Offa now induced the Pope to allow the pence so collected from
his kingdom to be paid to the Abbey of St. Alban instead of the
Saxon College at Rome. The payment was called Peter's Pence
because it was paid on August 1st (the day dedicated to _St.
Peter ad Vincula_), the day on which the relics of St. Alban had
been discovered.
All that Offa seems to have been able to do besides repairing the church
was to erect domestic buildings for his monks, who in course of time
numbered a hundred. We have no record of any partial rebuilding, or
enlargement even, of the church of Offa's day. From the fact that
certain remains of it were incorporated in the present building, and
that these were of the character generally called "Saxon," there is
little doubt that the church of the monastery was not the little church
erected in the fourth century over the martyr's grave, but one of later
date, probably the one described by Beda as standing in his day, built
in the latter part of the sixth or in the seventh century. We have no
further record of this church, but we know that the ninth Abbot, Eadmer,
began to collect materials for rebuilding the church; but the work was
not begun until the time of the fourteenth Abbot, Paul of Caen, who was
appointed by William I.
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