From Barlow’s: The Life of Edward p44-45
“Outside the walls of London, upon the river Thames, stood a monastery dedicated to St Peter, but insignificant in buildings and numbers, for under the abbot only a small community of monks served Christ. … The king, therefore, being devoted to God, gave his attention to that place, for it both lay hard by the famous and rich town and also was a delightful spot, surrounded by fertile lands and green fields and near the main channel of the river, which bore abundant merchandise of wares of every kind for sale from the whole world to the town on its banks. And, especially because of his love of the Prince of the Apostles, whom he worshipped with uncommon and special love, he decided to have his burial place there. Accordingly he ordered that out of the tithes of all his revenues should be started the building of a noble ediface, worthy of the Prince of rhe Apostles; so that, after the transient jounrey of this life, God would look kindly upon him, both for the sake of his goodness and beause of the gift of lands and ornaments with which he intended to enoble the place. And so the building, nobly begun at the king’s command was successfully made ready; and there was no weighing of the costs…”
In Matthew Paris’s ‘Life of Edward the Confessor’, the building of the abbey was brought about by the vision of a hermit of St Peter, who gave him a message for King Edward.
Edward, he said, would be pardoned for all his sins if he built a monastery dedicated to St Peter at Thorney on the Thames [Westminster]. St Peter himself promised to consecrate the spot.
The hermit wrote a letter and sent it to King Edward. Following miraculous confirmations of the hermit’s vision, and happy to be pardoned for his sins, King Edward gave orders for the restoration of the monastery.
see https://archive.org/details/livesofedwardcon00luar/page/242/mode/2up?view=theater
Lives of Edward the Confessor : Images by Matthew Paris
http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-EE-00003-00059/70
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