the
great Abbey was, first and foremost, a religious foundation, raised in
the first instance to the glory of God, and meant to help forward the
worship of God, and make the worship worthy of the Most High.

But besides being primarily and emphatically a religious foundation, the
Abbey in the 13th century had grown into something else, and had become
the home of a corporation of scholars and students, who were the leaders
of art and culture in an age when art and culture were to be met with
nowhere outside the walls of a great monastery. There, in what might be
called the museum of the Abbey, you might see no mean collection of
antique gems that had once been the pride of Roman magistrates.
Mysterious specimens of barbaric goldwork, fashioned by unknown
craftsmen for the necks of nameless chieftains who had drawn the sword
and perished, none knew when. Engraved gems that had been dug up in
mysterious sepulchres, about which even imagination despaired of telling
any story; relics of saints and martyrs, charters of Saxon kings,
granted centuries before the Normans came to ring out the old and ring
in the new. The wealth of mere archaeological specimens at St. Alban's
made it such a museum of antiquities as provokes wonder and bitterness,
as we read the catalogue of what was once there, and has perished
utterly and for ever.[3]

The range of buildings to the south of the church covered a far larger
area than that which the church itself occupied. Uncertain though the
exact site may be and is, there had already been added in Brother
Matthew's time what we should now call an Art school, a Library, and,
almost more famous than all, the Scriptorium. By-and-bye, too, came the
printing-press which John Herford set up in 1480. Wynkyn de Worde was
sometime schoolmaster of Saint Alban's, and Lady Juliana Berners' famous
volume issued from the Abbey Press, while Caxton was still pursuing his
craft in the almonry of another monastery at Westminster.

In the days of King John, however, people had so little idea of the
possibility of the printing-press, that they were almost equally
ignorant of such a material as paper for literary purposes. Yet it is a
huge mistake which has not yet been exploded, as it ought to be, that
reading and writing were rare accomplishments in the 13th century.
Knowledge of a certain kind was disseminated far more effectively and
far more universally than is generally believed. The country parson was
expe