ent moderate. These causes drew a constant
concourse. Sanctified deserts assumed a new face; the marshes were
drained, and the lands cultivated. And as this revolution seemed rather
the effect of the holiness of the place than of any natural causes, it
increased their credit; and every improvement drew with it a new
donation. In this manner the great abbeys of Croyland and Glastonbury,
and many others, from the most obscure beginnings, were advanced to a
degree of wealth and splendor little less than royal.

In these rude ages government was not yet fixed upon solid principles,
and everything was full of tumult and distraction. As the monasteries
were better secured from violence by their character than any other
places by laws, several great men, and even sovereign princes, were
obliged to take refuge in convents; who, when, by a more happy
revolution in their fortunes, they were reinstated in their former
dignities, thought they could never make a sufficient return for the
safety they had enjoyed under the sacred hospitality of these roofs. Not
content to enrich them with ample possessions, that others also might
partake of the protection they had experienced, they formally erected
into an asylum those monasteries, and their adjacent territory. So that
all thronged to that refuge who were rendered unquiet by their crimes,
their misfortunes, or the severity of their lords; and content to live
under a government to which their minds were subject, they raised the
importance of their masters by their numbers, their labor, and, above
all, by an inviolable attachment.

The monastery was always the place of sepulture for the greatest lords
and kings. This added to the other causes of reverence a sort of
sanctity, which, in universal opinion, always attends the repositories
of the dead: and they acquired also thereby a more particular
protection against the great and powerful; for who would violate the
tomb of his ancestors or his own? It was not an unnatural weakness to
think that some advantage might be derived from lying in holy places and
amongst holy persons: and this superstition was fomented with the
greatest industry and art. The monks of Glastonbury spread a notion that
it was almost impossible any person should be damned whose body lay in
their cemetery. This must be considered as coming in aid of the amplest
of their resources, prayer for the dead.

But there was no part of their policy, of whatever nature, that