ADDRESSES 233 



lighthouses were erected wherever their possessions or in- 

 fluence extended. The half at least of broad Northumber- 

 land, covering an area of about two thousand square miles, 

 was lost in sandy plains and barren heaths; the half at 

 least of East Anglia and a considerable part of Mercia were 

 covered with marshes, difficult of access. Yet in both 

 these regions the monks substituted for these uninhabit- 

 able deserts fat pasturage and abundant harvests. The 

 latter district, the present name of which (the Fens) alone 

 recalls the marshy and unwholesome nature of the soil, 

 became the principal theatre of the triumphs of agricult- 

 ural industry, performed by the monks. Medehampstead 

 (now Peterborough), Ely, Croyland, Thorney (now South- 

 ampton), Ramsay, were the first battlefields of these con- 

 querors of nature, these monks who made of themselves 

 ploughmen, breeders and keepers of stock, and who were 

 the true fathers of English agriculture, which, thanks to 

 their traditions and example, has become the first agri- 

 culture in the world. 



Perhaps in no better way can I more graphically bring 

 before you the immense work of the monks than by giving 

 you a picture of the fen district of Southampton before 

 Thorney Abbey was founded, and then reading you the 

 description of this abbey by the great bishop of Tyre, Wil- 

 liam of Malmesbury. Southampton is a peninsula making 

 down between the mouths of the Itchen and the Test or 

 Anton into the tide- swept channel that separates it from 

 the Isle of Wight. It was nothing but a vast morass. 1 The 

 fens in the seventh century were probably like the forests at 

 the mouth of the Mississippi or the swamp shores of the 



1 Kingsley, Hermits. 



