“Intemperance, impurity and greed of gold soon became rampant. The mixed company of worldly-minded and criminal persons, whose professed penitence gained them admission to those once pure homes of Christian life, defiled the monastic abodes which sheltered them. Many still more worthless men, with no knowledge nor care for the religious life, obtained grants of land from kings on the pretence of founding monasteries, so as to have the estate made over to them and their heirs for ever, gathering together in the buildings they erected all sorts of worthless persons; much scandal and vice resulting,”--_English Church History_ (Rev. C. A. LANE). The Nemesis soon came in the shape of the Danish invasions which swept away practically all the monasteries in the land--Lindisfarne, Whitby, Wearmouth and Sheppey, in particular, suffering greatly from the marauders. St Edmund endured martyrdom at their hands; Peterborough, Ely, Winchester, London, Canterbury, Rochester, etc., all were pillaged, and the inhabitants massacred; while the whole country became a scene of desolation. Temporary peace was gained in the reign of Alfred the Great, King of Wessex--the Danes being permitted to settle in Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia, and the process of reviving religious life went hand in hand with the rebuilding of the monastic houses. Cardinal Newman gives a wonderful description of this restoration of monastic life-- “Silent men were observed about the country, or discovered in the forest, digging, cleaning and building; and other silent men, not seen, were sitting in the cold cloisters tiring their eyes and keeping their attention on the stretch, while they painfully deciphered, then copied and recopied the manuscripts which they had saved. There was no one that contended or cried out, or drew attention to what was going on; but by degrees the woody swamp became a hermitage, a religious house, a farm, an abbey, a village, a seminary, a school of learning and a city. Roads and villages connected it with the abbeys and cities which had similarly grown up. And then, when these patient, meditative men had in the course of many years gained their peaceful victories, perhaps invaders came, and with fire and sword undid their slow and persevering toil in an hour. Down in the dust lay the labour and civilisation of centuries--churches, colleges, cloisters and libraries--and nothing was left to them but to begin all over again; but this they did without grudging, so promptly, cheerfully and tranquilly as if it were by some law of nature that the restoration came; and they were like the flowers and shrubs and great trees, which they reared, and which, when ill-treated, do not take vengeance or remember evil, but give forth fresh branches, leaves and blossoms, perhaps in