Having passed in review so many of the activities of the religious, and the phases of their common experience, it becomes possible, and it is the historian's duty, to draw together the various strands and to consider the pattern of the fabric that the years have woven.

The period opened with what was destined to be the last attempt on the part of a medieval pope to issue reforming decrees affecting the monks and canons of western Europe. True, they were of limited scope, and aimed at doing little more than to sanction and delimit existing practice. They were, nevertheless, the act of authority, and were accepted as such. The constitutional provision, which united the black monks of both provinces in a single chapter, had a permanent effect; it created an English congregation, which survived the revolutions of the sixteenth century in a single life, and endures to-day. The practical effect on the life of the monks was, however, small. The movement towards centralization and control from above by the abbots president had exhausted itself before the two chapters were united, and in the two hundred years that remained the monks did not once use the machinery of chapter to devise and implement a common design. Even Thomas de la Mare, the most eminent and active of the presidents, never attempted to direct the policy or promote the unity of the whole body; he contented himself with disciplinary visitations, and his one attempt to force a recalcitrant house into line was not successful.