Pope Leo readily absolved the king from his vow, desiring that instead he should build or restore some monastery to the honour of St. Peter, and make over to the relief of the poor such a sum of money as his journey would have cost him.
Edward was wonderfully pleased at the Pope's message, and resolved to begin at once a building worthy of the great Apostle. What more natural than that he should choose the little monastery at Westminster, which was very poor? It lay near to the city of London, and to that great river up and down which there was so much coming and going of ships. It lay near also to his own palace, and if the present humble buildings gave place to such an edifice as he intended to raise, where could a more suitable burying-place for himself be found when the time came for God to call him hence? Then, too, Abbot Eadwine found great favour in his eyes; and the monks there, under the strict rule of St. Benedict, had won for themselves a good report concerning the simplicity and holiness of their lives. So it seemed fitting that Westminster should be raised from its lowly state and be refashioned in a manner worthy of the saint whose name it bore.
Just at this time, too, Wulsinus, an aged and saintly monk at Worcester, had a wondrous story to tell of a sacred vision vouchsafed to him, in which St. Peter had appeared bidding him to deliver this message to the king. "There is," declared the Apostle, "a place of mine in the west of London, which I chose and love, the name of it being Thorney: which having for the sins of the people been given to the power of the barbarians, from rich is become poor, from stately low, and from honourable is made despicable. This let the king by my command restore and make a dwelling of monks, stately built and well endowed, for it shall be no less than the House of God and the Gate of Heaven."
The vision was made known to Edward, and shortly afterwards he commanded that a tenth of his entire substance, gold, silver, cattle, and all other possessions, should be set aside for the purpose of pulling down the old church and raising a new one from the very foundation.
So from this time the story of the Abbey passes from misty legend into proven history, and it is with Edward, named afterwards "the Confessor," that the glory must rest of having called into being that great religious house, destined in the future to be most closely linked with all that concerned alike the crown and the country.