for they cannot even help themselves when they have escaped, since they have not wherewithal to sustain their own lives. Sorely exhausted by a tardy repentance, they grieve over their carelessness in despising the king’s commands; they unite in praising his wisdom, promising to fulfil with all their might what before they had declined to do, namely, in the construction of fortresses, and other things useful to the whole kingdom. =92. Alfred builds two Monasteries.=[246]--Concerning his desire and intent of excellent meditation, which, in the midst both of prosperity and adversity, he never in any way neglected, I cannot in this place with advantage forbear to speak. For, when he was reflecting, according to his wont, upon the need of his soul,[247] he ordered, among the other good deeds to which his thoughts were by night and day[248] especially turned, that two monasteries should be built, one of them being for monks at Athelney.[249] This is a place surrounded by impassable fens and waters on every hand, where no one can enter but by boats, or by a bridge laboriously constructed between two fortresses, at the western end of which bridge was erected a strong citadel, of beautiful work, by command of the aforesaid king. In this monastery he collected monks of all kinds from every quarter, and there settled them. =93. Monasticism was decayed.=[250]--At first he had no one of his own nation, noble and free by birth, who was willing to enter the monastic life, except children, who as yet could neither choose good nor reject evil by reason of their tender years. This was the case because for many years previous the love of a monastic life had utterly decayed in that as well as in many other nations; for, though many monasteries still remain in that country, yet no one kept the rule of that kind of life in an orderly way, whether because of the invasions of foreigners, which took place so frequently both by sea and land, or because that people abounded in riches of every kind, and so looked with contempt on the monastic life. On this account it was that King Alfred sought to gather monks of different kinds in the same monastery. =94. Monks brought from beyond Sea.=[251]--First he placed there John[252] the priest and monk, an Old Saxon by birth, making him abbot; and then certain priests and deacons from beyond sea. Finding that he had not so large a number of these as he wished, he procured as many as possible of the same Gallic race[253]; some of whom, being children, he ordered to be taught in the same monastery, and at a later period to be admitted to the monastic habit. I have myself seen there in monastic dress a young man of heathen birth who was educated in that monastery, and by no means the hindmost of them all.