Stories of _dreams_, _visions_, and _miracles_ were also propagated without a blush, by the clergy, and believed without a doubt, by the laity. Extraordinary _watchings_, _fastings_, and other arts of tormenting the body in order to save the soul, became frequent and fashionable; and it began to be believed in the seventh century, that a journey to Rome was a most meritorious undertaking, and even, of all others, the most direct road to heaven.—Such was the christianity of the good people of Lynn and the rest of their countrymen in those days. In the eighth century the humour of making pilgrimages to Rome, and of retiring into monasteries, still increasing, _Coinred_ king of Mercia, as _Henry_ informs us, laid down his sceptre, and took up the pilgrim’s staff, in 709, and travelled to Rome, accompanied by _Offa_, a young prince of the royal family of the East-Saxons, where they both became monks. Not long after, _Ina_, the warlike and victorious king of the West Saxons imitated their example, and ended his days in a cloister at Rome, where he founded a house for the entertainment of English pilgrims, and the education of English youth. Great numbers of _nuns_ also, and other English women, were among those devout pilgrims who then travelled to Rome: but we have the testimony of _Winfred_, alias _Boniface_, archbishop of Mentz, who lived at that period, that they were generally debauched before they returned, and even that many of them became common prostitutes in the cities of France and Italy: he therefore exhorts and charges his friend _Cuthbert_, then archbishop of Canterbury, to put a speedy stop to these scandalous female pilgrimages. The religious prayers and songs, which constituted the church service, were then all in _Latin_, and so not understood by the common people, who were therefore directed by the 27th. canon of the first council of Cloveshoos, or Cliff, in Kent, {246} held in 747, to affix any meaning they pleased to the words in their own minds, and to pray in their hearts for any or every thing they wanted, no matter how foreign to the real sense of the public prayers. A curious salvo, says _Henry_, for the absurd practice of praying in an unknown tongue. The same canon contains also the following short form of _prayer_, _for the dead_; “Lord, according to the greatness of thy mercy, grant rest to his soul, and for thy infinite pity, vouchsafe to him the joys of eternal light with thy saints.”