appears the wrecked and desolate land upon the retirement of a flood.
To cope with such conditions, to reintroduce into the ravaged and
desecrated province, which had lost its language in the storm, all its
culture, and even its religion, a new beginning of energy and of
production, came, with the peculiar advantages we have seen it to
possess for such a work, the monastic institution. For two centuries
the great houses were founded all over England: their attachment to
Continental learning, their exactitude, their corporate power of
action, were all in violent contrast to, and most powerfully
educational for, the barbarians in the midst of whom they grew. It may
be truly said that if we regard the life of England as beginning anew
with the Saxon invasion, if that disaster of the pirate raids be
considered as so great that it offers a breach of continuity in the
history of Britain, then the new country which sprang up, speaking
Teutonic dialects, and calling itself by its present name of England,
was actually created by the Benedictine monks.

It was within a very few years of St. Augustine's landing that
Westminster must have been begun. There are several versions of the
story: the most detailed statement we have ascribes it to the
particular year 604, but varied as are the forms in which the history,
or rather the legend, is preserved, the truth common to all is the
foundation quite early in the seventh century. It was very probably
supported by what barbaric Government there was in London at the time
and initiated, moreover, according to one form of the legend, and that
not the least plausible, by the first bishop of the see. The site was
at the moment typical of all those which the great monasteries of the
West were to turn from desert places to gardens: it was a waste tract
of ground called "Thorney," lying low, triangular in shape, bounded by
the two reedy streams that descended through the depression which now
runs across the Green Park and Mayfair, and emptied themselves into
the Thames, the one just above, the other 100 or 200 yards below, the
site of the Houses of Parliament.

The moment the foundation was established a stream of wealth tended
towards it: it was at the very gate of the largest commercial city in
the kingdom and it was increasingly associated, as the Anglo-Saxon
monarchy developed, with the power of the Central Government. This
process culminated in the great donation and rebuilding of Edward