_Laborare est orare_ was the true monastic motto: and the documents of the religious houses, relating to lands and leases, show us the other or material side of the picture, which was not less important in its way than the spiritual and intellectual side.

Everywhere the monks settled in the woodland by the rivers, cut down the forests, drove out the wolves and the beavers, cultivated the soil with the aid of their tenants and serfs, and became colonisers and civilisers at the same time that they were teachers and preachers.

The reclamation of waste land throughout the marshes of England was due almost entirely to the monastic bodies.
The value of the civilising influence thus exerted is seen especially in the written laws, and it affected even the actions of the fierce English princes.

The dooms of AEthelberht of Kent are the earliest English documents which we possess, and they were reduced to writing shortly after the conversion of the first English Christian king: while Baeda expressly mentions that they were compiled after Roman models.

The Church was not able to hold the warlike princes really in check; but it imposed penances, and encouraged many of them to make pilgrimages to Rome, and to end their days in a cloister.