, and to these
it owes everything except its genesis.

Whatever Lewes may have been before the Conquest that revolution saw
it pass into the power of one of the greatest of William's nobles,
that William de Warenne who was his son-in-law. It was he and his wife
Gundrada, generally supposed to be the Conqueror's daughter, who
founded the Priory of St Pancras at Southover. It is probable, even
certain, that a chapel, possibly with some sort of religious house
attached to it, existed here before William de Warenne obtained from
the Conqueror the rape and town of Lewes. In any case it can have
been of small importance. But within ten years of the Conquest William
de Warenne and his wife determined to found an important monastery at
the gates of their town, and with this intention they set out on
pilgrimage for Rome to consult, and to obtain the blessing of, the
Pope. They got so far as Burgundy when they found that it was
impossible to go on in safety on account of the war between the Pope
and the Emperor. When they found themselves in this predicament they
were not far from the great Abbey of SS. Peter and Paul at Cluny.

Now the Cluniac Congregation, the first great reform of the
Benedictine Order, had been founded there in the diocese of Macon in
910, and it was then at the height of its power and greatness. Cluny
was the most completely feudal of the orders, for the Cluniac monks
were governed by Priors each and all of whom were answerable only to
the Abbot of Cluny himself, while every monk in the Order had to be
professed by him, that mighty ecclesiastic at this time can have been
master of not less than two thousand monks. Cluny's boast was its
school and the splendour of its ceremonies and services; God was
served with a marvellous dignity and luxury undreamed of before, and
unequalled since Cluny declined. It was to this mother house of the
greatest Congregation of the time that William de Warenne turned with
his wife when war prevented them on the road to Rome, and we cannot
wonder that they were so caught by all they saw that they determined
to put the monastery they proposed to build under the Abbot of Cluny
and to found a Cluniac Priory at the gates of their town of Lewes.
They therefore approached the Abbot with the request that he would
send three or four of his monks to start the monastery. They did not
find him very willing; for the essence of Cluny was discipline, the
discipline of an army, and doubtless