Between 1390, when John Wessington took the religious habit, and 1446, when he resigned the priorate of Durham, 123 monks were received into the community of Saint Cuthbert. Little can ever be known for certain about the individual characters of these men or their attitudes to each other, their superior, their order and their religion. The few monks like William Partrike, prior of Lytham, and Henry Helay, terrar and then prior of Holy Island, who have left some impression of their personalities to posterity were usually those who were particularly troublesome and unruly inmates of the convent. Although the private desires and aspirations of the individual monk are largely a matter for speculation, it is, however, possible to establish the main outlines of his career. Little as we know about the monks of Durham, we are better informed as to their recruitment, their education, their employment, their ambitions and their interests than those of any comparable group of men in early fifteenth-century England. Such an opportunity should not be left unnoticed by the historian, even if he is compelled to recognise that many of the most important questions will remain forever unanswered.