the waste beach to seaward; and the marshes, where wild birds scream and spectral windmills whirl, on every other side of it. But drearier still must it have been when Ranulf de Glanvil built that now ruined church some seven centuries ago. The field was then an actual island in a forlorn expanse, now mud, now salt water, as the tide ebbed and flowed round it. 1 Sir Ranulf de Glanvil was a great lord, learned, valiant, and powerful; lawyers yet hold his name in reverence, attributing to him our earliest law book. He had held many and great employments; to him the custody of Queen Eleanor had been committed; he had, associated with Prince John-appointed king over Ireland2-governed that distressful country; he it was who took William the Lion, King of Scotland, prisoner at Alnwick 3; he had gone ambassador to Flanders; he had led a campaign against the Welsh ; he was now, as Justiciary, Regent of this kingdom; he became one of King Henry II.'s executors; and finally, he took the cross and did his devoir gallantly under Cœur de Lion, dying at last before Acre. And a good son of holy Church was he, like all his race. No less than six houses of religion, five of them in East Anglia, owed their origin to the de Glanvils. Ranulf's grandfather, father, and elder brother had all been founders or benefactors of monasteries. But a few years before-the year it was of the martyrdom of Becket— Ranulf himself had built a priory at Butley in Suffolk, where the gatehouse yet stands with his arms upon it; and now his mind was set to found one more religious house in his native province.1 'This and two other mounds, formerly islands in the estuary, may possibly have been artificial sites for ancient lake dwellings. 2 Adrian IV., the only English Pope, had sent John, as King of Ireland, a diadem of peacocks' feathers woven with gold, but before it arrived he had been driven out of the country. Mrs. J. R. Green, in Henry II., tells us how the King, after penance en route at Canterbury, arrived in London on July 14, 1174; and how, three days later, a messenger rode at midnight to the gate of the palace where the King lay ill, worn out by suffering and fatigue. . . . He forced his way to the door of the King's bedchamber. "Who art thou?" cried the King, suddenly startled from sleep. "I am the servant of Ranulf de Glanvil, and I have come to bring good tidings." "Ranulf our friend, is he well?" "He is well, my Lord, and holds your enemy the King of Scots captive in chains at Richmond." The King was half-stunned by the news, but as the messenger produced Glanvil's letter, he sprang from his bed and, in a transport of emotion and tears, gave thanks to God, while the joyful ringing of bells told the good news to the London citizens. He is said to have been born at Stratford St. Andrew, near Saxmundham, a village on the Roman road between Sitomagus (Dunwich) and Ad Ansam, By the twelfth century the monastic virtues were declining, but it yet remained the fashion to found abbeys-in this district at all events, where six "ornaments of the land" were reared during but fifty years within a twelve miles radius. Ranulf, moreover, had heard of a new order of exceptional sanctity, a modern graft on the primitive stock of that "father of monks," St. Benedict. Their founder, St. Norbert, Archbishop of Magdeburg,' had, at Prémontre," restored and carried farther Benedict's "small beginnings" of monastic discipline. His monks kept perpetual Lent, almost perpetual silence; they prayed and they laboured, so far as mortals might, without ceasing; they were paupers and recluses; they lived in slave-like subjection to their superior, shrinking not from the scourge at his reverend hands. And for men of that holy rule Glanvil deemed the island in the Myssemeare a fitting dwelling-place. The rude rubble-built church and a few cells and offices of, maybe, rough timber and clay daubing, had no doubt been roofed in before winter; but not till spring-time would the recluses have taken possession-the spring it was of 1182; and they, it is likely, chose the day of their own patron, the blessed St. Mary, for the ceremony. Looking out now from the grey old ruin, it all seems to come back to one : one hears the distant chant of litanies and the regular beat of oars; and from venerable Dunmoc, city of King Sigberht, who changed his crown for the tonsure,3 of St. Felix* the great apostle of the East Angles, of St. Humbert who crowned the martyr King Edmund and died with him, one sees at Where the writer would recommend tourists to visit the interesting Romanesque church and convent which St. Norbert founded, and which even Tilly spared. 2 This place's name is said to be derived from Pratum monstratum, a meadow in the forest of Coucy, pointed out to St. Norbert in a dream as a site where. upon he might build a house for his new order. Hence, perhaps, the "s" in the ordinary spelling, Premonstratensian. ... * Bede describes King Sigberht as "a most Christian and learned man,” and adds that he "became so great a lover of the heavenly Kingdom that, quitting the affairs of his crown .. he went himself into a monastery which he had built; and, being shorn, applied himself rather to gain a heavenly throne." Persuaded to quit his retirement and again to lead an army, he would carry nothing in his hand but a wand. He was killed by the Pagans.-Stevens's Translation, pp. 162 and 224. "Sigberht's endeavours to Christianise East Anglia were much favoured by the Bishop Felix, who, coming to Honorius, the archbishop, from the parts of Burgundy where he had been born and ordained . . . he sent him to preach the word of life to the aforesaid nation of the Angles. Nor were his good wishes in vain, for the pious husbandman reaped much fruit there of believing people, highest tide a flotilla come sweeping across the estuary.1 And then, in procession, prelates in their sacred vestments, the new abbot, his cross borne before him, white robed canons, noble knights in their weeds of peace, and grave burgesses of Dunmoc, perambulate the little isle. And in the lowly chapter-house is read the deed of foundation, reciting in monkish Latin how this convent of Premontratensian monks had been founded to the glory of God, for the soul's health of King Henry-who had then done penance for the murder of St. Thomas-for the soul's health of the founder, his wife, his ancestors, his successors. And then a first solemn service in the new abbey church. At length the daylight wanes, the tide has ebbed and flowed again; and prelates, noble knights, and burgesses embark once more, row away into dim distance, and leave our recluses to solitude. Such was the beginning of the fraternity whose home for nigh two centuries was this remote island. They did not leave it till 1363. The Abbey's first endowment was the manor of Leystone (in Domesday it had been spelt Leytuna), and here the abbots exercised manorial rights of wreck, gallows, and free warren. On this perilous coast, and in those days of small, ill-found vessels, the right of wreck brought no little profit; many an ill-starred carack and crayer went to pieces on the sandbanks, and strewed all the beach with wreckage. The Paston Letters tell us how, some centuries later-1477-men whose names have come down to us stole from the lord of a Norfolk manor's "several ground no less than twenty-two cartsful of stuff, being in part cargo with great plenty of the wreck of a ship." One hopes the holy men found seldom employment for their gallows; but gibbets were common objects in all the landscapes of the period, and our abbots had one which a gate yet commemorates-the gibbet-gate near by the parish church of Aldringham. Nor can the third right long iniquity and infelicity, and bringing it to the faith and works of righteousness, and the gifts of perpetual felicity. He had the See of his bishopric appointed in the city Donmoc, and, having presided over the same province with pontifical government seventeen years, he ended his days there in peace." He is supposed to have landed at the spot ever since known as Felixstowe. body was buried at Dunwich, but afterwards removed to Soham, near Ely, "on the edge of a lake once dangerous to ships."-Bede: Stevens's Translation, pp. 162 and 232. His 'The site of the vanished city must be six miles out at sea beyond the present line of shore, if the tradition is well founded that from the houses folk could across the bay (then called, like Purgatory, "Abraham's bosom,") see the -that of free warren-have been of much service to the early abbots. Both their strict rule and canon law forbade hunting, and such delicate cates as the flesh of beasts and fowls of warren-hares, rabbits, pheasants, partridges-they would not have suffered, even to regale guests, in their austere kitchen. Ten years after their foundation the monastic hive had grown strong enough to send out a first swarm; for when de Glanvil's sonin-law, William de Auberville, founded a Premontratensian house at West Langdon, in Kent, it was colonised from Leystone. It would seem, however, that the monks' revenues, after providing needful bread for their own sustenance, did not suffice for the duties of charity and hospitality; for we find that Glanvil had to persuade his black canons of Butley Priory to make over the tithes and advowson of the parish church of Leystone to the white canons of Leystone Abbey. Not that our monks' needs were extravagant, for as well to a religious of this order as to a Benedictine monk might be applied the eloquent words of Newman: "He formed no plans, he had no cares, the ravens of his father Benedict were ever at his side; he went forth in his youth to his work and to his labour until the evening; if he lived a day longer he did a day's work more; whether he lived many days or few, he laboured on to the end of them; he had no wish to see farther in advance of his journey than where he was to make his next stage; he ploughed and sowed, he prayed and meditated, he studied, he wrote, he taught and then he died and went to heaven." So primitive were the virtues, so holy and self-denying the lives, we shall not err in believing of the original monks of Leystone; but could frail humanity long endure the strain? As "fatness and fleeces" blessed their good husbandry, and as manors, churches, lands, tithes, and oblations flowed in on them, the proverbial truth appeared. "Crescit amor nummi quantum ipsa pecunia crescit ;" our professors of poverty grew covetous, and then decadence inevitably set in. No longer climbing heavenwards by arduous steps, prayer, poverty, silence; no longer humbly serving each other, and earning their living by their own hands, they gave the rein to indolence and luxury. Their austere house of religion became a pleasant club, they were served by lay brethren, and, no more "pover cloysterers" condemned "upon a 'Nothing so delicate even as wheaten bread. They were probably content with bulmong, meslin, and dragel-mixtures of oats with tares or peas, oats with rye, and oats with barley respectively-which Mr. Garnier tells us were the book . . . alway to powre, Or swynke with their handes and laboure," the monks now fared abroad for business and pleasure. With wealth, indeed, business had multiplied upon their hands, within the house and out of it. Indoors, the machine of a great establishment had to be kept going. One brother looked to the repairs of the buildings, one held the post of almoner, another was the sacristan, two more were camerarius and cellerarius respectively.' And out of doors, their estate business was so onerous, took so much time, that "Unnethe might they matins say for counting and court holding." The accounts of the seneschal, or else of the bailiffs, if a brother acted as seneschal, had to be examined and audited; wool had to be put on board ship and despatched to market 2; rents, too, had to be collected from small widely-scattered tenants; and, after 1313, there were the tolls to take of a weekly market now forgotten, and of a yearly fair which still is held in autumn-time on Coldfair Green. And the abbots were called upon to take part in local business just as country magnates are now. In 1340, for instance, we find the Abbot of Leystone acting as assessor at Framlingham to value the ninth sheep and fleece and lamb granted by Parliament to King Edward III. Nor did the canons longer mortify their inclination for pleasure; "many a deynte hors" had Dan Pers and Dan Dominike, who, "whan they rood, men might their bridel heer, gyngle in whistlying wynd so cleer." Rights of free warren over many parishes belonged to the Abbey ; and now the gay canons took their disport and "hunted the hare hardily," for they "loved venerye." Nor did they longer shrink from strictly enforcing their sporting rights. The first poacher, indeed, ever prosecuted by an English subject was, I think, a certain man John, who, in the last year of the thirteenth century, was impleaded by the then Abbot of Leystone for trespassing and driving off the hares from his manor. The monks seem to have forgiven him, however, for five years afterwards we 'The post of sacristan was one of trust, but how much more so that of camerarius! His duty it was to change the hay in his brethren's beds, and have their dormitory cleaned out (query on the 1st March) once a year! And to him they looked to "make flea to refraine" by strawing wormwood, and to exorcise that nocturnum fœtidum animal which Mr. Norfolk Howard's name commemorates. And a yet greater and more august officer was the "heygh selerer." He kept the keys of the liquor; and no man of a surety was deferred to so heartily as he. 2 The Abbot had the privilege—like the Cistercian Abbot of Sibton, a house also on the Myssemeare, higher up the stream-of selling farm produce, and buying goods for his own needs, in the burgh of Ipswich, free of |