[128]: Her abbey was for generations the favourite boarding-school in France for young ladies from England.
[129]: These borders are now marked only in the Ordnance maps. The line runs right across the county from west to east, following the West River (the ancient course of the Ouse), to its junction with the Cam, and then almost straight eastward to the boundary of Suffolk, along a water-course known as the "Bishop's Delph" (i.e., ditch, from the verb delve).
[130]: This title implied a vague Primacy amongst the various Anglo-Saxon monarchs, conferred, by as vague a recognition on their part, upon him who was for the time the most powerful amongst them. But though vague it was far from unreal. We find Ethelbert's protection enabling St. Augustine to preach all over England. Indeed the name (which etymologically signifies merely Broad Wielder) very early got to be regarded as meaning Wielder of Britain.
[131]: Augustine, true to his mission from St. Gregory, strove to rekindle all over the land such embers of the Faith as still smouldered on amongst the British refugees. For those in the fenland, the Girvii, he had set up a small religious house at Cratendune near Ely, which was afterwards absorbed by Etheldreda's larger Abbey.
[132]: William the Conqueror had already run a military causeway across Willingham Fen to the south-west side of the island at Aldreth.
[133]: The word "stunt" in the dialect of Cambridgeshire signifies steep. The shores of Stuntney rise from the fen with most unusual abruptness.
[134]: Macaulay.
[135]: After the suppression of the alien Priories this property went to the Crown, and was granted by Henry the Sixth to Pembroke College, Cambridge, in whose hands it still remains.
[136]: He fought at Agincourt, and was one of the knights told off to kill the French prisoners.
[137]: The Peytons held Isleham till the eighteenth century.