degrees as monasteries were built, each to become a centre of
civilisation.

For, as it has been well remarked, without the influence of the
Church there would have been in the land but two classes--beasts of
burden and beasts of prey--an enslaved serfdom, a ferocious
aristocracy.

And such an outpost of civilisation was the Priory of Michelham, on
the verge of the debatable land where Saxon outlaws and Norman
lords struggled for the mastery.

On the southern border of this sombre forest, close to his Park of
Pevensey, Gilbert d'Aquila, as almost the last act of his race in
England {4}, built this Priory of Michelham upon an island,
which, as we have told in a previous tale, had been the scene of a
most sanguinary contest, and sad domestic tragedy, during the
troubled times of the Norman Conquest; the eastern embankment,
which enclosed the Park of Pevensey and kept in the beasts of the
chase for the use of Norman hunters, was close at hand.

The priory buildings occupied eight acres of land, surrounded by a
wide and deep moat full forty yards across, fed by the river
Cuckmere, and abounding in fish for fast-day fare. Although it had
proved (as described in our earlier tale) incapable of a prolonged
defence, yet its situation was quite such as to protect the priory
from any sudden violence on the part of the "merrie men" or nightly
marauders, and when the drawbridge was up, the gateway closed, the
good brethren slept none the less soundly for feeling how they were
protected.