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Updated: June 3, 2025
So they made a sledge, tied beef-bones underneath it, put Torfrida thereon, well wrapped in deer and fox and badger skin, and then putting on their skates, swept her over the fen to Crowland, singing like larks along the dikes. And Torfrida said yes, and yes, and yes, and felt in her heart that she knew all that already. Had not she, too, taught, entreated, softened, civilized?
It was not till the time of Alfred the Great, who came to the throne in 871, that the invasions of the Danes were finally checked, and tranquillity restored to the kingdom. Security being assured, the people began again to improve their public buildings and the religious houses. Crowland was the first in the neighbourhood to be restored. This restoration was effected by Thurketyl.
Here and there, too, upon the far horizon, rose a tall line of ashen trees, marking some island of firm rich soil. Here and there, too, as at Ramsey and Crowland, the huge ashes had disappeared before the axes of the monks, and a minster tower rose over the fen, amid orchards, gardens, cornfields, pastures, with here and there a tree left standing for shade.
A little may be gleaned from biographies such as that of Guthlac of Crowland; but the letters of Boniface and Alcwine, which have been edited by Jaffé in his series of "Monumenta Germanica," form the most valuable contemporary materials for this period. From the rise of Wessex our history rests mainly on the English Chronicle.
He hid himself in a neighboring wood, and, with a degree of sagacity and discretion remarkable in a boy of his years, he contrived to find his way back to the smoking ruins of his home at the Abbey of Crowland.
"For this Richard de Rulos," says Ingulf, or whoever wrote in his name, "who had married the daughter and heiress of Hugh of Evermue, Lord of Bourne and Deeping, being a man of agricultural pursuits, got permission from the monks of Crowland, for twenty marks of silver, to enclose as much as he would of the common marshes.
As yet it is enough to do, if I can keep down this devil here in my throat. Women, bring me the scissors." And Torfrida cut off her raven locks, now streaked with gray, and put on the nun's dress, and became a nun thenceforth. On the second day there came to Crowland Leofric the priest, and with him the poor child. She had woke in the morning and found no mother.
Shortly afterwards, it would transpire that miracles were being successfully performed by the relics in the hands of the new possessors. Leaving the main road a detour of a few miles enabled us to visit Crowland Abbey shortly before reaching Peterborough. It is a remarkable ruin, rising out of the flat fen country, as someone has said, "like a light-house out of the sea."
Farther northward in the Fenland, and over the border in Lincolnshire, was the Benedictine abbey of "courteous Crowland," though its remains are now scanty. It derives its name from the "Land of Crows," which in this part is drained by the Welland River and the great Bedford Level.
Alfgar's name, indeed, still lives in the village of Algar-Kirk; and Lady Godiva, and Algar after her, enriched with great gifts Crowland, the island sanctuary, and Peterborough, where Brand, either her brother or Leofric's, was a monk, and in due time an abbot.
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