Saint Ermenilda and the other benefactors of the abbey had destined to the support of peace-preaching monks, and to the sustenance of the poor. And thus fared it with the abbey of Ely, until the reign of the great and bountiful King Edgar, who in course of his reign founded or restored no fewer than fifty monasteries. In the year 970 this ever-to-be-revered king (_Rex Venerandus_) granted the whole of the island of Ely, with all its appurtenances, privileges, and immunities, to Ethelwald, bishop of Winchester, who rebuilt the church and the monastery, and provided them well with monks of the Benedictine order. The charter of Edgar, as was recorded by that king’s scribe in the preamble to it, was granted “not privately and in a corner, but in the most public manner, and under the canopy of heaven.” The charter was confirmed by other kings, and subsequently by the pope. The great and converted Danish King Canute, who loved to glide along the waters of the river and listen to the monks of Ely singing in their choir, and who ofttimes visited the Lord Abbat, and feasted with him at the seasons of the great festivals of the church, confirmed the charter; and the cartularies of the house contained likewise the confirmation of King Edward the Confessor, now a saint and king in heaven, (_in cœlo sanctus et rex_.) Theoretical and fabulous are the tales of those who say that the Saxons had no majestic architecture; that their churches and abbeys and monasteries were built almost entirely of wood, without arches or columns, without aisles or cloisters; and that there was no grandeur or beauty in the edifices of England until after the Norman conquest. The abbey built at Ely in the tenth century by the Saxon bishop Ethelwald was a stately stone edifice, vast in its dimensions, and richly ornamented in its details. Round-headed arches rested upon rows of massive columns; the roof of the church and the roof of the great hall of the abbey were arched and towering; and, high above all, a tower and steeple shot into the air, to serve as a landmark throughout the flat fenny country, and a guide to such as might lose themselves among the meres and the labyrinths of the willow forests. If the monks of Ely were lords of all the country and of all the people dwelling in it, those people and all honest wayfarers ever found the hospitable gates of the abbey open to receive them; and all comers were feasted, according to their several degrees, by the Lord Abbat, the prior, the cellarer, the hospitaller, the pietancer, or some other officer of the house. Twenty knights, with their twenty squires to carry arms and shield, (_arma ac scuta_), did service to the Lord Abbat as his military retainers; and in his great stables room was left for many more horses. The house had had many noble, hospitable, Saxon-hearted heads, but never one more munificent and magnificent than the Abbat Thurstan.[57] He had been appointed to the dignity in the peaceful days