of all the northern parts, did not show that rapacious desire of riches which long disgraced and finally ruined their successors.  Not only did they not seek, but seemed even to shun such donations.  This prevented that alarm which might have arisen from an early and declared avarice.  At this time the most fervent and holy anchorites retired to places the furthest that could be found from human concourse and help, to the most desolate and barren situations, which even from their horror seemed particularly adapted to men who had renounced the world.  Many persons followed them in order to partake of their instructions and prayers, or to form themselves upon their example.  An opinion of their miracles after their death drew still greater numbers.  Establishments were gradually made.  The monastic life was frugal, and the government 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.