1. The hundred years after the Norman Conquest was a great period of building. It was a time for establishing or _founding_ new =religious houses=. Something like 389 such houses were opened during this period, so that they played a very important part in the history of the times. The Normans were not very much interested in the English religious houses which they found already established here. In fact, a good many of them, since the times of the Danish invasion, 200 years before, had got into very bad order, and were in need of reform. Little by little, as Norman bishops and abbots were appointed over these Saxon religious houses, reforms did take place, but not always very easily or quietly. 2. At the time of the Conquest the religious houses in Normandy were in a far better state than those in England. Their members lived better lives, did better work, and set a much better example of godly living and working. There were several =new orders= or societies of monks, which had their head-quarters on the continent of Europe. These interested King William's companions more than the old English monasteries, because they and their fathers had helped to establish them. 3. So we find, as the Normans received lands here in England, and founded religious houses, most of them were connected with the monasteries across the sea, and were ruled by abbots who lived across the sea. Such branch houses were generally called =priories=, and the kings and barons who founded them gave them manors and parts of manors, sometimes taking them from the older Saxon monasteries and cathedrals.[6] 4. Then, too, there were the old Saxon houses, like St. Alban's Abbey, Westminster Abbey, and Glastonbury Abbey: they were reformed and improved, and to them, too, lands were given in various parts of the country, often far away from the mother house. Thus St. Alban's Monastery had important lands in the neighbourhood of the River Tyne, and a daughter house was opened there called =Tynemouth Priory=. So, you see, there were two kinds of priories in England: one class attached to English religious houses, and the other to Norman or foreign religious houses. In time the foreign priories received the name of =alien priories=. 5. All these religious houses had some interest in the land, and all of them, to a greater or less degree, were landlords. In some cases the lands given to them were manors which had been managed and tilled in the same way for hundreds of years. The only change was that the lord of the manor might be a society or religious house instead of a baron. Each of the manors had its steward, its villeins, and so forth, like any other in the land. But a good deal of the land given to these new religious houses had never been occupied before.