Among these was a Saxon monk, the Abbot of Ikanho, St. Botolph by name, who lived about the middle of the seventh century.
Botolph belonged to a noble English family. After having been educated at one of the religious houses in what was then called Belgic Gaul, he came back to England, and begged of King Ethelmund a barren spot on which to build a monastery; and here, on the Witham River, near the eastern coast of England, in what is now called Lincolnshire, he built his priory, and founded a town to which was given the name, St. Botolph’s Town.
Here is what an unknown poet says of it in Longfellow’s Poems of Places:
“St. Botolph’s Town!—Hither across the plains
And fens of Lincolnshire, in garb austere,
There came a Saxon monk, and founded here
A priory, pillaged by marauding Danes,
So that thereof no vestige now remains;
Only a name, that spoken loud and clear,