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Beguines & Beghards (1048 words) |
 | The Beghards were often men to whom fortune had not been kind--men who had outlived their friends, or whose family ties had been broken by some untoward event, and who, by reason of failing health or advancing years, or perhaps on account of some accident, were unable to stand alone. |
| Nor did the Beghard communities of the Netherlands escape the fate which sooner or later overtakes all human institutions: before the close of the Middle Ages most of them were in full decadence. |
| Not, as so often happens, that their life was crushed out by the weight of gold; though, as time went on, they acquired endowments, they were never rich; they waned with the waning of the cloth trade, and, when that industry died, gradually dwindled away. |
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