A.D. 793. ] KING OFFA IN ROME. 163 their meadows such a price as they chose to fix on ; after which the king consecrated those meadows, and with regal munificence assured them to all strangers who should come there, that pilgrims who should sojourn for a time in those places might, by the king's bounty, for ever have grass or hay without price for the support of their horses. How king Offa arrived in Home, ami promoted the building of the blessed Alban's monastery. Having paid the money for the purchase of the meadows, the king proceeded on his journey, and at length arriving at Home, he with pious devotion visited the gates of the apostles and the places of the various saints. He next informed the chief pontiff Adrian of the cause of his arrival, and made his earnest petition, both for the canonization of the blessed Alban and for the founding of the monastery. The court of Rome yielded a ready compliance, and the more so that the discovery of the martyr was the effect of divine revelation. On his consulting the court touching the founding of the monastery, and exempting it from episcopal jurisdiction, the Roman pontiff made answer as follows :— " Most beloved son Offa, most mighty king of the English, we greatly commend thy zeal for the proto-martyr of thy kingdom, and willingly yield our assent to thy petition for building and privileging a monastery, enjoining thee, for the remission of thy sins, to return to thy land, and, with the advice of thy bishops and nobles, to confer on the monastery of the blessed Alban such possessions and liberties as thou shalt be disposed, and what privileges thou shalt so confer we will afterwards confirm ; and we will adopt that monastery as a favoured daughter of the Roman see, and it shall be subject to our apostolic see, without the intervention of bishop or archbishop." On hearing this, the king considered within himself how he could make some recompence for such a gift; and at length, by the inspiration of divine grace, he adopted a salutary expedient, and the next day, going to the English school, which flourished at Rome at that time, he made a grant to it. for ever for the support of such of his kingdom as shall come there, of a penny from every family that had possessions in lands to the value of thirty pence ; and for this liberality he obtained that none of the English nation should M 2