The uprising, then, was natural and almost inevitable; no less naturally or inevitably, again, the rebels struck at the Church landlord as at the squire. Many parsons were too rich, many others too poor, to allow the parishioners what everybody knew to be, in theory, their share of the parish revenues. So, again, with the monasteries. Peter of Blois had expressed the feelings of the best churchmen of the twelfth century when he wrote: “It is detestable in a monk that, under any custom of colour, or honour, or title of power, he should possess feudal rights and bondmen and bondwomen, or homages and fealties and allegiances, or that he should lay forced labour upon them, and extra-services and other burdens of public works,” and that, on the strength of these revenues, he should lead an easy life. Luchaire shows how, in that same century, when monasticism was at its strongest, the monk suffered almost more than any other from any outbreak of lawlessness, since his wealth was always a temptation to the spoiler, and here, for the moment, was a spoiler restrained by no religious considerations. Great and well-ordered abbeys, it is true, were centres of charity to the country round; but even here their influence is very commonly exaggerated by modern authors, as I hope to show in the second volume of my Five Centuries of Religion.