In the foregoing chapters we have seen how the revival of English monasticism, wholly spontaneous in its origin under Dunstan at Glastonbury, drew its further inspiration from two centres of new life abroad. From Fleury came the impulse of Cluny, modified by its passage at second hand and by the peculiar characteristics of Abbo and others; from Ghent came the spirit of the Lotharingian reform. Together these two sources sent to England what may be called the first of that series of waves of foreign influence which succeeded each other in the course of three hundred years, culminating in the coming of the friars in the first half of the thirteenth century.

As has been seen, the overseas influence in the tenth century was temporary. English monastic life, having once received in 970 the impress of foreign traditional practice in the Regularis Concordia, continued thence-forward to develop its own traditions and characteristics without any further communication with monasteries abroad. Between the sojourn of Abbo of Fleury at Ramsey in 986–8 and the first Norman heralds of the coming invasion under Edward the Confessor there is no trace of continental influence in English monasticism. The second wave, that of the Norman tradition, was to be far more pervading and permanent in its effects, and in order to appreciate the changes which it brought about, we must glance at the antecedents and history of the body of monasteries from which it drew its origin.