The typescript of The Monastic Order passed from the hands of its author to the Secretary of the University Press in October 1937. In the twenty-five years that have passed since that date monastic and other historians have been extremely active, but no opportunity has been given me of making more than a very few alterations, mostly literal, to the book. Now, for a photo-offset reprint, the occasion has been taken of effecting a more extensive review, but in order to preserve the existing pagination and layout all alterations have been confined to exact replacements and the filling-up of blank spaces. Anyone who has been through an exercise of this kind will probably agree that, while it consumes an inordinate amount of time, it can nevertheless produce fairly satisfactory results, and corrections and additions have been made in some 150 places in the light of criticisms received and further research. If even this seems little when such a large book is in question, it may be said that in fact major revisions in English monastic history have been few; the most notable additions to knowledge have been in the fields of early and continental monasticism. Consequently, the text of this book remains virtually unchanged. Were it to be written again ab ovo it would doubtless differ much in emphasis and treatment, but it would then become another book, and I have been content to eliminate or to change only those statements and passages which seemed to me to be either erroneous or outdated by subsequent research.