The victorious fleet of Rollo first sailed in triumph up the Seine, in the year 876.  According to three monkish historians, Dudo of St. Quintin, William of Jumieges, and Matthew of Westminster, the chieftain venerated the sanctity of Jumieges, and deposited in the chapel of St. Vast, the corpse of the holy virgin, Hameltruda, whom he had brought from Britain.  They also tell us that, on the sixth day after his baptism, he made a donation of some lands to this monastery.—­The details, however, of the circumstances connected with the first, diminish its credibility; and Jumieges, then desolate, could scarcely contain a community capable of accepting the donation.  But under the reign of the son and successor of Rollo, the abbey of Jumieges once more rose from its ashes.  Baldwin and Gundwin, two of the monks who had fled to Haspres, returned to explore the ruins of the abbey:  they determined to seclude themselves amidst its fire-scathed walls, and to devote their lives to piety and toil.—­In pursuing the deer, the Duke chanced to wander to Jumieges, and he there beheld the monks employed in clearing the ground.  He listened with patience to their narration; but when they invited him to partake of their humble fare, barley-bread and water, he turned from them with disdain.  It chanced, however, that immediately afterwards, he encountered in the forest a boar of enormous size.  The beast unhorsed him, and he was in danger of death.  The peril he regarded as a judgment from heaven; and, as an expiation for his folly, he rebuilt the monastery.  So thoroughly, however, had the Normans demonachised Neustria, that William Longa Spatha was compelled to people the abbey with a colony from Poitou; and thence came twelve monks, headed by Abbot Martin, whom the duke installed in his office in the year 930.  William himself also desired to take refuge from the fatigues of government in the retirement of the monastery; and though dissuaded by Abbot Martin, who reminded him that Richard, his infant, son still needed his care, he did not renounce his intention:—­but his life and his reign were soon ended by treachery.

This second aera of the prosperity of Jumieges was extremely short; for the prefect, whom Louis d’Outremer, King of France, placed in command at Rouen, when he seized upon the young Duke Richard, pulled down the walls of this and of all the other monasteries on the banks of the Seine, to assist towards the reparation and embellishment of the seat of his government.  But from that time forward the tide of monastic affairs flowed in one even course of prosperity; though the present abbatial church was not begun till the time of Abbot Robert, the second of that name, who was elected in 1037.  By him the first stone of the foundation was laid, three years after his advancement to the dignity; but he held his office only till 1043, when Edward the Confessor invited him to England, and immediately afterwards promoted him to the Bishopric