[16] The pollard willow is the chief denizen of the fens. [17] The water runs flows and dances through the Cantabrigian’s life. The king’s and the bishop’s mills, Newnham mill just beyond, the Mill street, and the hythes, all courted constant recognition. As at Ely, the _hythes_ were the small trading ports along the river: there was Dame Nichol’s hythe, Cornhythe, Flaxhythe, Salthythe, Clayhythe. [18] For the vii c. foundation of _Ely_ see chap. vi. p. 311. The see dates from 1107, when the minster became a cathedral. _Crowland_, in Lincolnshire on the borders of Cambridgeshire, was built over the tomb of Guthlac, a prince and a saint of the house of Mercia, in the vii c. _Bury_ rose after the martyrdom of the East Anglian king Edmund (870) _c._ 903; it did not become a monastery till 1020. _Peterborough_ was founded by Wulfhere, king of Mercia from 659 to 674: it formed part of the diocese of Lincoln till the xvi c. Ramsey and Thorney were other fen monasteries. Ramsey was on the borders, in Huntingdonshire, but Thorney was in Cambridgeshire. Peterborough and Thorney with Ely and Crowland were sacked by the Danes in 870. All these were ‘black Benedictine’ houses. [19] Cottenham 7 miles north of Cambridge; the benefice became an advowson of Chatteris abbey in the isle of Ely, and was bestowed by the abbess on Warham in 1500. [20] Joffred was appointed abbot of Crowland in 1109 in succession to Ingulph: the xiv c. forgery the _Historia Croylandensis_ pretends to be written by Ingulph (_nat._ 1030) and continued by Peter of Blois. It contains fables about the antiquity of Oxford. See _Ingulph and the Historia Croylandensis_ by W. G. Searle, _M.A._ [21] p. 8. [22] Fuller. [23] “The monk Odo, a singular grammarian and satirical poet, read grammar to the boys and those of the younger sort assigned to him”; logic and rhetoric were imparted to the elder scholars. _Soi-disant Peter of Blois._ [24] iii. p. 164. Their school was in the parish where the university schools rose later--under the shadow of Great S. Mary’s; and opposite was Le Glomery Lane (the _Vicus Glomeriae_). [25] _La Bataille des vii Ars._ Oeuvres Rutebeuf, Paris 1839, ii. 415.