Traditional Protestant historiography tended to stress the corruption and unpopularity of the late Medieval Scottish church. Since the late twentieth century, research has indicated the ways in which it met the spiritual needs of different social groups. Historians have discerned a decline of monastic life in this period, with many religious houses maintaining smaller numbers of monks. Those remaining often abandoned communal living for a more individual and secular lifestyle. The rate of new monastic endowments from the nobility also declined in the fifteenth century. In contrast, the burghs saw the flourishing of mendicant orders of friars in the later fifteenth century, who, unlike the older monastic orders, placed an emphasis on preaching and ministering to the population. The order of Observant Friars were organised as a Scottish province from 1467, and the older Franciscans and the Dominicans were recognised as separate provinces in the 1480s.