"Thus saying, he passed the day in peace till eventide.

The boy [his scribe] said to him, 'Still one sentence, beloved master, is yet unwritten.' He answered, 'Write it quickly.' After a while the boy said, 'Now the sentence is written.' Then he replied, 'It is well,' quoth he, 'thou hast said the truth: it is finished.'...

And so he passed away to the kingdom of heaven." It is impossible to overrate the importance of the change which made such a life of earnest study and intellectual labour as Baeda's possible amongst the rough and barbaric English.

Nor was it only in producing thinkers and readers from a people who could not spell a word half a century before, that the monastic system did good to England.

The monasteries owned large tracts of land which they could cultivate on a co-operative plan, as cultivation was impossible elsewhere.