Now the Cluniac Congregation, the first great reform of the Benedictine Order, had been founded there in the diocese of Macon in 910, and it was then at the height of its power and greatness. Cluny was the most completely feudal of the orders, for the Cluniac monks were governed by Priors each and all of whom were answerable only to the Abbot of Cluny himself, while every monk in the Order had to be professed by him, that mighty ecclesiastic at this time can have been master of not less than two thousand monks. Cluny's boast was its school and the splendour of its ceremonies and services; God was served with a marvellous dignity and luxury undreamed of before, and unequalled since Cluny declined. It was to this mother house of the greatest Congregation of the time that William de Warenne turned with his wife when war prevented them on the road to Rome, and we cannot wonder that they were so caught by all they saw that they determined to put the monastery they proposed to build under the Abbot of Cluny and to found a Cluniac Priory at the gates of their town of Lewes. They therefore approached the Abbot with the request that he would send three or four of his monks to start the monastery. They did not find him very willing; for the essence of Cluny was discipline, the discipline of an army, and doubtless the Abbot feared that, so far away as Sussex seemed, his monks would be out of his reach and might become but as other men. But at last the Conqueror himself joined his prayers to those of William de Warenne, and in 1076 the Abbot of Cluny sent the monk Lanzo and three other brethren to England, and to them William de Warenne gave the little church of St Pancras especially rebuilt for their use with the land about it, called the Island, and other lands sufficient to support twelve monks. But the Abbot of Cluny had no sooner agreed to establish his congregation in England than he seems to have repented. At any rate he recalled Prior Lanzo and kept him so long that William de Warenne, growing impatient, seriously thought of transferring his foundation to the Benedictines; but at length Prior Lanzo returned and all was arranged as was at first intended. The monastery flourished apace and grew not only in wealth but in piety. Prior Lanzo proved an excellent ruler, and the Priory of St Pancras at Lewes became famous for its sanctity through all England. To the same William de Warenne Lewes owes the foundation or the refoundation of its Castle the second centre about which the town grew.