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wonder and the admiration of the age, both for size and magnificence.
The abbey church of Cluny, in Burgundy, was five hundred and thirty feet
long, and had stalls for two hundred monks. It had the appointment of
one hundred and fifty parish priests. The church of Saint Albans, in
England, is said to have been six hundred feet long; and that of
Glastonbury, the oldest in England, five hundred and thirty.
Peterborough's was over five hundred. The kings of England, both Saxon
and Norman, were especial patrons of these religious houses. King Edgar
founded forty-seven monasteries and richly endowed them; Henry I.
founded one hundred and fifty; and Henry II. as many more. At one time
there were seven hundred Benedictine abbeys in England, some of which
were enormously rich,--like those of Westminster, St. Albans,
Glastonbury, and Bury St. Edmunds,--and their abbots were men of the
highest social and political distinction. They sat in Parliament as
peers of the realm; they coined money, like feudal barons; they lived in
great state and dignity. The abbot of Monte Cassino was duke and prince,
and chancellor of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Tins celebrated
convent had the patronage of four bishoprics, sixteen hundred and
sixty-two churches, and possessed or controlled two hundred and fifty
castles, four hundred and forty towns, and three hundred and thirty-six
manors. Its revenues exceeded five hundred thousand ducats, so that the
lord-abbot was the peer of the greatest secular princes. He was more
powerful and wealthy, probably, than any archbishop in Europe. One of
the abbots of St. Gall entered Strasburg with one thousand horsemen in
his train. Whiting, of Glastonbury, entertained five hundred people of
fashion at one time, and had three hundred domestic servants. "My vow of
poverty," said another of these lordly abbots,--who generally rode on
mules with gilded bridles and with hawks on their wrists,--"has given me
ten thousand crowns a year; and my vow of obedience has raised me to the
rank of a sovereign prince."

Among the privileges of these abbots was exemption from taxes and tolls;
they were judges in the courts; they had the execution of all rents, and
the supreme control of the income of the abbey lands. The revenues of
Westminster and Glastonbury were equal to half a million of dollars a
year in our money, considering the relative value of gold and silver.
Glastonbury owned about one thousand oxen, two hundred