History of the Abbey of St. Alban. By L. F.
Rushbrook Williams (Longman and Co. 7s. 6d. not.)—This is an interesting and work- manlike history of one of the greatest monastic foundations of mediaeval England. Little is definitely known of St. Alban, the first Christian martyr of England, who died perhaps between the years 303 and 305, and it is uncertain when a church was founded at the place where he suffered, though Bode in the eighth century speaks of it as already very old. Tho author rejects the story that Offs, King of the Mercians, built and endowed the Abbey in 793, though he may have improved the church and established Benedictine monks there. St. Alban's owed its early greatness to its Norman Abbots. In later days it was noted for its aristo- cratic tone and for its high literary and artistic culture. It was the only monastic house, outside Westminster, which had a printing- press in the fifteenth century. At the Dissolution all its building,, except the Abbey and the Gate-house, wore rapidly demolished for the sake of the materials, but those seaports relics enable one to form some idea of the magnificence of the vanished monastery.
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