The abbey, to which Fecamp was indebted for all its greatness and celebrity, was founded in 664[32] for a community of nuns, by Waning, the count or governor of the Pays de Caux, a nobleman who had already contributed to the endowment of the Monastery of St. Wandrille.  St. Ouen, Bishop of Rouen, dedicated the church in the presence of King Clotaire; and, so rapidly did the fame of the sanctity of the abbey extend, that the number of its inmates amounted in a very short period to three hundred or more.  The arrival, however, of the Normans, under Hastings, in 841, caused the dispersion of the nuns; and the same story is related of the few who remained at Fecamp, as of many others under similar circumstances, that they voluntarily cut off their noses and their lips, rather than be an object of attraction to the lust of their conquerors.  The abbey, in return for their heroism, was levelled with the ground, and it did not rise from its ashes till the year 988, when the piety of Duke Richard I. built the church anew, under the auspices of his son, Robert, Archbishop of Rouen; but, departing from the original foundation, he established therein a chapter of regular canons, who, however, were so irregular in their conduct, that within ten years they were doomed to give way to a body of Benedictine Monks, headed by an Abbot, named William, from a convent at Dijon.  From his time the monastery continued to increase in splendor.  Three suffragan abbies, that of Notre Dame at Bernay, of St. Taurin at Evreux, and of Ste. Berthe de Blangi, in the diocese of Boullogne, owned the superior power of the abbot of Fecamp, and supplied the three mitres which he proudly bore on his abbatial shield.  Kings and princes in former ages frequently paid the abbey the homage of their worship and their gifts; and, in a period nearer to our own, Casimir of Poland, after his voluntary abdication of the throne, selected it as the spot in which he sought for repose, when wearied with the cares of royalty.  The English possessions of Fecamp (for like most of the great Norman abbeys, it held lands in our island) do not appear to have been large; but, according to an author of our own country[33] the abbot presented to one hundred and thirty benefices, some in the diocese of Rouen, others in those of Bayeux, Lisieux, Coutances, Chartres, and Beauvais; and it enjoyed so many estates, that its income was said to be forty thousand crowns per annum.  Fecamp moreover could boast of a noble library, well stored with manuscripts[34], and containing among its archives many original charters, deeds, &c. of William the Conqueror, and several of his successors.