It was within a very few years of St. Augustine’s landing that Westminster must have been begun.  There are several versions of the story:  the most detailed statement we have ascribes it to the particular year 604, but varied as are the forms in which the history, or rather the legend, is preserved, the truth common to all is the foundation quite early in the seventh century.  It was very probably supported by what barbaric Government there was in London at the time and initiated, moreover, according to one form of the legend, and that not the least plausible, by the first bishop of the see.  The site was at the moment typical of all those which the great monasteries of the West were to turn from desert places to gardens:  it was a waste tract of ground called “Thorney,” lying low, triangular in shape, bounded by the two reedy streams that descended through the depression which now runs across the Green Park and Mayfair, and emptied themselves into the Thames, the one just above, the other 100 or 200 yards below, the site of the Houses of Parliament.

The moment the foundation was established a stream of wealth tended towards it:  it was at the very gate of the largest commercial city in the kingdom and it was increasingly associated, as the Anglo-Saxon monarchy developed, with the power of the Central Government.  This process culminated in the great donation and rebuilding of Edward the Confessor.

The period of this new endowment was one well chosen to launch the future glory of Westminster.  England was all prepared to be permeated with the Norman energy, and when immediately after the Conquest came, the great shrine inherited all the glamour of a lost period, while it established itself with the new power as a sort of symbol of the continuity of the Crown.  There William was anointed, there was his palace and that of his son.  When, with the next century, the seat of Government became fixed, and London was finally established as the capital, Westminster had already become the seat of the monarchy.

Chertsey, next up the river, took on the work.  Like Westminster—­though, by tradition, a few years later than Westminster—­its foundation goes back to the birth of England.  Its history is known in some detail, and is full of incident, so that it may be called the pivot upon which, presumably, turned the development of the Thames Valley above London for two hundred years.  Its site is worth noting.  The rich, but at first probably swampy, pasturage upon the Surrey side was just such a position as one foundation after another up and down England settled on.  To reclaim land of this kind was one of the special functions of the great abbeys, and Chertsey may be compared in this particular to Hyde, for instance, or to the Vale of the Cross, to Fountains, to Ripon, to Melrose, and to many others.  It was in the new order of monastic development what Staines, its neighbour, had been in the old Roman order—­the mark of the first stage up-river from London.