It was while William was encamped upon Telham Hill, expecting the battle of the morrow, that he vowed an abbey to God if He gave him the victory.  He was heard by a monk of Marmoutier, a certain William, called the Smith, who, when Duke William had received the crown at Westminster, reminded him of his promise.  The King acknowledged his obligation and bade William of Marmoutier to see to its fulfilment.  The monk thereupon returned to Marmoutier, and choosing four others, brought them to England; but finding the actual battlefield unsuited for a monastery, since there was no water there, he designed to build lower down towards the west.  Now when the King heard of it he was angry and bade them build upon the field itself, nor would he hear them patiently when they asserted there was no water there, for, said he:  “If God spare me I will so fully provide this place that wine shall be more abundant there than water is in any abbey in the land.”  Then said they that there was no stone.  But he answered that he would bring them stone from Caen.  This, however, was not done, for a quarry was found close by.  Also the King richly endowed the house, giving it all the land within a radius of a league, and there the abbot was to be absolute lord free of bishop and royal officer, [Footnote:  The unique privileges of the abbot of Battle included the right to “kill and take one or two beasts with dogs” in any of the King’s forests.] and very many manors beside.  Yet ten years elapsed before the Abbey of Battle was sufficiently completed to receive an abbot.  In 1076, however, Robert Blancard, one of the four monks chosen by William of Marmoutier, was appointed, but he died e’er he came to Battle.  Then one Gausbert was sent from Marmoutier, and he came with four of his brethren and was consecrated “Abbot of St Martin’s of the place of Battle.”  Beside the extraordinary gifts and privileges which the Conqueror had bestowed upon the Abbey in his lifetime, upon his death he bequeathed to it his royal embroidered cloak, a splendid collection of relics and a portable altar containing relics, possibly the very one upon which Harold had sworn in his captivity in Normandy to support his claim to England.  William is said to have intended the monastery to be filled with sixty monks.  We do not know whether this number ever really served there.  In 1393, but that was after the Black Death, there appear to have been some twenty-seven, and in 1404 but thirty.  In 1535, on the eve of the Suppression, Battle Abbey was visited by the infamous Layton who reported to Thomas Cromwell that “all but two or three of the monks were guilty of unnatural crimes and were traitors,” adding that the abbot was an arrant churl and that “this black sort of develish monks I am sorry to know are past amendment.”  Little more than two years later the abbot surrendered the abbey and received a pension of one hundred pounds.  The furniture and so forth of the house was then very poor.  “So beggary a house I never see, nor