Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/507

 were probably nothing but the shrieking sea-gulls and the melancholy cries of the bittern and curlew, he landed on a bit of dry ground two miles to the north-east of Croyland, now called Anchor-Church-Hill, just east of the Spalding road. Here were some British or Saxon burial mounds, on one of which he set up his hut and chapel, while his sister Pega established herself a few miles to the south-west, at Peakirk. He had landed on his island on St. Bartholomew's Day, August 24, 699, a young man of twenty-six, and here he was visited by Bishop Hædda, who ordained him in 705. In 709 Æthelbald being outlawed by his cousin King Coelred, took sanctuary with St. Guthlac, who prophesied to him that he would one day be king, and without bloodshed. St. Guthlac died in 713 or 714, but Æthelbald, who had vowed to build a monastery for Guthlac if ever he could, did become king in 716, and in gratitude built the first stone church and endowed a monastery for Benedictines at Croyland. Naturally St. Guthlac was the patron saint, and to him was joined St. Bartholomew, on whose day he had first come to Croyland.

St. Guthlac is represented in his statue as bearing the scourge of St. Bartholomew, on whose feast day each year little knives were given away emblematic of his martyrdom by flaying. The custom was not abolished till 1476. Pictures of the scourge and knives are found in the stained glass of old windows; for instance, at Bag-Enderby, near Somersby. In 866 the Danes burnt the monastery. Eighty years later the chancellor of King Edred, whose name is variously given as Turketyl, or Thurcytel, restored the church and monastery, and became the first abbot in 946, about which time he founded the Croyland library. The first church was built on a peat bog; oak piles five and a half feet long being driven through the peat on to gravel, and above the piles recent digging has shown alternate layers of loose stone and quarry-dust, above which the stone foundation of the tower were found to go down fifteen inches below the surface, and to rest on a mixture of rubble and stiff soil which was brought in boats a distance of nine miles. Thurcytel's church, which was cruciform and of considerable size and held one large bell, has almost, if not entirely, disappeared. The monastery was finished after his death by his successor, Egelric, who added six other bells in 976. The Danes, by cruel and repeated exactions, ruined the abbey