which still lay in ruins. The chief of these were Ely, Medeshamstede and Thorney. Thanks to Aethelwold, these were all re-established and filled with monks, Medeshamstede taking the name of Peterborough. A new model abbey also arose at Ramsey in Huntingdonshire about 969. This was the joint work of Bishop Oswald and Duke Aethelwin of East Anglia, a son of Aethelstan Half-king; and it was from Ramsey a few years later that Oswald brought monks first to Winchcombe and ultimately to his cathedral church at Worcester, establishing them in his "familia" side by side with the clerks, whose life interests he respected. Finally, to set the seal on these activities, Aethelwold at Edgar's request translated the Rule of St Benedict into English for the benefit of those who were weak in Latin. He also, with the object of introducing uniformity of practice into the daily life of the monasteries, composed a new rule for English monks, known as the "Regularis Concordia Anglicae Nationis," founded partly on the custom of Fleury and Ghent and partly on the "Capitula" issued in 817 by Benedict of Aniane.
Another side of the ecclesiastical awakening which characterised Edgar's reign is seen in the care with which the reforming prelates set about developing and managing the estates which the laity, encouraged by the king, on all sides pressed upon them. The best evidence of this is found at Worcester, where a number of records still survive shewing how Bishop Oswald personally superintended the administration of the demesnes belonging to his church. Among them are some seventy deeds in which the bishop is seen granting out portions of the episcopal lands to persons whom he describes as his thegns, knights or milites on condition of faithful service, and side by side with these is preserved a letter, addressed by the bishop to King Edgar, in which he reports in explicit terms exactly what the nature of the bargain was and what were the services which the tenants were to render for their holdings. For the most part these leases, or "land-loans" as they are called, were for the period of three lives, that is to say they were roughly tantamount to ninety-nine year leases, the first tenant having the right to name two successors, after which the land was to revert to the church; but in the meantime the tenants were to pay yearly church-scots, at the rate of a horse-load of corn for each hide of land which they held, to pay toll to the bishop when they bought or sold, to render pannage for their pigs when feeding in the bishop's woods and help their lord in his hunting, to ride on the lord's errands and fulfil all the duties of a knight or, as the letter expresses it, fulfil the "lex equitandi quae ad equites pertinet." What makes these curious records particularly interesting is the clear implication, which they convey, that already the estates of the great English ecclesiastics were taking very much the shape of the baronies of a later day, and that we can discern in these "knights," though they cannot yet be called military tenants, a class who held by a tenure which was almost feudal, and which would easily become "tenure in chivalry" as soon as
