Albans, in England, is said to have been six hundred feet long; and that of Glastonbury, the oldest in England, five hundred and thirty.  Peterborough’s was over five hundred.  The kings of England, both Saxon and Norman, were especial patrons of these religious houses.  King Edgar founded forty-seven monasteries and richly endowed them; Henry I. founded one hundred and fifty; and Henry II. as many more.  At one time there were seven hundred Benedictine abbeys in England, some of which were enormously rich,—­ like those of Westminster, St. Albans, Glastonbury, and Bury St. Edmunds,—­and their abbots were men of the highest social and political distinction.  They sat in Parliament as peers of the realm; they coined money, like feudal barons; they lived in great state and dignity.  The abbot of Monte Cassino was duke and prince, and chancellor of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies.  This celebrated convent had the patronage of four bishoprics, sixteen hundred and sixty-two churches, and possessed or controlled two hundred and fifty castles, four hundred and forty towns, and three hundred and thirty-six manors.  Its revenues exceeded five hundred thousand ducats, so that the lord-abbot was the peer of the greatest secular princes.  He was more powerful and wealthy, probably, than any archbishop in Europe.  One of the abbots of St. Gall entered Strasburg with one thousand horsemen in his train.  Whiting, of Glastonbury, entertained five hundred people of fashion at one time, and had three hundred domestic servants.  “My vow of poverty,” said another of these lordly abbots,—­who generally rode on mules with gilded bridles and with hawks on their wrists,—­“has given me ten thousand crowns a year; and my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince.”

Among the privileges of these abbots was exemption from taxes and tolls; they were judges in the courts; they had the execution of all rents, and the supreme control of the income of the abbey lands.  The revenues of Westminster and Glastonbury were equal to half a million of dollars a year in our money, considering the relative value of gold and silver.  Glastonbury owned about one thousand oxen, two hundred and fifty cows, and six thousand sheep.  Fontaine abbey possessed forty thousand acres of land.  The abbot of Augia, in Germany, had a revenue of sixty thousand crowns,—­ several millions, as money is now measured.  At one time the monks, with the other clergy, owned half of the lands of Europe.  If a king was to be ransomed, it was they who furnished the money; if costly gifts were to be given to the Pope, it was they who made them.  The value of the vessels of gold and silver, the robes and copes of silk and velvet, the chalices, the altar-pieces, and the shrines enriched with jewels, was inestimable.  The feasts which the abbots gave were almost regal.  At the installation of the abbot of St. Augustine, at Canterbury, there were consumed fifty-eight tuns