4. For example, King Offa II, at the end of the eighth century, founded the monastery of St. Alban, giving to it a wide extent of land round the ruins of the old city of Verulam. The monastery was built, and much land brought under cultivation. We find the sixth abbot, Ulsinus, two centuries later, encouraging people to settle round the walls of the monastery. That monastery lay near one of the great roads of England; many people were coming and going; so houses were built and a market was established. Churches, too, were erected for the use of the people who settled in the town. The abbot was the lord of this "town", and the people dwelling in it were his tenants. He, like any other lord of a "tun", or "vill", was responsible for the keeping of order and good government on his land. [Illustration: ST. ALBAN'S CATHEDRAL page 47] 5. St. Edmund's Bury, or Bury St. Edmund's, grew up round a monastery which had been established in a lonely place; and there, also, arose in time a flourishing town, under the rule of the abbot. 6. A number of towns, which to-day are cathedral cities, grew up round the churches where the bishop and his principal clergy had their homes and chief centres of work. 7. These things only came about very gradually. The monks who settled first at Bury, or those whom King Offa settled by the ruins of Verulam, never dreamed that in the years to come their convents would be great land-owners, with many hundreds of tenants. But it was so; and the monasteries at length formed one of the most important classes of land-owners in the country; their special rights and privileges coming to them so gradually, and so naturally, that no one realized exactly what was taking place. 8. Those who entered a monastery, or embraced "the religious life", intended to keep out of the world, and apart from its cares and worries as much as they could. But the lands left to them had to be looked after and cultivated. These did not always lie close round the monastery--very frequently they were tracts of land in distant counties,--and somebody had to look after them. New possessions mean new responsibilities; and so we find that the monasteries had not only to attend to the daily round of worship and work inside the walls of the monastery, but had to carry on all the business belonging to great estates as well. 9. So in time a monastery had to use the services of many men besides monks; the monks became great employers of labour one way and another, and this attracted to their towns a good many skilled workmen.