The church thus built must have been of considerable substance, if, as recorded, Peada in the foundation of it “laid such stones as that eight yoke of oxen could scarce draw one of them."[1] It has nevertheless, utterly perished.  We read of the continued support bestowed by a succession of princes and nobles, of the increasing dignity of the house, and of the privileges it acquired; but there is nowhere a single line descriptive of the buildings themselves.  Gunton does indeed speak of a goodly house for the Abbot constructed by King Peada; but he must have been capable of strange credulity if he imagined, as his words seem to imply, that this very house was in existence in the time of Henry viii.  He writes thus:[3] “The Royal Founder ... built also an house for the Abbot, which upon the dissolution by Henry the Eighth, became the Bishop’s Palace.  A building very large and stately, as the present age can testifie; all the rooms of common habitation being built above stairs, and underneath are very fair vaults and goodly cellars for several uses.  The great Hall, a magnificent room, had, at the upper end, in the Wall, very high above the ground, three stately Thrones, wherein were placed sitting, the three Royal Founders carved curiously of Wood, painted and guilt, which in the year 1644 were pulled down and broken to pieces.”

[Illustration:  The Cathedral; from the North, c. 1730]

There is no doubt that this first monastery was utterly destroyed by the Danes about the year 870.  The very circumstantial account given in the chronicle of Abbot John, derived from Ingulf, is well known; but as it is entirely without corroboration in any of the historians who mention the destruction of the monastery, recent criticism has not hesitated to pronounce the whole account a mere invention.  It is unnecessary, therefore, to give it here.  The account “may have some foundation in fact,” Professor Freeman admits, “but if so, it is strange to find no mention of it in Orderic."[4] But the discredit thrown upon the minutely graphic story of Ingulf, does not of course apply to the actual fact, of which there is ample evidence, that the monastery was burnt by the Danes.  Matthew of Westminster says:[5]—­“And so the wicked leaders, passing through the district of York, burned the churches, cities, and villages ... and thence advancing they destroyed all the monasteries (coenobia) of monks and nuns situated in the fens, and slew the inmates.  The names of these monasteries are, Crowland, Thorney, Ramsey, Hamstede, now called Burgh S. Peter, with the Isle of Ely, and that once very famous house of nuns, wherein the holy Virgin and Queen Etheldreda laudably discharged the office of abbess for many years.”