the monastic habit, and spent
two years in the most exact observance of the rule, and penetrated in
every exercise with its true spirit: after this he returned to Rome,
where he received an order of pope Vitalian to accompany St. Theodorus,
archbishop of Canterbury, and St. Adrian, to England. When he arrived at
Canterbury, St. Theodorus committed to him the care of the monastery of
SS. Peter and Paul, near that city, which abbacy he resigned to St.
Adrian upon his arrival in England. St. Bennet stayed about two years in
Kent, giving himself up to religious exercises and sacred studies, under
the discipline of those two excellent persons. Then he took a fourth
journey to Rome, with a view of perfecting himself in ecclesiastical
discipline, and the rules and practice of a monastic life; for which
purpose he made a considerable stay at Rome and other places: he brought
home with him a choice library, relics and pictures of Christ, the
Blessed Virgin, and other saints. When he returned to Northumberland,
king Egfrid (in whose father's court St. Bennet had formerly lived)
bestowed on him seventy ploughs or families of land for building a
monastery;[1] this the saint founded on the mouth of the river Were,
whence it was called Weremouth. When the monastery was built, St. Bennet
went over to France, and brought back with him skilful masons, who built
the church for this monastery of stone, and after the Roman fashion; for
till that time stone buildings were very rare in Britain, even the
church of Lindisfarne was of wood, and covered over with a thatch of
straw and reeds, till bishop Eadbert procured both the roof and the
walls to be covered with sheets of lead, as Bede mentions.[2] St. Bennet
also brought over glaziers from France, for the art of making glass was
then unknown in Britain. In a fifth journey to Rome, St. Bennet
furnished himself with a larger stock of good books, especially the
writings of the fathers, also of relics and holy pictures, with which he
enriched his own country.

His first monastery of Weremouth was entitled from Saint Peter, prince
of the apostles; and such was the edification which it gave, that the
same {132} king added to the saint a second donation of lands,
consisting of forty ploughs; on which Biscop built another monastery, at
a place called Girwy, now Jarrow, on the Tine, six miles distant from
the former, and this latter was called St. Paul's; these two monasteries
were almost looked upo