Note 571 — Chapter XI

The Benedictines drained the marshes of Lincolnshire and Somersetshire to employ the poor in the eighth century. St. Bennet travelled to France and Italy, and brought back from his seven journeys cunning artificers in glass and stone, besides costly books and copies of the Scriptures, in order (as is expressly said by Bede) that the ignorant might learn from them, as others learned from books. See Mrs. Jameson’s “Legends of the Monastic Orders,” pp. 56, 57.