Sanctified deserts assumed a new face; the marshes were drained, and the lands cultivated.

And as this revolution seemed rather the effect of the holiness of the place than of any natural causes, it increased their credit; and every improvement drew with it a new donation.

In this manner the great abbeys of Croyland and Glastonbury, and many others, from the most obscure beginnings, were advanced to a degree of wealth and splendor little less than royal.
In these rude ages government was not yet fixed upon solid principles, and everything was full of tumult and distraction.

As the monasteries were better secured from violence by their character than any other places by laws, several great men, and even sovereign princes, were obliged to take refuge in convents; who, when, by a more happy revolution in their fortunes, they were reinstated in their former dignities, thought they could never make a sufficient return for the safety they had enjoyed under the sacred hospitality of these roofs.

Not content to enrich them with ample possessions, that others also might partake of the protection they had experienced, they formally erected into an asylum those monasteries, and their adjacent territory.