e suffered to
abide long with thee. For this cause thou dost affirm that it should be
profitless and wasteful that by the lapse of time things that might
perchance serve as an example and tend to the edification of some, should
pass over to forgetfulness.

Wherefore I have fulfilled thy petition, though mayhap not thy full
desire, since my manner of writing is coarse and ill-kempt; for which
reason I have made no mention of thy name, nor of my own; and this is of
set purpose lest if this poor letter fall at any time into the hands of
another, he might be offended on the very threshold and so not care to go
forward any further.

II. _The history of the origin of the New Devotion_.

Now in the days of old the land of the English did abound in men great
and holy, by whose saintliness and doctrine (as saith the venerable Bede)
that land was watered like the Paradise of the Lord; and so it was that
certain rivulets of that water, through the mercy of God, flowed down to
this our land to make it fruitful. For this country was up to that time
truly parched and ill-tended, inasmuch as doing service to idols, and
being ensnared in the errors of the heathen, it was held captive of the
devil.

III. _Of them by whom this land was turned to the Faith of Christ_.

As for the first and chief of these spiritual rivulets, namely that great
man and true saint, Willebrord, we know the tale of how he appeared here
by sure testimony. For in the time of Pepin, King of the Franks, and his
son Charles the Great, and when 700 years more or less had elapsed since
the birth of the Lord, Willebrord with eleven others did irrigate the
said land with the waters of their holy preaching. Moreover, with the
help of his companions he did busy himself with breaking up the ground
with the ploughshare of discipline, yet not without much difficulty; and
in a short space the task of spreading the faith did prosper wondrously
beneath their hands; for God worked with them, and did confirm their
words with signs following.

Of a truth how great a fervour of faith and devotion flourished in this
our land under their guidance, and for a long while after their days, is
shown to this day, not only by the testimony of the books which we have
read, but also by those countless churches and monasteries which, as we
see, were builded on every side where the temples of idols had been
overthrown.

IV. _A lamentation over the waning of the aforesaid fervour_