abbey of Preaux is said to have existed prior to the invasion of the
Normans; but its earliest records go no farther back than the middle of
the eleventh century, when it was restored by Humphrey de Vetulis, who
built and inclosed the monastery about the year 1035, at which time Duke
Robert undertook his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. This abbey, according
to the account given by Gough, in his _Alien Priories_, presented to
thirty benefices, and enjoyed an annual revenue of twenty thousand
livres.--Among its English lands which were considerable, was the priory
of Toft-Monks in our own immediate vicinity: the name, as you know,
remains, though no traces of the building are now in existence.

The third abbey, that of St. Evrau or St. Evroul, called in Latin,
_Monasterium Uticense_, was one of the most renowned throughout
Normandy. The abbey dates its origin from St. Evroul himself, a
nobleman, who lived in the reign of Childebert, and was attached to the
palace of that monarch, "from which," to use the words of the
chronicles, "he made his escape, as from shipwreck, and fled to the
woods, and entered upon the monastic life."--The legend of St. Ebrulfus
probably savors of romance, the almost inseparable companion of
traditional, and particularly of monastic, history: it is safer,
therefore, to be contented with referring the foundation of the
monastery to the tenth century, when William Gerouis, after having been
treacherously deprived of his sight and otherwise maimed, renounced the
world; and, uniting with his nephews, Hugh and Robert de Grentemaisnil,
brought considerable possessions to the endowment of this abbey. The
abbey was at all times protected by the especial favor of the kings of
France. No payment or service could be demanded from its monks; they
acknowledged no master without their own walls, besides the sovereign
himself; they were entitled to exemption from every kind of burthen; and
they had the privilege of being empowered to castellate the convent, and