The greatest kings and conquerors frequently resigned their crowns and shut themselves up in monasteries.

When kings became monks, a high lustre was reflected upon the monastic state, and great credit accrued to the power of their doctrine, which was able to produce such extraordinary effects upon persons over whom religion has commonly the slightest influence.
The zeal of the missionaries was also much assisted by their superiority in the arts of civil life.

At their first preaching in Sussex, that country was reduced to the greatest distress from a drought, which had continued for three years.

The barbarous inhabitants, destitute of any means to alleviate the famine, in an epidemic transport of despair frequently united forty and fifty in a body, and, joining their hands, precipitated themselves from the cliffs, and were either drowned or dashed to pieces on the rocks.

Though a maritime people, they knew not how to fish; and this ignorance probably arose from a remnant of Druidical superstition, which had forbidden the use of that sort of diet.