They have been transcribed and published by Mr.Kemble and Mr.Thorpe, and they form some of our most useful materials for the early history of Christian England.
It was mainly by means of the monasteries that Christianity became a great civilising and teaching agency in England.

Those who judge monastic institutions only by their later and worst days, when they had, perhaps, ceased to perform any useful function, are apt to forget the benefits which they conferred upon the people in the earlier stages of their existence.

The state of England during this first Christian period was one of chronic and bloody warfare.

There was no regular army, but every freeman was a soldier, and raids of one English tribe upon another were everyday occurrences; while pillaging frays on the part of the Welsh, followed by savage reprisals on the part of the English, were still more frequent.

During the heathen period, even the Picts seem often to have made piractical expeditions far into the south of England.
In 597, for example, we read in the Chronicle that Ceolwulf, king of the West Saxons, constantly fought "either against the English, or against the Welsh, or against the Picts." But in 603, the Argyllshire Scots made a raid against Northumbria, and were so completely crushed by AEthelfrith, that "since then no king of Scots durst lead a host against this folk"; while the southern Picts of Galloway became tributaries of the Northumbrian kings.