[1] The charter is a late forgery, but there is no reason to
doubt that it represents the correct tradition.

Before the battle of Winwidfield, Oswiu had vowed to build twelve
minsters in his kingdom, and he redeemed his vow by founding six in
Bernicia and six in Deira. In 669, Ecgberht of Kent "gave Reculver to
Bass, the mass-priest, to build a monastery thereon." In 663,
Æthelthryth, a lady of royal blood, better known by the Latinised name
of St. Etheldreda, "began the monastery at Ely." Before Bæda's death, in
735, religious houses already existed at Lastingham, Melrose,
Lindisfarne, Whithern, Bardney, Gilling, Bury, Ripon, Chertsey, Barking,
Abercorn, Selsey, Redbridge, Coldingham, Towcester, Hackness, and
several other places. So the whole of England was soon covered with
monastic establishments, each liberally endowed with land, and each
engaged in tilling the soil without, and cultivating peaceful arts
within, like little islands of southern civilisation, dotted about in
the wide sea of Teutonic barbarism.

In the Roman south, many, if not all, of the monasteries seem to have
been planned on the regular models; but in the north, where the Irish
missionaries had borne the largest share in the work of conversion, the
monasteries were irregular bodies on the Irish plan, where an abbot or
abbess ruled over a mixed community of monks and nuns. Hild, a member of
the Northumbrian princely family, founded such an abbey at Streoneshalch
(Whitby), made memorable by numbering amongst its members the first
known English poet, Cædmon. St. John of Beverley, Bishop of Hexham, set
up a similar monastery at the place with which his name is so closely
associated. The Irish monks themselves founded others at Lindisfarne and
elsewhere. Even in the south, some Irish abbeys existed. An Irish monk