It is clear that this house was one of those ruled by an abbess, for Jonas says that no distinction was recognised between the sexes, and that the abbess treated both alike. The discipline here, however, seems to have been very severe, for he adds that some of the new nuns tried to escape by ladders from the dormitory. Brie is interesting to us as forming one of the links between Continental and English monasticism at this time. Bede says of the daughter of Erconberht, King of Kent, "She was a most virtuous maiden, always serving God in a monastery in France, built by a most noble abbess, Fara by name, at a place called Brie; for at that time, but few monasteries being built in the country of the Angles, many were wont, for the sake of monastic conversation, to repair to the monasteries of the Franks or Gauls; and they also sent their daughters there to be educated and given to their Heavenly Bridegroom, especially in the monasteries of Brie, Chelles, and Andelys."[15] He adds that two daughters of King Anna of East Anglia, "though strangers, were for their virtue made abbesses of the monastery of Brie." Little is known of Andelys, except that it was founded by Queen Clotilda. At Chelles, founded by Queen Bathilda in 662, ten miles from Paris, on the river Marne, many famous persons, both men and women, received their education. Among them was a Northumbrian princess, Hereswith, whose sister was Hild, the most famous of English abbesses. The prevalence and influence of the double monastery in England may perhaps be better understood by a reference to the position of women generally in Anglo-Saxon society. Nothing astonished the Romans more than the austere chastity of the Germanic women, and the religious respect paid by men to them, and nowhere has their influence been more fully recognised or more enduring than among the Anglo-Saxons. This fact largely accounts for the extreme importance attached by them to marriage alliances, particularly those between members of royal houses.[16] These unions gave to the princess the office of mediatrix; in Beowulf she is called Freothowebbe, "the peace-weaver."[17] From this rose the high position held by queens. Their signatures appear in acts of foundation, decrees of councils, charters, etc. Sometimes they reigned with full royal authority, as did Seaxburg, Queen of the West Saxons, after the death of her husband.[18] From the beginning of Christianity in England, the women, and particularly these royal women, were as active and persevering in furthering the Faith, as their men. "Christianity," says Montalembert,[19] "came to a people which had preserved the instinct and sense of the necessity for venerating things above," and "they at least honoured the virtue which they did not themselves always practise."