Jarrow, and York were like mountain-peaks tipped with gold
by the first rays of the rising sun, while all below remains
dark. Yet while not indicative of widespread means of
instruction, the existence of these centres, and the character
of the work done in them, suggests that at other places the
same sort of work, on a smaller and less influential scale,
soon began. At Lichfield, on the moorland at Ripon, in
"the dwelling-place in the meadows" at Peterborough, in
the desolate fenland at Crowland and at Ely, on the banks
of the Thames at Abingdon, and of the Avon at Evesham,
in the nunneries of Barking and Wimborne, at Chertsey,
Glastonbury, Gloucester, in the far north at Melrose, and
even perhaps at Coldingham, Christianity was speeding its
message, and learning--such as it was, primitive and
pretentious--caught pale reflections from more famous places.
Now and again definite facts are met with hinting at a spreading
enlightenment. Acca, abbot and bishop of Hexham,
for example "gave all diligence, as he does to this day,"
wrote Bede, "to procure relics of the blessed Apostles and
martyrs of Christ.... Besides which, he industriously gathered
the histories of their martyrdom, together with other
ecclesiastical
writings, and erected there a large and noble library."
Of this library, unfortunately, there is not a wrack left
behind. A tiny school was carried on at a monastery near
Exeter, where Boniface was first instructed. At the
monastery of Nursling he was taught grammar, history,
poetry, rhetoric, and the Scriptures; there also manuscripts
were copied. Books were produced under Abbess Eadburh
of Minster, a learned woman who corresponded with