In a previous chapter we have seen something of the history of the first Cluniac foundations in England. They were comparatively few in number—less than a dozen in all, if only those houses are reckoned which attained the full stature of a regular monastery—and owed their origin to various private benefactors and admirers of Cluny or of one of the great Cluniac priories in France. Their plantation was not the result of policy on the part of the Conqueror, for though he may originally have looked towards Cluny as to a possible source for prelates to reform and govern the English Church, in the event his choice of Lanfranc and the coolness between himself and Gregory VII caused him to look exclusively to Normandy for monks to place over the English monasteries and to isolate the Church in England from all influences outside his dominions. Consequently, the early Cluniac foundations were in the nature of private ventures and save for Lewes, whose first prior, the saintly Lanzo, gave his house an honourable reputation, and Bermondsey, they made little mark. Planted for the most part away from important towns and owing at least some sort of obedience to a religious superior outside the territory of the king of England, they could not expect to make the same mark in English life as the old and celebrated abbeys whose heads were regularly summoned to the royal courts and councils, and ranked among the important tenants-in-chief.