The estates belonging to the monastery in England, prior to the
reformation, were both numerous and valuable.
Sammarthanus, author of the _Gallia Christiana_, says, in speaking of
Bec, that, whether considered as to religion or literature, there was
not, in the eleventh century, a more celebrated convent throughout the
whole of Neustria. The founder of the abbey was Hellouin, sometimes
called Herluin, a nobleman, descended by the mother's side from the
Counts of Flanders, but he himself was a native of the territory of
Brionne, and educated in the castle of Gislebert, earl of that district.
Hellouin determined, at an early age, to withdraw himself from the court
and from the world: it seems he was displeased or affronted by the
conduct of the earl; and we may collect from the chroniclers, that it
was not a very easy task in those times for an individual of rank,
intent upon monastic seclusion, to carry his purpose into effect, and
that still greater difficulties were to be encountered if he wished to
put his property into mortmain. Hellouin was obliged to counterfeit
madness, and at last to come to a very painful explanation with his
liege lord; and, when he finally succeeded in obtaining the permission
he craved, his establishment was so poor, that he was compelled to take
upon himself the office of abbot, from an inability to find any other
person who would accept it.
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