Hence, almost the first act of every newly-converted prince was to found a monastery in his dominions.  That of Canterbury dates from the arrival of Augustine.  In 643, Kenwealh of Wessex “bade timber the old minster at Winchester.”  In 654, shortly after the conversion of East Anglia, “Botulf began to build a monastery at Icanho,” since called after his name Botulf’s tun, or Boston.  In 657, Peada of Mercia and Oswiu of Northumbria “said that they would rear a monastery to the glory of Christ and the honour of St. Peter; and they did so, and gave it the name of Medeshamstede”; but it is now known as Peterborough.[1]

 [1] The charter is a late forgery, but there is no reason to
     doubt that it represents the correct tradition.

Before the battle of Winwidfield, Oswiu had vowed to build twelve minsters in his kingdom, and he redeemed his vow by founding six in Bernicia and six in Deira.  In 669, Ecgberht of Kent “gave Reculver to Bass, the mass-priest, to build a monastery thereon.”  In 663, AEthelthryth, a lady of royal blood, better known by the Latinised name of St. Etheldreda, “began the monastery at Ely.”  Before Baeda’s death, in 735, religious houses already existed at Lastingham, Melrose, Lindisfarne, Whithern, Bardney, Gilling, Bury, Ripon, Chertsey, Barking, Abercorn, Selsey, Redbridge, Coldingham, Towcester, Hackness, and several other places.  So the whole of England was soon covered with monastic establishments, each liberally endowed with land, and each engaged in tilling the soil without, and cultivating peaceful arts within, like little islands of southern civilisation, dotted about in the wide sea of Teutonic barbarism.

In the Roman south, many, if not all, of the monasteries seem to have been planned on the regular models; but in the north, where the Irish missionaries had borne the largest share in the work of conversion, the monasteries were irregular bodies on the Irish plan, where an abbot or abbess ruled over a mixed community of monks and nuns.  Hild, a member of the Northumbrian princely family, founded such an abbey at Streoneshalch (Whitby), made memorable by numbering amongst its members the first known English poet, Caedmon.  St. John of Beverley, Bishop of Hexham, set up a similar monastery at the place with which his name is so closely associated.  The Irish monks themselves founded others at Lindisfarne and elsewhere.  Even in the south, some Irish abbeys existed.  An Irish monk had set up one at Bosham, in Sussex, even before Wilfrith converted that kingdom; and one of his countrymen, Maidulf (or Maeldubh?) was the original head of Malmesbury.  In process of time, however, as the union with Rome grew stronger, all these houses conformed to the more regular usage, and became monasteries of the ordinary Benedictine type.