly both pious and wise, and being a clever man, when Bishop Alexander moved his Cistercians from Haverholme Priory to Louth Park Abbey, because they suffered so much at Haverholme from rheumatism, and handed over the priory, a chilly gift, to the Gilbertines, their founder managed to keep his Order there in excellent health. He harboured, as we know, Thomas à Becket there in 1164, and got into trouble with Henry II. for doing so. He was over 80 then, but he survived it and lived on for another five and twenty years, visiting occasionally his other homes at Lincoln, Alvingham, Bolington, Sixhills, North Ormsby, Catley, Tunstal and Newstead, and died in 1189 at the age of 106. Thirteen years later he was canonised by Pope Innocent III., and his remains transferred to Lincoln Minster, where he became known as St. Gilbert of Sempringham. Part of the nave of his priory at Sempringham is now the Parish Church; it stands on a hill three-quarters of a mile from Pointon, where is the vicarage and the few houses which form the village. Much of the old Norman work was unhappily pulled down in 1788, but a doorway richly carved and an old door with good iron scroll-work is still there. At the time of the dissolution the priory, which was a valuable one, being worth £359 12s. 6d., equal to £3,000 nowadays, was given to Lord Clinton. Campden, 300 years ago, spoke of “Sempringham now famous for the beautiful house built by Edward Baron Clinton, afterwards Earl of Lincoln,” the same man to whom Edward VI. granted Tattershall. Of this nothing is left but the garden wall, and Marrat, writing in 1815, says: “At this time the church stands alone, and there are but five houses in the parish, which are two miles from the church and in the fen.”