Tinterne Abbey

“There are some, I hear, who take it ill that I mention monasteries and their founders; I am sorry to hear it. But, not to give them any just offence, let them be angry if they will. Perhaps they would have it forgotten that our ancestors were, and we are, Christians; since there never were more certain indications and glorious monuments, of Christian piety than these.”—Camden’s Britannia, Pref. Ages of Faith, Book xi.

The Abbey of Tinterne, though one of the oldest in England, makes no conspicuous figure in its history, a proof that its abbots were neither bold nor ambitious of distinction, but devoted to the peaceful and retiring duties of their office. We do not find that the secluded Tinterne was ever the scene of any rebellious outbreak, or the refuge of any notorious criminal. From age to age, the bell that summoned to daily matins and vespers was cheerfully obeyed; and all they knew of the great world beyond the encircling hills, was learned, perhaps, from the daily strangers and pilgrims who took their meal and night’s lodging in the hospitium.

The name of Tinterne, as etymologists inform us, is derived from the Celtic words din, a fortress, and teyrn, a sovereign or chief; for it appears from history, as well as tradition, that a hermitage, belonging to Theodoric or Teudric, King of Glamorgan, originally occupied the site of the present abbey; and that the royal hermit, having resigned the throne to his son Maurice, “led an eremitical life among the rocks of Dindyrn or Tynterne.” It is also mentioned, as a remarkable coincidence in history, that two kings, who sought Tinterne as a temporary place of refuge, only left it to meet violent deaths. The first was Theodoric, who was slain in battle by the Saxons, under Ceolwilph, King of Wessex, in the year 600, having been dragged from his seclusion by his own subjects, in order that he might act once more as their leader. The next was “the unfortunate King Edward, who fled from the pursuit of his queen,” Isabella. The Welsh monarch is said to have routed the Saxons at Mathern, near Chepstow, where his body was buried. Bishop Godwin says, that he there saw his remains in a stone coffin; and on the skull, after the lapse of nearly a thousand years, the wound of which he died was conspicuous—thus verifying the tradition as to the place and manner of his death.

Nothing could be more happily chosen for the seat of a religious community, than the beautiful valley of which these ruins are the unrivalled ornament. It would be difficult to picture, even with the aid of a fertile imagination, scenes more fitted to cherish devout feelings; to instruct us, from the tranquil bosom of Nature, to look up to Nature’s God; and in the exclusion of the busy world, to feel aspirations of gratitude continually ascending towards Him who enriched the valley with his bounty, and in homage to whom that temple and its altars were first erected. The latter, as the work of man, and a prey to neglect and violence, have disappeared or crumbled into ruins; but the former, as the work of God, has lost nothing of its original beauty. The woods that curtain the scene; the river that sweeps along under pendent cliffs of oak; the meadows and orchards that cover and adorn its banks,—all continue as luxuriant, as copious and abundant, as verdant and blooming, as on that day when the first pilgrim-father planted his cross in the soil, and consecrated the spot to the service of God.

It has been often observed—and the observation is confirmed by fact—that those venerable ascetics, who acted as pioneers in the army of Christian pilgrims, were no mean judges of soil and climate, and generally chose some fertile spot upon which nature had bestowed her special favour. But many instances may be pointed out where they chose even the inhospitable desert for their habitation; and, by unremitting labour, transformed that desert into a garden. To the personal example of those ancient Cistercians, the country is indebted for many improvements in all branches of cultivation and embellishment. From the model-garden and orchard of the monastery, hints were communicated and lessons taught, which found their way into every part of the country, and carried with them the principal arts of civilization and improvement. Thus, what first gave a prosperous agriculture to our own shores, is still in operation upon the barbarous islands of the Pacific, where Christian missions, religious fraternities, are busily propagating, by their own example, those domestic and mechanical arts which are the safest and best introduction to religious knowledge. Of this happy influence on the minds and habits of the peasantry, none of the monastic orders was more fully sensible than the Cistercians, whose laborious but abstemious lives, sumptuous temples, and gorgeous ritual, threw an air of luxury upon every spot where the Order had once set its name.

From the shadowy woods which shelter and encompass it, Tinterne may be justly denominated the Vallis umbrosa of Monmouth; but the fertility of the soil, and solemn retirement of the scene, so desirable for a great sanctuary in the “Ages of Faith,” had an immense advantage in the noble and navigable river which formed the channel of communication between the interior and the sea; and, like an artery supplying nutriment to the system, brought its supplies of provision or treasure to the very gate of the abbey. And many a goodly cargo of corn from Hereford, and wine from Normandy, has been disembarked at that old pier, where the abbot’s galley has degenerated into a clumsy ferryboat, with old Richard Tamplin, the ferryman, for its commander.

From ancient historical sources, which treat of the origin, progress, and dissolution of this abbey, we select the following materials:—The founder was Walter de Clare, a name famous in the annals of chivalry and church-building. The first stone was laid in the thirty-first year of the twelfth century; but more than a century and a half elapsed before its completion. In those days churches were the work of generations; and it was rarely, indeed, that the founder lived to witness the fulfilment of his vow. “These all died in faith.” In 1287, we are told the White Friars took possession of the edifice consecrated to the Blessed Virgin, and commenced those hallowed services which the Eighth Henry, by his sic volo, was destined to silence. These services, however, had lasted for centuries; and who shall say, during the lapse of barbarous times, how much crime was prevented, how much good effected, by those holy men. Shut out from the haunts and habits of secular life, they exercised their spiritual functions, we may charitably believe, in a manner that drew many penitents to their altar; and, in the midst of wars and tumults, displayed the sacred banner of peace, and published the doctrine of salvation. Their record is on high. And, in justice to the Cistercians, it must be confessed, that if less learned, they were more exemplary, and not more worldly, than some other fraternities of higher pretensions. They exercised and patronised agriculture; and planting themselves, as the rule directed, in the depths of forests, or on desert heaths, they drew from the earth such sustenance as it would yield to the hand of labour; and trusted to those who sought their spiritual aid and counsel, for the means of building and embellishing their altars.

The order of Cistercians, as the reader is aware, made its appearance in England about the year 1128. In imitation of Christ and his twelve Apostles, the brotherhood was limited to twelve, with an abbot at their head, according to the rule of the Founder:—“Et sicut ille monasteria constructa, per duodecim monachos adjuncto patre disponebat, sic se acturos confirmabant.”—Mon. Ang. iv. 699. Their first establishment in England was at Waverley, in Surrey; and in the course of time, their numbers had so multiplied, that, shortly before the dissolution of religious houses, they had seventy-five monasteries, and twenty-six nunneries in this country. Their patriarch was St. Robert, Abbot of Molesme, a Benedictine monastery in the bishopric of Langres. This holy man becoming alarmed at the gradual decay of vital religion among the brotherhood, and their wilful neglect of the rules instituted by their founder, adopted measures for the immediate reformation of the order. Having obtained the Pope’s sanction in support of his design, he chose twenty-one of the brethren, and retiring from Molesme to the neighbourhood of Chalons-sur-Saone, took up his abode in the wilderness of Citeaux; where, under the protection of Otho, Duke of Burgundy, and the Bishop of Chalons, he laid the foundation of a religious house, in which the rules of St. Benedict were to be strictly enforced, and the character of his followers restored. But the wisdom and piety of Robert having introduced several improvements into the rules of St. Benedict, the brotherhood began to present features so distinct from the parent establishment, that, on the return of St. Robert to Molesme, his successor, Albericus, obtained a charter from the Pope, constituting the monks of Citeaux into an independent order—that of Cistercians, or Whitefriars. Their rules were positive and stringent; they involved the surrender of all secular affairs into the hands of lay brothers, so that their lives and labours might be exclusively devoted to the exercise of charity and the service of the altar. In their choice of localities for the establishment of new houses, they were enjoined, as already observed, to avoid cities, and go forth into the wilderness. This was favourable to pilgrimages; and with the fruits of these, and benefactions from all classes, what they had found a desert on their arrival, was speedily converted by labour and industry into a garden; and what was at first only a cell or chapel, was gradually extended into a church and abbey. The revenue of the order was divided into four parts—to the bishop, a fourth; to the priests, a fourth; to the exercise of hospitality, a fourth; and another fourth for the support of widows and orphans, the relief of the sick, and the repairs of churches and cloisters. And inasmuch as they could not find, either in the life or rule of St. Benedict, that their founder had possessed any churches, or altars, or ovens, or mills, or towns, or serfs; or that any woman was ever permitted to enter his monastery, or any dead to be buried there, except his sister; they therefore renounced all these things: “Ecce hujus seculi divitiis spretis cœperunt novi milites Christi cum paupere Christo pauperes inter se tractare, quo ingenio, quo artificio, quo se exercitio in hac vita se hospitesque divites et pauperes supervenientes quos ut Christum suscipere præcipit regula sustentarent.” For a time the Cistercians continued in exemplary observance of their rules: poverty and humility walked hand in hand; but, in proportion as their revenues increased, their discipline began to relax; a taste for luxury succeeded; and whoever has visited their splendid abbeys abroad, will readily confess that, while professing abstinence and self-denial, they were lodged like princes, and like princes shared in the vanities and pleasures of the world. Their ruling passion was said to be avarice; but if they amassed riches, they spent them with a princely liberality; and their buildings, in this and other countries, present some of the finest specimens of taste ever raised by the hand of man.

Cistercians were Benedictines, according to the letter of the rule, without mitigation. Their peculiarities are thus described in Dugdale’s Warwickshire:—“First, for their habits, they wear no leather or linen, nor indeed any fine woollen cloth; neither, except it be on a journey, do they put on any breeches, and then, after their return, deliver them fair washed. Having two coats with cowls, in winter time they are not to augment, but in summer, if they choose, they may lessen them; in which habit they are to sleep, and after matins not to return to their beds. For prayers, the hour of Prime, they so conclude, that before the Lauda it may be daybreak, strictly observing their rule, that not one iota or tittle of their service is omitted. Immediately after Lauda, they sing the Prime; and after Prime, they go out performing their appointed hours in work. What is to be done in the day, they act by daylight; for none of them, except he be sick, is to be absent from his diurnal hours or Complinæ. When the Compline is finished, the steward of the house and he that hath charge of the guests go forth, but with great care of silence serve them.

For diet, “the Abbot assumes no more liberty to himself than any of his convent, everywhere being present with them, and taking care of his flock, except at meat, in regard his talk is always with the strangers and poor people. Nevertheless, when he eats, he is abstemious of talk or any dainty fare; nor hath he or any of them ever above two dishes of meat; neither do they eat of fat or flesh, except in case of sickness; and, from the ides of September till Easter, they eat no more than once a day, except on Sunday, and not even on festivals.

“Out of the precincts of their cloyster they go not but to work; neither there nor anywhere do they discourse with any but the abbot or prior. They unweariedly continue their canonical hours, not piecing any service to another, except the vigils for the deceased. Their manual labour was as follows: In summer, after Chapter, which followed Prime, they worked till Tierce; and, after Nones, till Vespers. In winter, from after Mass till Nones, and even to Vespers, during Lent. In harvest, when they went to work in the farms, they said Tierce and the conventual Mass immediately after Prime, that nothing might hinder their work for the rest of the morning; and often they said divine service in their places where they were at work, and at the same hours as those at home celebrated in the church.

“They observe the office of St. Ambrose, so far as they can have perfect knowledge thereof from Millain; and, taking care of strangers and sick people, do devise extraordinary afflictions for their own bodies, to the intent their souls may be advantaged.” Of the same Order—

Hospinian says—“They allowed to candidates a year’s probation, but no reception to fugitives after the third time. All fasts were observed according to the rule: to visitors prostration was enjoined, with washing of feet. At the Abbot’s table sat the guests and pilgrims: they laboured more than the rule required: delicate habits were exploded: obsolete and primitive fervour was diligently revived and practised. But of this powerful order, avarice was the besetting vice: they were great dealers in wool, generally very ignorant, and, in fact, farmers rather than monks.” The best account of this brotherhood, as Fosbroke has told us, is to be found in the Usus Cisterciensium; but of their habits and ceremonies further notice will be found when we come to treat of the more opulent houses. Guyot le Provins, first a minstrel, then a monk, has thus satirized them in a poem, which he called a bible, or, more properly, libel. The Cistercian “abbots and cellarers have ready money, eat large fish, drink good wine, and send to the refectory, for those who do the work, the very worst. I have seen these monks,” he affirms, “put pig-sties in churchyards, and stables for asses in chapels. They seize the cottages of the poor, and reduce them to beggary.”—With this brief account of the Order, we return to the subjects selected for illustration.

In a historical sketch, by the late Archdeacon Coxe, the ruins of Tinterne Abbey are thus described, and his description is at once accurate and graphic:—

“We stopped to examine the rich architecture of the west front; but the door being suddenly opened, the inside perspective of the church called forth an instantaneous burst of admiration, and filled us with delight, such as I scarcely ever before experienced on a similar occasion. The eye passes rapidly along a range of elegant Gothic pillars, and, glancing under the sublime arches which once supported the tower, fixes itself on the splendid relics of the eastern window—the grand termination of the choir.

“From the length of the nave, the height of the walls, the aspiring form of the pointed arches, and the size of the east window, which closes the perspective, the first impressions are those of grandeur and sublimity. But as these emotions subside, and we descend from the contemplation of the whole to the examination of the parts, we are no less struck with the regularity of the plan, the lightness of the architecture, and the delicacy of the ornaments. We feel that elegance, no less than grandeur, is its characteristic, and that the whole is a combination of the beautiful and the sublime. The church, constructed in the shape of a cathedral, is an excellent specimen of Gothic architecture in its purity. The roof has long since fallen in, and the whole ruin is thus thrown open to the sky; but the shell is entire: all the pillars are standing, except those which divided the nave from the northern aisle, and their situation is marked by the remains of their bases. The four lofty arches which supported the tower, spring high in the air, reduced to narrow rims of stone, yet still preserving their original form. The arches and pillars of the transepts are complete: the shapes of all the windows may yet be discriminated; the frame of the west window is in perfect preservation, the design of the tracery is extremely elegant, and, when decorated with painted glass, must have produced a gorgeous effect. The general form of the east window is also entire, but its frame is much dilapidated. It occupies the whole breadth of the choir, and is divided into two large and equal compartments by a slender shaft, not less than fifty feet in height, with an appearance of singular lightness, which, in particular points of view, seems as if suspended in the air. To these decorations of art, nature has added her own ornaments. Some of the windows are wholly obscured, others partially shaded, with tufts of ivy, or edged with lighter foliage:

the tendrils creep along the walls, wind round the pillars, wreath the capitals, or, hanging down in clusters, obscure the space beneath. But instead of dilapidated fragments, overspread with weeds and choked with brambles, the floor is covered with a smooth verdant turf, which, by keeping the original level of the church, exhibits the beauty of its proportions, heightens the effect of the gray stone, gives relief to the clustered pillars, and affords an easy access to every part. Ornamented fragments of the roof, remains of cornices and columns, rich pieces of sculpture, carved stones and mutilated figures of monks and warriors, whose ashes repose within these walls, are scattered on the green sward, and contrast present desolation with former splendour.”

Although the exterior appearance of these ruins is not equal to the inside view, yet in some positions—particularly to the east—they present themselves with considerable effect. From a point on its left bank, and about half a mile down the river, the ruins assume a new character; and seeming to occupy a gentle eminence, impend over the river without the intervention of a single cottage to intercept the view. “The grand east window, wholly covered with shrubs, and half-mantled with ivy, rises like the portal of a majestic edifice embowered in wood. Through this opening, and along the vista of the church, the clusters of ivy, which twine round the pillars or hang suspended from the arches, resemble tufts of trees; while the thick mantle of foliage, seen through the tracery of the west window, forms a continuation of the perspective, and appears like an interminable forest.”

The Abbey is a cruciform structure, built, it is said, after the model of Salisbury Cathedral, consisting of a nave, north and south aisles, transepts, and choir. Its length from east to west is two hundred and twenty-eight feet, and from north to south, at the transepts, one hundred and fifty feet. The nave and choir are thirty-seven feet in breadth; the height of the central arch is seventy feet, of the smaller arches thirty feet; of the east window sixty-four feet, and of the west window forty-two feet. The total area originally enclosed by the walls of the abbey is said to have been thirty-four acres.

The exterior of the western front is singularly striking; but, on entering, as already observed, the scene that represents itself is indescribably grand and impressive. “When we stood at one end of this awful ruin,” says Gilpin, “the elements of earth and air its only covering and pavement, and the grand and

venerable remains which terminated both, perfect enough to form the perspective, yet broken enough to destroy the regularity, the eye was above measure delighted with the beauty, the grandeur, the novelty of the scene.”

The inner walls of the church are nearly entire; most of the elegant and massive columns, as already noticed, which separated the nave from the south aisle are yet standing; and the four lofty and magnificent arches which formerly supported the central tower are nearly perfect. The columns that divided the nave from the north aisle have fallen; but their bases still occupy the ground, showing their number, shape, and dimensions.

Windows.—The magnificent windows are little altered by time: and though somewhat obscured by a luxuriant and graceful drapery of ivy, the tendrils of which twine in their tracery, creep along the walls, encircle the columns, and form natural wreaths around the capitals, the forms of the principal objects are still so far preserved as to be easily discriminated. The tracery of the western window, as already observed, is exquisite; while the eastern window, high and graceful, and occupying nearly the whole breadth of the choir, with its slender umbilical shaft rising to a height of fifty feet, and diverging at the top into rich flowery traces, has quite a magical effect. The other windows, though less ornamented, are all in character, and have the same elegant design and finish.

The floor, originally covered with encaustic tiles, is now enveloped in a thick smooth matting of grass, trimmed like a bowling-green, and here and there spotted with little heaps of mutilated sculpture, and striped with flat tombstones—all thrown open to the winds of heaven.

The effigy of a knight in chain armour, a pavache shield, and crossed legs, is supposed to be that of Strongbow, first Earl of Pembroke, already noticed, but more probably that of Roger Bigod, as Strongbow is historically known to have been buried in Dublin. This interesting relic, that had escaped the ravages of time and the hostile spirit of resolution, was at last, as Mr. Thomas informs us, wilfully mutilated by a native of the village.

The next relic is a group of the Madonna and Child, much disfigured, but with sufficient evidence of its having been the work of a skilful artist. Mr. Bartlett considered it to be of very graceful design and execution.

Near the eastern window is the sculptured head of a friar, with the tonsure, but otherwise quite disfigured.

In the centre, between the transepts, is another broad stone slab, supposed to cover the ashes of the founder; but the fall of the tower, and the continual dropping of loosened fragments—until the ruin became an object of interest and consideration—have not left one of the sepulchral tablets or inscriptions entire. Many fragments may be discovered among the rubbish, but to reunite the scattered members were a very hopeless task. In the southern aisle is the only sepulchral antiquity that bears a legible inscription. It is elaborately carved in black or slate marble, with a cross finely sculptured on its surface longitudinally, and near its base three trouts, so entertwined as to form the symbolic triangle, with the figure of a salmon on the right and left. The inscription, in black letter, along the top of the cross, is simple—

“Hic jacet humatus Johann: Willino.”

The sepulchral brasses have all disappeared. For a century and more after the Dissolution, the Abbey appears to have been abandoned to every species of wilful depredators, who defaced the altars, ransacked the graves, and carried off without molestation whatever was curious or portable.

In the same aisle, close to the wall, and now preserved with great care, is the lately-discovered pavement of encaustic tiles, with escutcheons of the ancient Clare and Bigod families intertwined. The figures on these coloured tiles represent flowers, animals, and knights in full career at a tournament. This pavement was probably that of a private altar, belonging to the founder, or benefactor of the Abbey. In the process of clearing away the vast accumulation of rubbish, many of the ancient memorials were removed in fragments; and of the few that remain, not one, probably, now covers the dust over which it was originally placed.

Leaving the grassy lawn-like floor of the Abbey, the ascent to the top is still practicable by means of a spiral staircase in an angle of the northern transept. Those who conclude their survey of the ruins by this experiment, will be amply rewarded for any fatigue it may occasion. At the time of our visit, however, in the month of August last year, some unexpected obstacle prevented the custodier from gratifying our curiosity by a view from the summit: for the steps were either so unsafe or deficient, as to make the experiment rather hazardous.

Mr. Thomas, from whose notes we have already quoted, and whose late professional residence near the Abbey rendered him familiar with all its minutest features, tells us that the prospect it commands is highly picturesque; and in turning from the outward landscape, to look down into the cloistered depths below, the view of clustering pillars, lofty arches, mullioned windows, and flowing tracery, is indescribably grand and impressive.

The broken summit of the walls, throughout its whole outline, is adorned with a profusion of shrubs and flowers, that, with interlacing leaves and tendrils, cover the mouldering coping like a fragrant mantle. Where the labour of man appears to decay, nature has put forth her vigour and beauty, and transformed those roofless walls into a wild botanic garden. Here, and amidst the débris immediately adjoining, Mr. Thomas found a luxuriant crop of shrubs and flowers, all of different families, some of them rare, and in number between forty and fifty.

Reed, in his ‘Remains,’ gives the following eloquent and highly poetical description of the Abbey by moonlight:—“The great tree or vegetable rock, or emperor of the oaks, if you please, before which I bowed with a sort of reverence in the fields of Tinterne, and which for so many ages has borne all the blasts and bolts of heaven, I should deem it a gratification of a superior kind to approach again with an ‘unsandalled foot,’ to pay the same homage, and to kindle with the same devotion. But I should find amidst the magnificent ruins of the adjoining Abbey, something of a sublime cast, to interest and give pregnancy to my feelings. I must be alone. My mind must be calm and pensive. It must be midnight. The moon, half-veiled in clouds, must be just emerging from behind the neighbouring hills. All must be silent, except the wind gently rustling among the ivy of the ruins; the river lulling, by its faint murmurings, its guardian genius to repose; and the owl, whose funereal shriek would some time die along the walls in mysterious echoes. I should then invoke the ghosts of the Abbey; and Fancy, with one stroke of her magic wand, would rouse them from their dusty beds, and lead them into the centre of the ruin. I should approach their shadowy existences with reverence; making inquiries respecting the customs, and manners, and genius, and fate of antiquity—desire to have a glimpse of the destiny of future ages, and enter upon conversations which would be too sacred and even dangerous to communicate.” The lines by Sir Walter Scott, on “Melrose Abbey by Moonlight,” are equally descriptive of Tinterne.

It has been well observed, that, as the Abbey of Tinterne is the most beautiful and picturesque of all our Gothic monuments, so is the situation one of the most sequestered and delightful. One more abounding in that peculiar kind of scenery which excites the mingled sensations of content, religion, and enthusiasm, it is impossible to behold. There, every arch infuses, as it were, a solemn energy into inanimate nature; a sublime antiquity breathes mildly in the heart; and the soul, pure and passionless, appears susceptible of that state of tranquillity which is the perfection of every earthly wish. By the late Sir C. Colt Hoare, a man of taste and many travelled acquirements, this “seat of devotion, solitude, and desolation,” is pronounced as surpassing every other ruin he had seen in England or in Wales. Captain Barber, whose “Tour” is now very scarce, was so charmed with the scene, that he locked himself up in the Abbey, and employed several hours in delineating its picturesque features.

From the general aspect of this venerable pile—a coup d’œil that never fails to captivate the stranger—we proceed to a few detached features of the picture, all more or less interesting as relics of men, and times, that have long passed away.

Walter de Clare, the founder, was grandson of Osbert, Lord of Tudenham and Wollaston, by gift of William the Conqueror. He departed this life on the 10th of March, 1139, and dying without issue, was succeeded by his brother, Gilbert de Clare, who survived him nine years, and dying on the 6th of January, 1148, was buried in the church of Tinterne. This Gilbert de Clare left two sons by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Walleran, Earl of Melent—Richard, surnamed Strongbow, and Baldwin, who, “fighting stoutly on the part of King Stephen, at the battle of Lincoln, was there taken prisoner.” Richard was one of the witnesses to that “solemn accorde,” made in 1153, between King Stephen, and Henry, Duke of Normandy, whereby the latter was to succeed to the crown of England after the king’s demise. In the year 1170 [16 Henry II.], the said Richard, Earl of Striguil or Pembroke, being stript of his paternal inheritance by King Henry II., invaded Ireland, and captured the cities of Dublin and Waterford. Soon after this event, when “the king, who was then at Argentine, was consulting with his nobles about an expedition into that realm; certain messengers from this earl being present, offered, on the part of Richard, the above-named cities, with all the castles which he had there captured, at the death of Dermot, king of Dublin, whose daughter and heiress he had married.” With this conciliatory offer, King Henry was so well pleased, that he restored to him all his lands, both in England and Normandy, and freely granted that he should enjoy all those in Ireland which he had received in dowery with his wife, constituting him at the same time constable or governor of that realm, and “thereupon passing thither, subdued it wholly without any considerable resistance.”

By the daughter of the said King of Dublin or Leinster, this last earl of his family, Richard Strongbow left an only child, Isabel, who remained in ward fourteen years to the king, and was then given in marriage to William Marshall, who thereupon became Earl of Pembroke, Lord of Striguil, or Chepstow, and took possession of Leinster, with all the inheritance of the said Strongbow; and being thus advanced to that honour, he bore the royal sceptre of gold, with the cross on the head of it, at the solemn coronation of King Richard I. The history of this family is given at full length in the Monasticon and Baronage of England, but it is much too diffuse for our purpose. William Marshall, who, by his marriage with Isabel, only child of Richard de Clare, came into possession of his estates and titles, was a great benefactor to the church; he built and endowed many religious houses both in England and Ireland; and having, by his last will and testament, constituted the abbot of St. Augustine’s at Bristol, and Henry Fitzgerald, his executors, he departed this life at Caversham, in the third of Henry II. Being thence carried to Reading, his body was received in solemn procession by the monks of the abbey, and placed in their choir, whilst mass was celebrated for him. It was then taken to Westminster, where the solemnity was again performed, and on Ascension-day it was consigned to the earth with the following epitaph:—

Sum qui Saturnum sibi sensit Hibernia: Solem
Anglia; Mercurium Normannia; Gallia Martem.

These complimentary lines, meant to record his virtues, are characteristic of the times when heathen mythology was so frequently called in to assist in the eulogy of some great champion or benefactor of the Christian church. He certainly appears to have merited all that could be said of him as a great mover and promoter of monastic fraternities—especially the Cistercians; and in the same strain, Matthew of Paris has recorded that this mighty earl was a severe tamer of the Irish, a great favourer of the English, achieved much in Normandy, and was an invincible soldier in France—“Miles strenuissimus, ac per orbem nominatissimus.” But of the five sons whom he left behind, with the fair and flattering prospect that his name and titles would descend through many generations, all died prematurely and without issue. This deplorable fact was much commented upon at the time:—“Some did attribute it to God’s especial judgment, by reason that, when the said William, first earl, was a great commander in Ireland, and, according to the practice of soldiers, exercised such cruelties of fire and sword as usually accompany that sort of life, he took away by violence two fair manors from a reverend bishop there, and possessed himself of them as the acquisition of war; and that the bishop, after frequent and earnest entreaties for their restitution, without any effect, did thereupon pronounce the sentence of excommunication against him for the fact, which he the earl contemned.” The bishop, having proceeded to London, made his grievous wrong known to the king, showing wherefore he had excommunicated the said earl. “Whereupon the king, then very pensive, desired the bishop that he should go to his grave and absolve him, and then he would satisfy his desire. Whereupon the bishop went, and the king with him, and spoke as followeth: ‘O William! who liest here buried, and shackled with the fetters of excommunication, if these lands which thou most injuriously didst take from my church, be restored with full satisfaction, either by the king or any of thy kindred or friends, I then absolve thee: otherwise, I ratify that sentence to this end, that, being wrapt up with thy sins, thou mayest remain condemned in hell.’”

The king, who was “much displeased at these his expressions, blamed him for his ghostly rigour;” but anxious to remove the curse from the illustrious defunct, he sent private messages to the heir and his brothers, advising them in a friendly manner to come to terms with the bishop, and thus “in mercy release their father’s soul.” But the brothers were obstinate; they would not restore even an acre of bog, nor a stock of timber; observing that, “as the old doting bishop hath pronounced the sentence unjustly, the curse will fall upon himself. For my part,” quoth the heir, “I will never lessen my patrimony descended to me by inheritance.” The king being still under tutelage, and fearing the resentment of so powerful a family, “forbore to displease them.” But the bishop, hearing thereof, was much grieved, taking more offence at their contumacy, than of the injury first done by their father; and going to the king, he said, “Sir, what I have spoken, I have spoken; and what I have written is not to be reversed: the sentence therefore must stand; the punishment of evil-doers is from God; and, therefore, the curse which the Psalmist hath written, shall come upon this earl, of whom I do thus complain. His name shall be rooted out in one generation, and his sons shall be deprived of the blessing—increase and multiply. Some of them shall die a miserable death, and their inheritance shall be scattered. And this, O king, thou shalt behold in thine own lifetime, yea, in thy flourishing youth.”

Having spoken “thus much in the bitterness of his spirit, the bishop departed thence, leaving the defunct earl enthralled with that curse. Whereupon it happened that, in a few years after, all his sons died without issue.”

William, his successor, who, “in his father’s lifetime, had taken part with the barons, then in arms against the king, was one of those betwixt whom and the King those covenants were made, whereby the government of the realm was placed in xxv. of them, and the city of London thereupon put into their hands. Yea, so great a confidant was he of that rebellious pack, that they constituted him to be one of those xxv., for which respect amongst them he underwent the sentence of excommunication by the Pope. But upon the death of King John, which happened soon after, his noble father reduced him to obedience; so that he became loyal to King Henry the Third, and thereupon had a grant of the lands of Saier de Quinci, Earl of Winchester, and David, Earl of Huntingdon, two of those great rebels, for his support in the king’s service.”

A few years after this, “whilst he, the said William Marshall, was in Ireland, Leoline, Prince of Wales, took two of his castles; and having cut off the heads of those whom he found therein, manned them with his own soldiers. But when tidings thereof came to him, he soon returned into Wales; and having, with a great power, won them again, took the like revenge upon the Welsh: and thinking this not enough, he invaded the lands of Leoline, and wasted them with fire and sword. Whereupon Leoline advanced towards him with all his strength, but to little purpose; for, encountering him in battle, the Marshall totally routed his whole army, of which to the number of nine thousand were slain and taken.” This earl married Eleanor, daughter of King John; and dying at Kilkenny, in 1231, was there buried in the choir of the Mendicant Friars.

Richard, his brother and successor, being irritated by the violent conduct of the king and his ministry, formed an alliance with Llewellyn ap Jowarth, Prince of Wales, and in 1233 defeated the king’s army at Grosmont; but with dutiful respect for his sovereign, he fell back with the Cambrian army before sunrise, to allow his Majesty’s retreat from the Castle of Gloucester. Henry, not appreciating the generous conduct of his reluctant foe, resisted this attack; and on the return of the Lord Marshall to his estates in Ireland, he was treacherously wounded to death at Kildare, and there buried by the side of his brother William, whom he had survived only three years.

Gilbert, the third son, married a daughter of Alexander, King of Scotland, and died in 1242.

Walter Marshall, the fourth son, died at Goodrich Castle, in December, 1245. And—

Anselm, the fifth and last son of this doomed family, died like his brothers, childless, in the same month of the same year, in the Castle of Striguil or Chepstow, and was interred with his brother in Tinterne Abbey.

Of their five sisters, Eve, the youngest, married “William de Braliuse or Braose, of whose family more hereafter.

The male line in him having thus failed, Maude, their surviving sister, and heiress to the family possessions, was espoused to Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk. From this alliance sprang two sons, Hugh and Roger, or Rudulfus. The younger of whom, Roger, in right of his mother, was installed lord-marshal of the kingdom, and granted a charter to Tinterne Abbey, confirming those granted by the Clares and Marshalls, and adding large possessions to the brotherhood. Maude, on the death of her husband, Hugh Bigod, married John de Warren, Earl of Surrey; and departing this life, anno 1248, was buried in the Abbey of Tinterne; when her four sons—two by each marriage—carried her body into the choir. To prosecute the descent farther, would far exceed our limits; but readers who may feel curious to trace the genealogy of the founders, will find ample details in the Baronage, the Monasticon, and old chronicles.

Of Earl Roger it is told, that, being “openly reproached by the king as a traitor, he replied with a stern countenance that he lied; and that he, Bigod, never was, nor would be a traitor;” adding, “if you do nothing but what the law warranteth, you can do me no harm.” “Yes,” quoth the king, “I can thrash your corn and sell it, and so humble you.” “If you do so,” replied Bigod, “I will send you back the heads of your thrashers.”

The Hospitium, or guest-chamber, was generally a large room with columns, like the body of a church, and called palatium—the original meaning of which was a place of short residence. If a visitor came before dinner to the refectory, notice was given to the refectioner; if he was too late to dine with the convent, he staid in the locutorium, or parlour, until the refectory was swept, and then was introduced. The hosteler provided all things fit for Mass for the visitors; and if he was prevented, any one asked by him sang the mass and hours to them, for they had divine service as well as the convent. The visitors had meat and drink at solicitation, and the hosteler was to fetch the viands according to the rank of the person; all which, however, was accompanied with the appendage of a “soiled table cloth, very indifferent wine, grease in the salt, and a clownish servant.” The hospitaler could not introduce them to the collation before the end of the first verse. When this was over, he lighted his lantern with which the visitors waited before the Chapter door. He then introduced them into the parlour, after which they had refection, and Complin was sung to them. When the visitors wished to depart before daybreak, or at that time, the hosteler took the keys of the parlour from the Prior’s bed; but on Sundays, before procession, no one could receive the benediction, or ceremony of dismission.

Persons of rank were received with processions and high honours. One of the great bells was struck three times, to give the monks notice of assembling in the church to robe themselves. Visitors were allowed to make a stay of two days and two nights, and on the third day, after dinner, they were to depart. If by accident a guest could not then go, the hosteler signified his request to the Abbot, or Prior, for a longer stay. If in health, he was to be present at Matins, and follow the convent in everything, unless he had leave to the contrary. Women were to be received who came with an honourable suite. Particular attention was paid to the parents of monks, for whom necessaries and food were to be provided whenever they came to see their children—especially on the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, wheresoever they took refection, in the town or house; and they were to be honourably received on the Vigil.

The Refectory, as described by monastic writers, was a large hall wainscoted on the north and south sides, and in the west and nether parts was a long bench of stone, in mason-work, from the cellar-door to the pantry, or cove-door. It had a dresser in it: above the wainscot was a large picture of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and St. John; but in most places—and here perhaps—was the Cross or Crucifixion, to which, on entering the Fratry with washed hands, the monks made obeisance with their faces to the east. Within the door on the left was an Almery—where stood the grace-cup (the classical αγαθου δαιμονος), out of which the monks, after grace every day, drank round the table—and another large one on the right, with smaller within, where stood the mazers, of which each monk had his peculiar one, with a ewer and basin, which served the Sub-prior to wash his hands in at the table, of which he sat as chief. At the west end was a loft above the cellar, ascended by stairs with an iron railing, where the convent and monks dined together, the Sub-prior sitting at the upper end of the table. At the south end of the high table, within a glass window-frame, was an iron desk, ascended by stone steps, with an iron rail, where lay a Bible, out of which one of the novices read a part in Latin during dinner. The readers at the table were to give ear to the Prior in case of error; and if they did not understand his correction, they were to begin the verse again, even repeatedly, until they comprehended the Prior’s meaning. When the reader had finished, the master of the novices rang a silver bell hanging over his head, to call one of them to come to the high table to say grace; a single stroke of this bell (skilla), signified the conclusion of the lecture or the meal.

Hospitality, which the monastic rule enjoined upon all its professors, was faithfully practised by the Cistercians. The Refectory, as well as the Hospitium, or Guest Hall, of this Abbey, appears to have been an elegant and capacious chamber, with a vaulted stone roof supported on Gothic pillars, the massive bases of which still remain. But as the buildings were long thrown open as a stone quarry, for the use of the public, the squared and sculptured materials with which they were built and adorned, were employed for ages in constructing those shapeless hovels which now cluster, as if in mockery, around the sacred pile, and show to what base uses in this changing world, even the masterpieces of art may be applied.

The Dole.—An opening in the wall of the refectory westward, shows the place where the monk appointed to that duty, administered to the poor their daily portion of bread and beer. To that door the hungry and the weary never applied in vain—

Pilgrim, whosoe’er thou art,
Worn with travel, faint with fear,
Halt, or blind, or sick of heart,
Bread and welcome wait thee here.

At the east end of the Refectory was “a neat table, with a screen of wainscot over it, for the master of the novices, the elects, and novices, to dine and sup at: two windows opened into the refectory from the great kitchen, one large for principal days, the other smaller for ordinary days; and through these the dishes were served. Over against the door in the cloister was a conduit or lavatory, for the monks to wash their hands and faces, of a round form, covered with lead, and all marble, excepting the outer wall, without which they might walk about the Tower. After the monks had waited a while on the Abbot, they sat down at two other tables, placed at the sides of the refectory, and had their service brought in by the novices, who, when the monks had dined, sat down to their own dinner. Fires in the refectory were ordered from All-hallows Day to Good-Friday, and the wood was found by the cellarer. Pinafores or super-tunics, to protect the clothes at dinner, are mentioned by Lynwood, and occur in foreign consuetudinals. Giraldus Cambrensis, on dining with the Prior of Canterbury, “noted sixteen dishes, besides intromels,” or entremets; “a superfluous use of signs, much sending of dishes from the Prior to the attending monks, and from them to the lower tables;” with “much ridiculous gesticulation in returning thanks, with much whispering, loose, idle, and licentious discourse;” herbs brought in but not tasted; numerous kinds of fish, roasted, boiled, stuffed, fried, eggs, dishes exquisitely cooked with spices; salted meats to provoke appetite; wines of various kinds; pimento made of wine, honey, and spices; with claret, mead, and other beverages. Respecting these, it was not unusual, says Barnard, to see brought a vessel half full to try the quality and flavour of the wine; and that, after proof thereof, the monks decided in favour of the strongest. Superior dinners were always given on the feasts of the Apostles; but it was not lawful, it seems, to eat the flesh of any animal nourished on the earth, because this had been cursed by God; but the curse not extending to air and water, birds were permitted, as created of the same element as fish. Hence the prohibition of quadrupeds; but as it was found

impossible for inland monasteries to have fish enough, to eat flesh became unavoidable. However, to the great rule all their articles of food bore relation; namely, bread, beer, soup, beans for soup, all Lent; oats for gruel, on Thursdays and Saturdays, in that season; flour for pottage, every day in the same season; fried dishes, wastels, or fine bread for dinner and supper, on certain feasts; formictæ, or fine flour cakes, in Advent, Christmas, against Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and certain feasts; ‘fat things,’ which appear to have been bacon, were frequent with the Præmonstratenses; black beans and salt, with the Clugniacks; general bad fare with the Cistercians. In certain solemnities, we are told the convent was in the habit of retiring with the Abbot, leaving a few in the refectory, in order to eat meat elsewhere; and that they frequently dined in ‘extra-cloister’ apartments, where “they used to invite women (devout nuns, perhaps) to talk, eat, and drink with them.”

Diet was strictly prescribed; variety of viands was forbidden; flesh was allowed only to the sick or invalids; fish, eggs, milk, butter, and cheese, were not to be used on common days, but only on special occasions, as dainties or “pittances.” None but their guests and the sick were allowed any other than brown bread; they might use the common herbs of the country; but pepper and other spices were forbidden.

These observations, quoted from various authorities, apply to the monastic Orders generally, among whom the regulations of the refectory appear to have been nearly the same; but that order to which the Abbey of Tinterne belonged, professed the greatest abstinence, mortified diet, and abhorrence of all luxuries. To the devout taste of St. Bernard, the most rigid rules were the most agreeable; and hence he became a Cistercian, the strictest of the monastic orders in France. At that time they were but few in number, for, owing to their excessive austerities, men were discouraged from joining them. Bernard, however, by his superior genius, his eminent piety, and his ardent zeal, gave to this Order a permanent lustre and celebrity. At the age of twenty-three, with more than thirty companions, he entered into the monastery, and was afterwards appointed Abbot of Clairval. To those noviciates who desired admission, he used to say—“If ye hasten to those which are within, dismiss your bodies which ye brought from the world; let the spirit alone enter here; the flesh profiteth nothing.” “Yet, amidst all these disagreeable austerities,” says his biographer, “the soul of Bernard was inwardly taught of God; and as he grew in the divine life, he learned to correct the harshness and asperities of his sentiments.”

The Cistercian habit, as shown in the preceding woodcut, was a white robe in the nature of a cassock, with a black scapular and hood. Their garment was girt with a black girdle of wool; in the choir, they had over it a white cowl, and over that a hood, with a rochet hanging down, bound before to the waist, in a point behind to the calf of the leg. When they went abroad, they wore a cowl and a great hood, all black, which was also the choir habit.

The Lay Brothers of this Order were clad in a dark colour; their scapular hung down about a foot in length before, and was rounded at the bottom. Their hood was like that which the priests wore over their cowl, excepting the difference of the colour. In the choir they wore a cloak or mantle, reaching to the ground, and of the same colour as the habit.

The Novices, who were clerks, wore the same habit in the church, but it was all white; their scapular was not of the same length in all places, for sometimes it reached only half-way down the thigh, in others to the midleg, or even to the heels.

The sumptuary regulations extended even to the ornaments of their churches, and the vestments of the ministers. The altar cloth, the alb, and the service, were to be of plain linen; the stole and maniple, which were at first of cloth, were allowed afterwards to be of silk. Palls, capes, dalmatics, and tunics, were forbidden. The crosses were to be of wood, painted; and it was forbidden to have them made of carved work, or of silver or gold. The cruets for the service of the altar, were not to be of gold or silver: the chalice and fistula might be of silver gilt; the candlesticks were to be iron, and the censers of iron or copper. Pictures or painted glass were not to be allowed in their churches; which in all monasteries of this order were dedicated to God, under the invocation of the Virgin Mary.

Cistercians, according to the reformed rule, were obliged to perform their devotions together seven times every twenty-four hours. The Nocturnal, the first of these services, was performed at two o’clock in the morning; two Matins, or Prime, commenced at six o’clock; Tierce, at nine o’clock; the Sexte, at twelve o’clock; the None, at three in the afternoon; Vespers, at six; and the Compline, at seven o’clock in the evening. As the monks retired to bed at eight, they had six hours to sleep before the Nocturnal began; and if they again betook themselves to rest, after that service, it was not considered any fault or infringement of the rule; but after matins, they were not permitted to have the same indulgence. At the first stroke of the convent-bell for prayers, they were to suspend all matters of business in which they might happen to be engaged at the moment; and those who copied books, or were employed in any kind of writing—even if they had begun a text letter—were not allowed to finish it. They were to fast every day in Lent, till six o’clock in the evening. During meals, as already mentioned in these pages, the Scriptures were read to them by one of the brethren, who performed this and other offices in weekly rotation. After the Compline, all conversation was prohibited, and they silently retired to rest. The dormitory was a long barrack-like room, not divided into separate cells, where each monk had his own bed furnished with a mat, blanket, coverlet, and a pillow which was not to exceed a foot and a half in length. When any of the fraternity went abroad, they always walked in couples, so that each might be a check upon the other, and incite him to edifying thoughts.

At a General Chapter of the Cistercian Order, held in the year 1134, it was resolved that the rules of St. Benedict regarding diet, clothing, morals, and divine service, should continue to be strictly observed; and to these were added many new regulations for the suppression of luxury. It was directed that their monasteries, as already observed, should be founded in the most retired and solitary places; that the members of the Order should provide the necessaries of life by the labour of their hands. They were allowed, however, to possess lands, rivers, woods, vineyards, and meadows; with sheep, oxen, horses, and other domestic animals; but no deer nor bears, nor other animals kept merely for pleasure. They were forbidden to possess tithes, the advowsons or revenues of churches, dues of ovens or mills, bond-servants, or even rents of lands. The reason for these restrictions was, that they might not live by the labour of others; yet, upon the pretext of enabling the monks to live in greater retirement and abstraction from the world, they were allowed to admit into their community a certain number of lay brothers, called converts, whose office consisted in managing the secular business of the Convent, including the cultivation of their lands, in which they were permitted to employ hired servants. These lay brethren did not take the monastic vow; but in every other respect they were treated exactly like the professed monks.

With regard to the extension of their order, no convent was allowed to send forth a colony, unless the community consisted of at least sixty monks, and held a license, both from the general chapter, and from the archbishop, or bishop. Each monastery, as we have said, was to consist of at least twelve monks and their superiors; and before they could be brought to their new residence, the buildings required for their immediate accommodation were to be provided; namely, an oratory, a dormitory, a stranger’s cell, and a porter’s lodge. The books required for divine service, were also to be got ready. The superior of the new establishment was bound to pay a visit to the parent monastery once a year; and the Abbots of all the monasteries of the Cistercian order, were obliged to attend the General Chapter held annually at Cisteaux, those only excepted, who were excused by sickness or distance. Abbots in Scotland, Ireland, and Sicily, were obliged to be present only every fourth year. In some cases it was even allowed to send delegates.

Professions.—No person desirous of becoming a monk was suffered to enter upon his noviciate under fifteen years of age. The candidate having made his petition to be admitted, was, after four days, brought before the abbot, and a select number of the monks in the Chapter-house, where he threw himself down with his face to the ground. Being asked by the Abbot what he desired, he replied,—“The mercy of God and yours.” Upon this the Abbot made him stand up, and explained to him the strictness of the rules, and the self-denial required in keeping them; after which, he asked him if he was willing to submit to the restraint they imposed. Upon his replying in the affirmative, the Abbot admonished him, and when he concluded with these words,—“May God finish the good work which he hath begun in thee;” all who were present said, Amen! and then the candidate bowed, and retired to the guest-chamber.

A similar ceremony was observed when he was again introduced into the Chapter-house next day, after having read the rules of the Order. On the third day, he was admitted into the cell of the novices, and began the year of his probation; during which he was prepared and instructed for taking the vows, by a person called the Master of the Novices, who was usually one of the oldest and most learned of the monks. At the conclusion of the twelvemonth’s probation, when it was supposed he had had a sufficient trial of their discipline and manner of life, he was again formally interrogated; and if he persisted in his request, he was allowed to make his profession, and become a regular member of the Order. The following is a copy of the formulary used in English monasteries on such occasions:—

“The first petycion in the Collogium: ‘Syr, I besyche yow and alle the Convent for the luffe of God, our Ladye Sanct Marye, Sanct John of Baptiste, and alle the hoyle cowrte of hevyne, that ye wolde resave me to lyve and dye here emongs yow, in the state of a monke, a prebendarye and servant unto alle, to the honour of God, solace to the companye, prouffet to the place, and helth unto my sawle.’

“The answer unto the examinacyon: ‘Syr, I tryste through the helpe of God, and your good prayers, to keep alle these thyngs ye have now heyr rehersede.’

“The first petycion before the profession: ‘Syr, I have beyn heyr now this twellmonth nere hand, and lovyde be God, me lykes ryght well both the ordour and the companye. Whereupon I besyche yow, and all the companye, for the luffe of God, our Ladye Sanct Marye, Sanct John of Baptiste, and alle the hoyle companye of hevyn, that ye will resave me unto my profession, at my twellmonth day, according to my petycion which I made when I was first resaved heyr emongs yow.’”

The Cistercians, much to their honour, took considerable pains to cultivate and promote learning. The transcribing of books was one of the principal occupations in all their monasteries. A certain number of the brotherhood were constantly employed in the Scriptorium, in making copies of the most esteemed works, to furnish and augment the common library. None, however, were permitted to write new books, without first obtaining a license to that effect from the General Chapter. In the principal monasteries a chronicle was kept, in which the monks recorded, in Latin, the most remarkable events, both of general and local interest, that occurred within their knowledge. The chronicle of Tinterne Abbey, as partly transcribed in the Monasticon, contains copies of those deeds and charters, by which former rights and privileges were confirmed, and new benefactions added; but it includes no chronicle of passing events, public or private.

Many and great were the privileges, franchises, and immunities granted to this Order in general, by sundry kings and pontiffs; and on some particular houses were conferred very special favours. The brothers of the order were exempted from appearing in any court, or at the trial of any cause whatever, if the distance from the monastery exceeded two days’ journey. They were exempted from tithes; the ordinary could not call upon, nor punish them for any crime; neither could their houses be visited by any one, except their own abbot. Their benefactors, those who frequented their mills [molendini], as well as their friends and servants, were all exempted from the ban of excommunication. Boniface XI. made an effort to relieve them still farther, by exempting them from the payment of tithes for their lands, though let out to others; but this was rejected by King Henry IV., who would not permit the bull for that purpose to be executed. The monks of Tinterne, in common with their brethren of that order, enjoyed all the privileges and immunities here named. They were great proficients in the science of agriculture; and from the skill manifested in the cultivation of the abbey lands, and in those occupied by their tenants, produced the happiest effects on that important branch of rural economy.

The Cloister, which is so often described in poetry as the abode of religious harmony, was nevertheless subject, at times, to all those unruly passions which in the world engender strife amongst brethren, and destroy the quiet of secular life. Every monastery contained within its own walls, those elements of malice and dissension, which it required no common energy on the part of the abbot to regulate and subdue. Perverse men, clothed in the robe of meekness, were a constant source of trial to those patterns of monastic discipline, who laboured to correct and reform them. Persecution within the cloister existed occasionally under two forms: men of eminent sanctity suffered it from degenerate brethren, sometimes, simply on account of their superior justice; and at others, in consequence of their endeavours to reform them. Sometimes when the monastery fell under the dominion of an evil superior, the monks who persevered in sanctity fled from his persecution.

The character of a good Cistercian monk, contrasted with one of an opposite disposition, is thus drawn:—It happened that the pious Gobert, a monk of Villars, having to undertake a journey for the arrangement of certain affairs, set out accompanied by one of the brothers named Peter. Arriving late in the evening at a town where they were to pass the night, they were fatigued and exhausted with the labour and heat of the day; and Peter, causing a table to be spread, drew from the bag he carried, abundant provisions, and then ordered cups to be served, and many things made ready for their repast. To the pious Gobert, all this seemed to be more than necessary, more than was consistent with perfect moderation, and his conscience silently accused him of yielding too readily to the force of temptation. But after both had supped, he did not venture to give utterance to the compunctious feelings that were then passing in his mind. Next morning, however, as they were again prosecuting their journey through umbrageous lanes, he began meekly and humbly to disclose his thoughts; expressing his fears that the expense of the previous day had exceeded their wants; adding, that the patrimony of Christ ought not to be spent in superfluities, but given to the poor; that beneficed clerks are only dispensers of the Church, not lords of its substance; that when, in the words of St. Ambrose, we assist the poor, we give nothing of our own, but only that which the church appoints us to dispense; and, therefore, that ecclesiastical goods belong not to clerks, but to the poor.

Saying these and other things that pressed heavily on his mind, Gobert lamented that he should have squandered the money which did not belong to him. But brother Peter did not receive this reproof with a humble mind; on the contrary, he became so angry that he did not answer him a word. Thus they rode on for nearly three hours, Peter all the while preserving a sullen and painful silence, which the holy Gobert observing, he tried to soothe and turn away his displeasure, by addressing him in terms of mild and brotherly affection. At last, seeing that he could make no impression upon him, he said, “My brother, it is time for us to discharge the service of hours to our Creator!” Whereupon, according to the custom of the Cistercians, they dismounted and knelt down to begin the office. In this posture of devotion, while brother Peter was prostrate on the earth, Gobert, with clasped hands turned towards him, and bursting into tears, humbly implored his forgiveness for having, by words of admonition and seeming reproof, moved his resentment. But as this did not appear to soften the monk’s obdurate heart, he continued his entreaties, and declared that he would not rise from his knees until he had forgiven him. At last, touched and overcome by so much Christian humility, brother Peter relented; and, taking Gobert by the hand, with feelings of mingled shame and contrition, raised him up; and having freely forgiven him, and received his forgiveness, they went on their way rejoicing.

Thus far the chronicle, which the reader will find quoted in the Ages of Faith. “But,” says the learned author, “it was chiefly as reformers of their respective communities, that the holy men of monastic life suffered persecution.” In estimating the fortitude of those who laboured in this vineyard, it is to be observed, that specious arguments were never wanting to excuse the evil for which they sought a remedy. The monks of St. Benedict, according to Orderic Vitalis, who resisted the reform introduced by the Abbot Robert, defended themselves on this ground, urging that the different circumstances of the times required a life different from that of the hermits of Egypt. “God forbid,” said they, “that valiant knights, that subtile philosophers, and eloquent doctors, merely because they have renounced the world, should be obliged as mean slaves to occupy themselves in ignoble works. On these occasions, however, the real source of hostility was seldom avowed. Much was advanced in the time of St. Bernard, in respect to the colour of habits; but St. Peter the Venerable disengaged the question from its adventitious appendages: “Perhaps,” said he, writing to St. Bernard, “there is another and a deeper cause for this dissension between the Clugniacs and the Cistercians—between the ancient and the modern communities. We are restorers of piety that was grown cold; we are distinguished from others in manners, as well as in habits and customs. This is the secret and urgent cause of the breach of charity and of tongues, that are sharpened like swords against us. And oh, how much to be deplored, if the abstinence, the purity of a whole life; if invincible obedience, if unbroken fasts, if perpetual vigils, if such a yoke of discipline, if so many palms of patience, if so many labours—not so much of an earthly, as of a celestial life—should be dissipated by one hiss of the serpent: how much to be deplored, if the old dragon should thus, in an instant, with one breath, dissipate all your treasures collected by the grace of God, and leave you empty in the sight of the Supreme Judge!”

Of the miraculous legends connected with these institutions, the following, taken from the annals of a sister abbey, may serve as a specimen:—One evening, three strangers knocked at the abbey gate, and being admitted to lodge there for the night, were immediately conducted into the church, as the rule of St. Benedict directs; and having there finished their devotions, they were led back to the Guest Chamber, and welcomed in by brother Walter. Thence, as soon as the ceremony of washing their feet was over, they were summoned to the Refectory; but scarcely had they taken their seats, when it was discovered that one of the strangers was missing, and his chair empty. “Where,” said the hospitaller, addressing the other two; “where is your companion?” “Companion!” said the strangers, greatly surprised at the question; “thy servants had no companion.” “Nay,” quoth the friar, “say not so, I pray you; for ’tis but this instant that I placed three at table, and he who sat betwixt you has left his chair empty.” “Nay, we assure thee,” rejoined the strangers, “that no third person entered with us, neither have we journeyed hither with any man; but, being overtaken by night, we came along to the abbey gate, nor have we spoken to any man, save only thyself.” Strong in his own conviction, friar Walter was immovable; and calling the porter and another monk to his assistance, the fact of a third person having entered was confirmed by their united testimony. Hereupon the strangers could only repeat what they had already asserted; but to give it more solemnity, they called St. Benedict himself to witness the truth of their words. All was amazement; diligent search was made, but no foot had repassed the gate, nor was any stranger to be found in church or cloisters; so the two visitors, being spared all further question, were hospitably entertained for the night, and dismissed with the usual benediction. The next night, however, the hospitaller had a vision in his sleep: a personage of angelic features appeared to him; and with a voice like that of celestial music, said, “Walter, dost thou know me? I am the stranger whose sudden disappearance last night so greatly moved the warder. Know then, that by the good pleasure of heaven I am appointed to watch over this Monastery; to attend the outgoing and the incoming of every holy brother; and that my present errand is to certify that the alms and oblations of this community, more especially of your Abbot, have ascended in sweet memorial to heaven, and are accepted.” Again—

Waltheof, an abbot of whom we read in the Cistercian Annals, had many severe trials to undergo, not only with refractory monks, but with the arch-fiend himself, who appeared to have delegated the management of his other affairs to inferior powers of darkness, in order that he himself might direct his whole force and strategy against the uncompromising Waltheof. But the abbot, aware of all these machinations, never lost an inch of ground; every fresh rencontre was to him a fresh triumph; for knowing the strength and skill of the enemy, he took up the shield of faith, and, cased in this armour of proof, met his spiritual foe with a look of contempt and defiance. To report their numerous conflicts, would be to recapitulate the days of the life of Waltheof—for it was literally a warfare. At length, one evening after Compline—when all the monks had retired to the dormitory—the abbot continued lingering in the church; for, feeling a weight at heart, he wished to unburden his grief in solitary prayer and meditation. At such moments, it is well known, the powers of darkness are always most active—most on the alert; and Waltheof no sooner looked down the left aisle, than he perceived the arch-fiend moving stealthily from behind a pillar. In this instance he had assumed the habit of a monk; but as he cast no shadow behind him, and caused no sound as he shuffled along the tesselated floor, the abbot soon recognised his old customer, and calmly waited for him at the foot of the altar. Seeing himself thus baffled, the fiend suddenly threw aside his cowl, and assumed the terrific form of a soldier, armed at all points, and of such gigantic proportions, that in a moment every pillar in the nave seemed to have dwindled into insignificance. His grand object, as the abbot foresaw, was to inspire him with sudden terror, and thus drive him from his sanctuary; but the attempt was vain. He then brandished a huge spear, and belching forth streams of blue fire as he approached, made a feint, as if he would have hurled the weapon at his head. But the abbot, continuing to make the sign of the cross, kept the great adversary of mankind at bay; yet still finding that he did not quit the sacred pile, he armed himself with the pix which contained the sacred wafer; and then advancing, exclaimed, “Behold, thou wicked soldier, thou base hireling! here is thy judge, who shall quickly send thee to the bottomless pit! Wait for him if thou darest!” What need of words; at this sight the foul fiend suddenly collapsed in all his terrific proportions, and vanished in a cloud of smoke.

These two examples may suffice to give the reader some idea of the numerous legends with which the monastic annals abound: and, in addition to what has been already said of the internal administration of this order, we shall, from time to time, introduce other particulars, drawn from various sources, but chiefly from their own chronicles.

Environs.—It would be difficult to name a locality that, within so small a compass, contains so many richly-varied landscapes, as the Vale of Tinterne. In whatever direction we move, the eye is arrested by new features, new combinations of the graceful and picturesque. A saunter along the river, where it forms a crescent between the abbey and the village, will gratify every lover of the picturesque, and bring before him the beauty and freshness of nature, in striking contrast with the sublime but faded monuments of art. The best hour for enjoying this scene is about sunset; and, on returning, the tourist may ascend the Chapel Hill, and thence, in a more extended panorama, look down upon what would have furnished a rich subject for the pencil of Claude. The river, with its fantastic windings, here clamorous among shallows—there gliding away with the rapid but inaudible march of time—masses of brown rock overhanging the pass, gleaming in confused blocks through the trees that clamber up their

steep sides, or crown their pinnacles with masses of verdure; while here and there a cottage, with its whitewashed walls, gives new life and interest to the scene.

How oft the pilgrim, lingering here,
Beneath that yew’s sepulchral shade,
Hath dropt the penitential tear,
And, sighing to himself, hath said—
There’s solace here for all my woe,
St. Mary’s altar gleams below;
And blessèd be the hand divine,
That leads the pilgrim to her shrine.

But the point from which the Abbey of Tinterne is seen to most advantage, is that chosen by Mr. Bartlett in the illustration opposite. The way to the ‘Devil’s Pulpit,’ as it is called, runs along the left bank of the Wye, and, in its winding course, presents many little glimpses of the vale and river, that, like small cabinet-pictures, serve as a gradual introduction to the splendid panorama of nature—the features of which are here so faithfully illustrated by the pencil, as to render description superfluous.

The river, rolling far below—
Here swift as time, there still and slow;
O’ershadowed here with arching bowers,
There sweetly fringed with summer flowers;
The Vale—where, through its orchard trees,
The curling vapour meets the breeze,
And, vast and venerably grand,
The Abbey’s mouldering arches stand,—
All these a wondrous scene impart,
To charm the eye and melt the heart;
The scroll of ages to unfold,
And paint the wondrous men of old.

Of this lofty and romantic scene Mr. Thomas writes:—“Who shall describe the glories of this splendid view? Who cannot but involuntarily think of the second scene in the Temptation, when the prince of the power of the air took the Prince of peace into an exceeding high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, in a moment of time? But let no satanic thought break in upon the holy influence which the soul delights to cherish in this lovely spot! It seems as though imagination, that potent enchantress of the mind, had transmitted us to some pinnacled mountain to show us the peace, the beauty, and permanence of the works of God, in vivid contrast with the feeble, the transitory, the desolated works of man—the ruined abbey encircled by the everlasting hills. This comprehensive panorama contains the most pleasing combination of nature and art, mountain and meadow, water and wood. There flows the glassy Wye, coiled like a serpent, and either buried in woods, or gliding peacefully through meadows spangled with fleecy flocks. Its buoyant bosom bears a little bark freighted with the gay partizans of pleasure, whose scarlet banner is playing with the summer’s breeze. The distant sounds of a solitary flute harmonize with the busy hum of bees, and the song of some half-secluded bird. Again, we hear the hoarser cry of the mariner, and the metallic voice of an industrious anvil. The unpretending church of Tinterne, in its unspotted whiteness, contrasts with its aged companion—a sombre yew, which, like an ample pall, is overshadowing the clustered monuments of death.”

Lancaut cliffs, which contribute a striking feature to this part of the scenery, are rendered still more interesting by the following tradition:—During the calamitous war, so often referred to in these pages, Sir John Winter was eminently distinguished by his devotion to the royal cause. The personal risks and pecuniary sacrifices to which he was daily exposed, only served to give more warmth to his loyalty. When the Parliament sent their first troops to the banks of the Wye, Winter converted his house at Sidney into a fortress; and so promptly and skilfully was this accomplished, that it was rendered not merely inaccessible, but so well provisioned and fortified as to be able to stand a siege. In this, perhaps, there was some little exaggeration; for the garrison, then at Gloucester, and acting under the direction of skilful and determined leaders, were not likely to have been foiled, had they made any such attempt. Their grand object was Chepstow Castle; and if that fortress was ultimately found to be untenable, the defence of a private fortalice must have been a rash and hopeless attempt. It proves, nevertheless, that his loyalty admitted of no fear, and was prepared for every extremity. Acting under the command of Lord Herbert—whose operations will be detailed in our account of Raglan—Winter, by his rapid movements, frequently alarmed the troops under General Massey. But after the siege of Gloucester was raised by the Earl of Essex, the king’s interest in that part of the country was much impaired; and the Parliamentary forces continuing to advance, Sir John Winter was compelled by urgent duties to abandon his own residence, and retire across the frontier. In his retreat, however, through the forest of Tudenham, Cromwell’s dragoons were immediately on his traces; escape was seemingly impossible—he was completely hemmed in by the enemy on one hand, and the Wye on the other; and though well mounted, he soon perceived that his pursuers were sensibly gaining upon him. Determined that they should never boast of having taken him prisoner, he turned his horse’s head suddenly towards the rocks, which now bear his name, and by means, he knew not how, quickly disappeared and descended the cliffs in safety. At the base of these rolled the Wye, then in flood tide; but plunging into the river, his gallant steed carried him safely to the opposite bank, where he was soon joined by a party of royalists, and congratulated upon his miraculous escape. The point at which he descended the rocks is still called Winter’s leap. Of his escape, by scrambling down the cliff, there is no doubt; but to represent it as the result of a leap on horseback, would be to assume the peculiar privilege of “Geoffrey of Monmouth.”

After this perilous feat, the hardy royalist returned to his house at Sidney; but finding it, on closer inspection, to be quite untenable, he had it demolished, and then, joining the king’s forces, took part in the battle of Naseby, which gave a finishing blow to the king’s affairs.

A walk from the Abbey to the village of Tinterne Parva, will never fail to interest the stranger; in this short distance, many new features and new combinations of scenery crowd upon the view, and carry the mind back to remote times, when the cloister bell was the only sound that broke in upon the stillness of the scene. Sweeping round the outer ring of the crescent, within which the river flows in a deep smooth channel, the road is overhung by masses of rock, shaded by trees, and skirted by cottages, which, from the situations they occupy, rather than any taste or merit in their construction, present a picturesque appearance. As we advance, the scene is continually changing: the old abbey walls, beautiful from whatever point they are contemplated, assume a comparatively new aspect from the western approach, particularly about sunset, when the whole building appears as if bathed in a flood of yellow light. To enjoy the scenery of the place under such circumstances, is worth a long day’s pilgrimage. The river, which here doubles upon itself, so as to take the form of a horse shoe, is of a depth navigable for small craft; and though here and there fretted by rocks, the surface, as we passed, was smooth and limpid; through which, as in a mirror, the picturesque scenery on its banks appeared in distinct and beautiful reflexion.

Near to the Cross, the ancient market-place of the village, the stranger is shown a ruined edifice, partly covered with ivy, and bearing the evidence of having suffered less from time than violence. This is supposed to have been the villa, or extra-cloister residence of the abbots of Tinterne, to which at certain seasons they could retire from the exercise of their public functions, and enjoy the privileges of social life—the society and conversation of friends and strangers, without the forms and austerities of the cloister. Of this building, nothing but a few shapeless walls is left; but from the size and structure of the windows, square-headed and divided by transoms, it seems probable that the house is not earlier than the reign of Elizabeth. Mr. Thomas thinks, that from its Tudor-Gothic style, it was probably built by the abbot and some of the brotherhood, as a retreat about the period when the original foundation was dissolved. During the war which devastated the frontier in 1645-6, it was taken and ransacked by the soldiers of the Commonwealth. Since that period it has often changed its owners; and at one time, we are told, though on rather uncertain ground, it was the residence of the family of Fielding the novelist—

Whose name
Still draws the pilgrim to its shattered frame,
And bids him linger ’neath its shadow.

The parish church of Tinterne Parva is a small but very ancient building, irregularly divided into porch, nave, and chancel. Its erection, according to the historian of the abbey, was anterior to the foundation of the monastery itself; and by some writers it is even considered to have been the parent church. The evidences of its great antiquity may be found in the building itself; and a practised eye will detect indications of a British origin, in certain niches or circular arched windows in the massive walls of the western side. The porch, which is chaste and in good preservation, is a subsequent erection, and yet of a remote age. The chancel, which “most uncouthly joins the nave,” is the latest portion of the fabric. There are fragments of some antique monuments scattered about the floor—memorials of ecclesiastics—which, the writer sarcastically observes, “have been judiciously cut up, and squared, to mend the pavement!” By this sage arrangement, the parochial economy has been brought into the sharpest practice; and although it has evinced no special veneration for the sainted dead, or the hallowed relics of antiquity, yet “the ruinous expense of hauling fresh slabs from the quarry, on the opposite side of the way, has been most considerately spared.” Moreover, he adds, “the pipe of the stove within, is picturesquely thrust through the only Gothic window remaining in the nave!”

As if its smoke, though dark and somewhat denser,
Were meant to represent the ancient Censer,
That once, with daily sacrifice, perfumed
The ground where saints and heroes lay inhumed.

By the churchyard stile, as Mr. Thomas happily describes it, “and beneath the dark mantling boughs of the yew-tree, a scene of exquisite sweetness steals upon the eye. The beautiful meadows beyond are skirted by a ridge of lofty woods, with the gentle Wye flowing like a liquid mirror below. Beneath the

renewed limbs of an aged elm-tree, hollowed and blasted by the storms of many winters, a flock of unmolested sheep repose in grateful shade; these are, indeed, made “to lie down in green pastures,” and are “led beside the still waters.”

It would be difficult to picture to the mind’s eye a scene of more enchanting repose; in such a place as this, with such objects before him, the verdant pastures, the pendent groves, the winding river, the tranquil sky,—where the very clouds, with their fleecy wings stretched forth in vain to catch the subtile current, seem like a fleet becalmed on the wide ocean, waiting for the breeze;—with these before him, ambition forgets the world; sorrow looks up with more cheerful resignation; cares and disappointments lose both their weight and their sting: with so little of sordid earth, so much of the sublimity of nature to contemplate, his thoughts become chastened, soothed, and elevated; and the heart expands under a new sense of happiness, and a feeling of brotherly kindness and benevolence towards everything that breathes. He feels the poet’s exhortation in all its force—

When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come, like a blight,
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, the shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart,
Go forth into the open sky, and list
To Nature’s teaching!

And then turning to Wordsworth:—

For I have learnt
To look on Nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the roused ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows, and the woods,
And mountains, and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, both what they half create,
And what perceive.

Striguil.—The whole frontier of this interesting country—the land of Gwent—is sprinkled over with picturesque ruins,—the crumbling remains of those warlike strongholds raised by the Norman barons, as a defence to their newly-acquired possessions, which were brought into frequent jeopardy by the martial and reluctant subjects of the new dynasty. To these we can only advert in passing—for the plan on which this work is conducted, does not admit of their being noticed in detail. In the second century after the Conquest, six of these strongholds were erected near the British forest of Wentwood—a still venerable chase of between two and three thousand acres in extent, and associated with many events in the history and traditions of the Welsh frontiers. The grand object of these castles was to form a chain of garrisoned forts for the protection of Norman interests against the incursions of a people who, although compelled to pass under a foreign yoke, still gloried in their independence, and embraced every occasion to prove that their martial spirit, though bowed, was not broken.

One of the strongest of these embattled fastnesses was Castell-glyn-y-Striguil, erected, according to Doomsday-book, by the Norman warrior so often named in this work, William Fitzosborne. In Hammer’s Irish Chronicle, however, its erection is ascribed to Gilbert Strongbow, whose life and family we have already noticed in the account of Tinterne Abbey. The remains of this castle, though inadequate to convey any just notion of its original strength, are still sufficiently marked with regard to its size and proportions. Its outworks have mouldered down into shapeless masses, over which nature has thrown so dense a matting of underwood, that the traces of art have been almost obliterated. The form “was that of an oblong square, the angles of which, as usual in such cases, were defended by octagonal towers;” at one extremity was the donjon, or keep, the situation of which is indicated by the shapeless mound of vegetation, which draws nutriment from its débris. The walls were encircled by a deep moat, supplied by two mountain rivulets, which unite at this point to form the Troggy, one of the silver tributaries of the river Usk.

The other castles Avhich deserve a cursory notice, are, Llanvair, Llanvaches, Pencoed, Dinham, and Penhow. The latter, an ancient seat of the Seymours, occupies a bold and romantic situation. The acclivity which forms the direct approach to it, is nearly perpendicular. The view which it commands consists of a valley, or rather wooded ravines, in the foreground; and in the distance, a range of barren hills that bound the horizon—

Hills that, giving birth
To circling fountains, glad the parent earth;
And from their bosom, framed for martial toil,
Sent forth the guardian heroes of the soil.

By the marriage of the Lady Jane, daughter of Sir John Seymour, with Henry the Eighth, and the birth of their son, afterwards Edward the Sixth, the house of Penhow was placed in a situation to compete with that of Raglan; and by the fortuitous influence thus acquired, the Seymours took a leading authority in the management and direction of county affairs.

This castle, or rather fortalice, appears to have derived its strength, more from its isolated and once inaccessible position, than from the extent of its walls or outworks. A portion of the interior has been repaired and rendered habitable, or rather a house has been erected on the site of the old berçeau, and thus future patriots and statesmen may yet “come forth of Penhow.”

Llanvair, about six miles west from Chepstow, was the ancient residence of the Kemeys family, from whom sprang Sir Nicholas Kemeys, the last governor of Chepstow Castle, whose heroic but tragical fate has been already noticed in these pages. The ruins of this ancient homestead are too inconsiderable to challenge more than a passing glance from the tourist. The same may be said of Dinham, a hamlet in the parish of Llanvair-Discoed.

Goldcliffe, “so called,” says Camden, “because the stones there, of a golden colour, by reverberation of the sunne shining full upon them, glitter with a wonderful brightnesse. Neither can I be easilie perswaded that nature hath given this brightnesse in vaine unto the stones, and that there should be a flowre here without fruit; were there any man that would serch into the veines there, and using the direction of Art, enter into the inmost and secretest bowels of the earth.” But what was a mystery in the days of Giraldus, and even of Camden, admits of a very simple solution. The Gold Cliff, so called, consists of a rock nearly perpendicular, which rises abruptly to the height of a hundred feet in an extensive moor. It consists of limestone strata, nearly horizontal and parallel, supported by a base of brown sandstone, abounding with yellow mica. The brilliant effect of the sun upon this micaceous surface, was a reason for the old belief in the neighbourhood, that the rock contained gold, and was therefore considered as a situation of peculiar value and sanctity. The church of Goldcliffe belonged to a priory founded and endowed in 1113, by Robert de Chandos, eighteen years earlier than that of Tinterne Abbey, who, by the persuasion of Henry the First, annexed it to the Abbey of Bec, in Normandy, whence a prior and twelve Black, or Benedictine, friars were conveyed to it. On the suppression of alien priories, Henry Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, obtained of King Henry the Sixth the patronage of the priory, with permission to annex it to the Abbey of St. Mary, at Tewkesbury, to which it was made a cell in 1442. The Cambro-Britons, however, being offended at this measure, obliged the prior and monks of Tewkesbury to quit Goldcliffe in 1445; but in the following year they were permitted to return. In the twenty-ninth of the reign of Henry the Sixth, Goldcliffe Priory was granted to the college at Eton, and to Tewkesbury again. At the accession of Edward the Fourth, but seven years later, it was restored to Eton college, in whose possession it has since remained.

Caldicot.—The castle of this name is said to have been erected by one of the ancient Bohuns, earls of Hereford, hereditary lords-high-constables of England, for nearly two hundred years. From them the castle descended to Henry, Duke of Lancaster, and upon his accession to the throne as Henry the Fourth, it was invested in the crown. The ivy-mantled walls enclose a large court, with three entrances. The principal gateway is flanked by lofty square towers; and on the east side are the remains of the hall, comprising a range of windows, of large size and elegant workmanship. The style of masonry, as shown in the construction of the walls, is excellent; the courses of large and equal sized stones, are accurately squared and jointed; but the whole construction has more the appearance of an ancient domestic residence, than of a British stronghold—well suited for the accommodation of a feudal baron and his retinue in times of peace, but ill prepared to resist an enemy, or sustain a siege.

Yet there Tradition tells her tale
Of warrior-knights in glittering mail—
Of martial feat, and festive hall,
And banners waving from the wall;
When Cambria’s rival spears were bent
For martial joust and tournament;
While Beauty, from her lattice high,
Surveyed the scene with radiant eye—
And Cambria’s Chivalry in arms
Did faithful homage to her charms.

But Caldicot, how lonely now!
The wreath has withered from thy brow;
The scene of song and martial deeds
Is now a wilderness of weeds!
Ah, such at last the homes shall be
Of England’s proudest Chivalry!

Mathern is remarkable as the burial-place of Theodoric or Teudrick, the hermit king of Glamorgan, already mentioned. His hermitage “among the rocks of Tinterne,” to which he had retired for repose and meditation in the evening of life, is supposed to have stood on the site of the present abbey, which had thus, in the traditional records of the people, a spot already consecrated by royal example, as a foundation for those gorgeous altars by which it was subsequently distinguished.

When dragged from his retreat by the supplications of his family and subjects, and armed once more against the Saxons, he solemnly enjoined his son that, in the event of his falling in battle, they should erect a Christian church over his remains, as a monument of his faith and patriotism. The battle that speedily ensued, as tradition reports, was a great victory, but a victory purchased with the blood of Teudrick; for during the fierce conflict that had covered the Vale of Tinterne with the slain, he received a blow from a Saxon battle-axe which proved fatal. From the field he was conveyed homeward as far as Mathern, where he died; and there his son, who succeeded him in the chieftainship, erected a church to his memory, the name of which has perpetuated his martyrdom.

The foundation of this church in its primitive state, consisted, like other British structures, of a nave only—a side aisle and chancel appear to have been added at a very early date; and, subsequently to these, a tower was erected which completed the sacred edifice, and rendered it more conspicuous as a historical landmark, and place of pilgrimage. It is distinguished by handsome Gothic windows, portions of which are adorned with stained glass; and the roof is supported by Saxon arches, resting on massive octagon piers.

On a plain mural tablet in the Chancel of this ancient church, is the following inscription, supposed to have been written by Bishop Godwin. The fact of its being the sepulchre of the British Prince Teudrick, was finally ascertained by the discovery of his stone coffin, in which the skeleton was found almost entire. On the skull, also, in accordance with local tradition, a fracture was observed, which clearly indicated the manner of his death, and confirmed the testimony of local history.

The following is the inscription:—“Here lyeth entombed the body of Theodoric, King of Morganuch, or Glamorgan, commonly called St. Theodoric, and accounted a martyr, because he was slain in battle against the Saxons, being then pagans, and in defence of the Christian Religion. The battle was fought at Tynterne, where he obtained a great victory. He died here, being on his way homeward, three days after the battle, having taken order with Maurice, his son, who succeeded him in the kingdom, that in the same place where he should happen to decease, a church should be built, and his body buried in the same, which was accordingly performed in the year 600.”

“On ascending the tower of this church,” says Mr. Thomas, “a scene of great extent and surpassing beauty is spread before the eye; on one side you have a long reach of water, strewn with vessels and rocks; on the other a wide undulating tract of land, overspread with villas and smiling meadows, crowded with many a gentle herd; while beneath, and not the least interesting objects of this scene, are those melancholy wrecks of bygone splendour—Mathern Palace and Moinscourt.” The first of these two objects, the old episcopal residence, is now “the ruinous retreat of some humble followers of the plough.” The north and north-east portions, comprising the porch and tower, were erected by Bishop De la Zouch, who was consecrated in the year 1408, and the chapel hall, and some other compartments, were added by Miles Sulley, who came to the see in 1504. Moinscourt, now reduced to the humble uses of a farmhouse, was another of the palaces, belonging to the see of Llandaff, and supposed to have been erected by Bishop Godwin, who made it his favourite residence. Passing beneath a Gothic porch, crowned with two lofty turrets, we enter a spacious quadrangular court, at the extremity of which stands the palace. Over the entrance is an escutcheon, on which are sculptured the arms of Godwin, impaled with those of the see, and bearing the date of 1603. The court was formerly adorned with two monuments of Roman antiquity found in the vicinity—one a votive altar, the other an inscription, recording the rebuilding of the Temple of Diana, by T. F. Posthumius Varus. It was from the ancient Roman slabs, built into the garden walls of this residence, that Bishop Godwin supplied the drawings and inscriptions for Camden’s Britannia.

Before adverting to the final suppression of Tinterne Abbey, and the confiscation of its revenues to the king’s treasury, we shall now take a brief view of the circumstances which led to this grand revolution in our ecclesiastical government—quoting for our authority those writers of unquestionable veracity, who have treated of that momentous epoch. First, with regard to the

Dissolution.—“Never,” says an historian of this epoch, “never was there any exploit, seemingly so full of hazard and danger, more easily achieved than the subversion of our English monasteries.” The church commissioners presented a startling report of the vices and deceptions of the monks and nuns; and, what was of equal weight in the condemnation, they sent in the title-deeds of their estates, with the inventory of their plate, jewels, and ready money. Upon this a bill was introduced, giving unto the king and his heirs all monastic establishments, the revenues of which did not exceed two hundred pounds sterling a year, with every kind of property attached to them, whether real or personal. Three hundred and eighty of the lesser houses fell within this category, and were suppressed; whereby the king was enriched by thirty-two thousand pounds per annum—an enormous sum in that day—in addition to a hundred thousand pounds in ready money, plate, and jewels. The bill, according to one writer, was not passed through the House of Commons without some difficulty; but Henry, sending for the ministers, and telling them that he would have either the bill or their heads, they passed it immediately.

The parliament, which, by successive prorogations, had sat for the unprecedented term of six years, was now dissolved; and Henry, after all their passive obedience, appears to have been disgusted at this their last and feeble effort at opposition. He now named other commissioners to take possession of the suppressed monasteries, and to prepare measures for the seizure of others. If these men, mostly the friends of Cromwell or of Cranmer, had a better religion before their eyes, they certainly were not blind to the charms of lucre, and the temptations of fair houses and fat glebes; as many of them made a harvest for themselves, out of the spoils of the monks and nuns.

The superiors of the suppressed houses were promised small pensions for life, which were very irregularly paid. All the monks not twenty-four years of age were absolved from their vows, and turned loose upon the world without any kind of provision; the rest, if they wished to continue in the profession, were divided among the greater houses that were still left standing. The poor nuns were turned adrift to beg or starve; having nothing given to them, save one common gown for each. “These things,” says Godwin, “were of themselves distasteful to the vulgar sort, of whom each one did, as it were, claim a share in the goods of the church; for many being neither monks, nor allied to monks, did, notwithstanding, conceive that it might hereafter come to pass that either their children, friends, or kindred, might obtain their share; whereas, when all their property was once confiscated, they could never hope for any such advantages. But the popular commiseration for the thousands of monks and nuns who were, almost without warning given, thrust out of doors, and committed to the mercy of the world, became a more forcible cause of discontent. There were not wanting desperate men to take advantage of this state of public feeling; and it was diligently rumoured in all parts, that this was but the beginning of greater evils and more general spoliations—only a trial of their patience; that, as yet, the shrubs and underwood were but touched; but unless a speedy remedy were applied, the end would be with the fall of the lofty oaks.” At the same time, the crowds of poor, who, by an ancient but defective system, had derived their support from the monastic establishments, became furious at finding their resources cut off, and at seeing the monks who had fed them now begging like themselves by the roadsides.

In the midst of these general discontents, Cranmer and Cromwell issued certain doctrinal injunctions to the clergy, which were too novel to find immediate favour with the multitude; and certain Protestant reformers, who had more courage than they, ventured to print books about Iconolatria, image-worship, auricular confession, transubstantiation, and other fundamental tenets and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. The king, who assumed all the authority in matters of dogmas that had ever been claimed by the popes, and much more than they had ever put in practice in England, pronounced rewards and sentences which irritated both parties alike, and all these questions were referred to him—thus occupying a good deal of his time, and keeping in dangerous activity his old political bile. We find the Lord Chancellor Audley writing in great perturbation to Cromwell, telling him that “there is a book come forth in print, touching the taking away of images, and begging to know whether he was privy to the publishing thereof,” which Cranmer probably was, though, had such a fact been known to his master at that moment, his neck would have been in jeopardy. The chancellor says, “I assure you, in the parts where I have been, some discord there is, and diversity of opinion among the people, touching the worshipping of saints and images; and for creeping, kneeling at cross, and such like ceremonies heretofore used in the church, which discord it were good should be put to silence; and this book will make much business in the same, if it should go forth. Wherefore,” he continues, “I pray you, I may be advised whether you know it or no, for I intend to send for the printers and stop them; but there may be many abroad. It were good that the preachers and people abstained from opinions of such things, till such time as by the report of such as the king’s highness hath appointed for the searching and ordering of laws of the church, his grace may put a final order on such things, how his people and subjects shall use themselves without contention. And if the people were thus commanded by proclamation to abstain till that time, such proclamation, drawn in honest terms, would do much good to avoid contention.”

The king was by no means backward in issuing his final orders and decrees spiritual; and the reformers herein concealing their ulterior views, he was led to reduce the number of sacraments from seven to three—Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and Penance; to forbid the direct adoration of images; to abrogate a number of saints’ days or holidays, especially such as fell in harvest time; to declare the Scriptures, with the Apostolic, Nicene, and Athanasian creeds, the sole standards of faith; to order every parish priest to expound these to his parishioners in plain English; and to direct the printing and distribution of an English translation of the Bible, one copy of which was to be kept in every parish church. The king, in his wisdom, insisted on the necessity of auricular confession, and denounced any questioning of the ‘real presence’ in the eucharist as a damnable heresy, to be punished with fire and faggot. Purgatory, he confessed, puzzled him; steering a middle course, he declared himself to be uncertain on this head; and kindly permitted his subjects to pray for the souls of their departed friends, provided only that they fell into none of the old abuses of enriching religious houses and shrines for this object.

“Meanwhile,” says the historian, “the king continued much prone to reformation, especially if anything might be gotten by it.” Nothing was more easy than to prove that all the monastic orders had been engaged in the late insurrection; and as many of the richest abbeys and priories remained as yet untouched, there was no want of wise counsellors, all anxious to share in the spoil, who recommended their total suppression. In some cases, out of a dread of martial law, or, what was equally bad, a prosecution for high treason, the Abbots surrendered, gave, and granted their abbeys unto the king, his heirs and assigns for ever; but still many replied, like the prior of Henton, “that they would not be light and hasty in giving up those things which were not theirs to give, being dedicated to the Almighty for service to be done to his honour continually, with other many good deeds of charity which be daily done in their houses to their Christian neighbours.” “These recusants were treated with great severity; the prisons were crowded with priors and monks, who died so rapidly in their places of confinement, as to excite a dreadful suspicion.”

Without waiting for a “needless act of parliament, the king suppressed many other houses; and soon after, with the full consent of Lords and Commons, finished the business, by seizing all the abbeys without exception, with all the other religious houses, except a very few, which, at the earnest petition of the people, were spared or given up to the representatives of their original founders.” Before proceeding to the “final suppression, under the pretence of checking the superstitious worshipping of images, he had laid bare their altars, and stripped their shrines of everything that was valuable; nor did he spare the rich coffins and the crumbling bones of the dead.” At the distance of four hundred years—exasperated at that extraordinary man’s opposition to the royal prerogative—he determined to execute vengeance on the bones and relics of

Thomas a Becket.—The Martyr’s tomb was broken open; and by an insane process, worthy of a Nero or a Caligula, a criminal information was filed against him as “Thomas Becket, some time Archbishop of Canterbury;” and he was formally cited to appear in court, and answer to the charges. Thirty days were allowed the saint; but we need hardly inform our readers that his dishonoured relics rested quietly at Canterbury, and did not appear to plead in Westminster Hall. With due solemnity the court opened its proceedings. The attorney-general eloquently exposed the case for the prosecution, and the advocates of the saint—who no doubt spoke less boldly—were heard in defence; and that being over, sentence was pronounced, that “Becket” had been guilty of rebellion, treason, and contumacy; that his bones should be burnt as a lesson to the living not to oppose the royal will; and that the rich offerings with which many generations of men, native and foreign, had enriched his shrine, should be forfeited to the crown as the personal property of the traitor. “In the month of August,” continues the historian, “Cromwell, who must have smiled at the course pursued, sent down some of his commissioners to Canterbury, who executed their task so well, that they filled two immense coffers with gold and jewels, each of them so heavy that it required eight strong men to lift it.” “Among the rest,” says Godwin, “was a stone of especial lustre, called the Royal of France, offered by King Louis VII., in the year 1179; together with a great massive cup of gold, at what time he also bestowed an annuity on the monks of that church of an hundred tuns of wine. This stone was afterwards highly prized by the king, who did continually wear it on his thumb.” A few months after, the king, by proclamation, stated to his people, that forasmuch as it now clearly appears Thomas Becket had been killed in a riot provoked by his own obstinacy and insolence, and had been canonized by the Bishop of Rome merely because he was champion of that usurped authority, he now deemed it proper to declare that he was no saint whatever, but a rebel and traitor to his prince: and that, therefore, he, the king, strictly commanded that he should not be any longer esteemed or called a saint; that all images and pictures of him should be destroyed; and that his name and remembrance should be erased out of all books, under pain of his majesty’s indignation, and imprisonment at his grace’s pleasure.

The revenues of Tinterne Abbey, though far inferior to others of the same order, particularly those in Yorkshire, were still sufficient for the maintenance of the brotherhood, the repairs and decoration of the buildings, and the exercise of hospitality, which formed so important a feature in the monastic code. The estimate recorded by Dugdale is probably under the mark; while that of Speed may possibly exceed, by a few pounds, the actual rental of the abbey lands. The former has computed it at £192. 1s. 3d., the latter at £252. 11s. 6d., sums which, taking into account the value of money in those times, give no mean idea of its annual resources. This sum, however, is exclusive of the daily tribute received from the pious hands of pilgrims, and the donations of many distinguished guests, who, from time to time, sat at the Abbot’s table, or found refuge in its sanctuary.

The details of the first endowments of Tinterne Abbey, as well as various later benefactions, down to the seventh year of Henry the Third, are contained in a charter of confirmation from William Marshall, grandson of Walter de Clare, the founder.

“Herein,” says Tanner, “were thirteen religious about the time of the dissolution, when the estates belonging to this monastery were rated at £256. 11s. 6d. in the gross, and £192. 1s. 4-1/2d. per annum, clear income.”

The site of Tinterne Abbey, with all the monastic buildings, was granted 28th Henry VIII. to Henry, Earl of Worcester. It is still the property of his descendant, the Duke of Beaufort. Leland, mentioning Tinterne Abbey in his Collectanea, says, “There was a sanctuary granted to Tinterne, but it hath not been used many a day.”

The common seal of this monastery is appended to an instrument dated in the 6th of Henry VIII., whereby the abbot and convent appoint Charles, Earl of Worcester, and Henry Somerset, Lord Herbert, his son and heir apparent, chief stewards of their manor of Arle in Norfolk. The subject of this seal, of which only a mutilated impression in red wax remains, was the Virgin Mary and the infant Saviour, seated under an ornamented arch—in a niche underneath, was an abbot, with his crosier, on his knees praying. Nearly the whole of the legend is gone, the only part remaining being.... RII. BEATE.

William Marshall, the “vetus Marescallus,” as he is called in black-letter chronicles—who married the daughter and heiress of Richard Strongbow—became the founder of a new Cistercian Abbey, near Wexford, in Ireland. Finding himself, once upon a time, in great peril during a voyage thither, he made a vow to the Virgin Mary, that if by her help he escaped shipwreck, and once more set foot on dry land, he would testify his gratitude by founding an abbey to her honour. The ship having got safe into port, he lost no time in commencing the pious work, to which, in compliment to her elder sister on the Wye, he gave the name of Tynterna de Voto.

Daughters of Tinterne.—In addition to what has been already mentioned of the two daughters, or offshoots, of Tinterne on the Wye, we collect the following particulars:—

Tinterne Abbey, in the County of Wexford.—“This abbey was situated on the shore of Bannow Bay, in the barony of Shelburne, three miles north-east of Duncannon Fort. William, Earl of Pembroke, as already mentioned, being in great danger and peril at sea, made a vow to found an abbey in that place where he should first arrive in safety; and the place was the bay in question. He accordingly performed his vow, dedicated his abbey to the Virgin Mary, endowed it, and settled a convent of Cistercian monks in it, whom he brought from Tinterne in Monmouthshire. Archdale gives the particulars of the Earl of Pembroke’s endowment of this house, from King. The whole, however, was not completed in the earl’s lifetime, for Dugdale has given King John’s charter confirming the bequest of thirty carucates of land to this abbey in the earl’s will.”

Kingswood Abbey.—“Roger de Berkeley received by gift of William Rufus certain lands, upon condition that he should confer them upon some monks or canons; but being prevented by death, he bequeathed them to William de Berkeley his nephew, upon the same terms. And of which William, I find that he bestowed upon the monks of Tynterne, in Wales, a certain Desart near Berkeley, called Kingswood, there to found an abbey of the Cistercian Order; and that Maud the Empress, daughter to King Henry the First, confirmed that grant. The convent was built, but during the troublous reign of Stephen they removed to Haselden; but thence, on the return of peace, they were expelled by the proprietor, and again took up their abode at Kingswood. Reginal D. S. Walerick repenting, invited them back to Haselden; but, after a time, the place being found very inconvenient for lack of water, they were removed by him to Tetbury, Kingswood all this time being left as a mere grange of the monastery. Of this the heir of the founder complained, and required that the convent should return thither, according to the conditions upon which it was given by his ancestor. A general chapter of the whole Order, however, decided against him, and determined that Kingswood should remain as a mere farm belonging to the convent of Tetbury; but that mass should always be sung at Kingswood, privately, by one monk, who was to have for his labour twenty-seven marks and a half. But after this, by another general chapter of that Order, it was agreed that the Abbot of Waverley, in Surrey, should rebuild Kingswood with the consent of the founder, and confirmation of the King; which being done without the privity of the convent at Tetbury, and Abbot of Tynterne, who opposed the same. Upon a meeting of divers other abbots at Kingswood, it was concluded, that the monks placed at Kingswood should be recalled, and that place reduced unto the state of a grange to Tettebiry, as it was before.” These transmutations, however, were not yet concluded: “for Tettebiry being found a narrow place, too little for an abbey, and having no fuel but what was brought from Kingswood, which was far distant, Bernard de S. Walerick came to accord with Roger de Berkley, the founder of Kingswood, and therefore, obtaining a grant from him of forty acres of land adjoining to Kingswood, translated those monks from Tettebiry thither, and called it Kingswood, as a name of most note.” Such were the vicissitudes of this abbey.

According to Pope Nicholas’ taxation, the spiritualities of this monastery amounted in 1291 to the annual sum of £6. 4s. 4d.; the temporalities to £47. 17s. 2d.; making a total of £54. 1s. 6d. There is no valuation of Kingswood in the general ecclesiastical survey of the 26th Henry VIII., though Tanner says it was valued at that time, according to Dugdale, at £244. 11s. 2d. per annum; according to Speed, at £254. 11s. 2d.; clear, £239. 19s. 7-3/4d. In a MS. record in the whole at £254. 5s. 10d. A survey of this house, taken in the 29th Henry VIII., is preserved in the appendix to the Monasticon Anglicanum. There is also a minister’s ‘accompt’ of it in the Augmentation office, 32nd Henry VIII.; but its possessions are there answered for, in gross, at the sum of £245. 8s. 8d., the whole of its estates being then on lease to Sir Nicholas Peyntz, Knt., under the seal of the Court of Augmentations, dated 10th March, 29th Henry VIII., for a term of twenty-one years at the above rent. In the second year of Queen Elizabeth, the site of this house was granted to Sir John Thynne, Knt. The register of Kingswood Abbey was in the possession of John Smith, Esq. of Nibley, in the county of Gloucester. The common seal represented the Blessed Virgin crowned, holding in her arms the infant Jesus, and standing between two elegant pilasters, surmounted by a canopy; the field diapered; in base, under an arch, the half figure of a monk praying; the legend much flattened, so that no more of it can be read than S.COF ... CONVENTUS ... DE KINGEWOD. An impression of this seal on red wax is appendant to a conventual lease, temp. Henry VIII., in the Augmentation office.

FROM the above cursory notice of the spiritual daughters of “Holy Tinterne,” we return to the Mother-Abbey.

In England, says an eminent Catholic writer, the scheme of plundering the ecclesiastical property by men of a certain class, had never been wholly abandoned. In Henry the Fourth’s time there was “the laymen’s parliament of those who countenanced Wickliffe, and loved the lands far better than they did the religion of the Church; but their designs at that time were defeated by the stout and religious opposition of Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, and other Prelates.” Against these evils the ancient canons of the church in Germany provided, by prohibiting the faithful from holding any communication with men who disturb priests, and the state of the church. “Now,” he continues, “if St. Thomas and the clergy of the middle ages are to be condemned for resisting such injustice by prayers, and law, and canonical censures, what will be thought of St. Ambrose, and other pastors of the early church, who, by still more uncompromising firmness, believed that they were imitating the apostles?” St. Ambrose declares that he will never relinquish the churches to the Arians, as the Emperor Valentinian commands, unless by force. “If any force remove me from the church, my flesh,” he says, “may be disturbed, but not my mind; for I am prepared to suffer whatever a priest may suffer, if the emperor should exert his regal power. I will never abandon the church voluntarily; but I cannot oppose force. I can grieve, I can weep, I can groan; against arms, soldiers, and Goths, tears are my arms; for these are the weapons of a priest. Otherwise I neither ought to resist, nor can I resist. When it was proposed to me to deliver up the vessels of the church, I sent word that I would willingly give up what was mine own, whether lands or houses, gold or silver; but that I could take nothing from the temple of God, nor lightly abandon what I had received to guard—not to deliver up. Fear not, therefore, for me, dearly beloved, since I know that whatever I am about to suffer, I shall suffer for Christ; and the will of Christ must be fulfilled, and that will be for the best. Let them decree the penalty of death, I fear it not; nor will I on that account desert the martyrs; for whither could I go where all things would not be full of groans and tears, when Catholic priests are ordered to be driven from the churches, or to be struck with the sword if they resisted; and this decree to be written by a bishop, who should quote ancient examples to prove himself most learned? Auxentius, thirsting for blood, demanded my church; but I say with the prophet—‘Absit ut ego patrum meorum tradam hæreditatem!’ Naboth was prepared to defend his vineyard at the expense of his blood. If he could not give up his vineyard, neither will we give up the church of Christ. Do I then return a contumacious answer? I have answered as a priest; let the emperor act as an emperor. Last year,” he adds, “when I was invited to the palace, and introduced before the council, when the emperor wished to take from us the church, I should have been subdued by the contemplation of the royal hall, and I should not have kept the constancy of a priest, or should have departed with loss of right. Do they not remember, then, how the people rushed to the palace, and overwhelmed every force, declaring that they would die for the faith of Christ? Then I was desired to appease the people, which I did by engaging that the church should not be given up; but now the Arians wish to give law to the church, and accuse us of sedition in resisting the emperor. Let him take our tribute or our lands, if they ask treasure: our treasure is the poor of Christ; our defence is in the prayers of the poor. These blind, and lame, and weak, and aged persons, are stronger than robust warriors. I am to give to Cæsar what belongs to Cæsar; to God what belongs to God: the tribute is Cæsar’s, but the church is God’s. As for the fire, or sword, or banishment, which are threatened, we fear them not.”

Again, writing to his sister Marcella, he says: “Not only the basilica without the walls is now demanded, but also the new and greater one within the city. When the prince summoned me to resign them, I replied, what was of course, that ‘the temple of God could not be given up by a priest.’ The emperor cannot invade the house of a private man, and will he dare to take possession of the house of God! The palace belongs to the emperor, the church to the priest. If he be a tyrant, I desire to be aware of it, that I may know how to prepare against him, for I have the power to offer my body. If he thinks himself a tyrant, why does he delay to strike? By ancient laws empires were given by priests, not taken from them; and it is a common saying, that emperors have rather desired priesthood, than priests empire. The tyranny of a priest is his infirmity; for ‘when I am weak, then am I strong.’”

With examples like this before them—and numerous others might here be cited—it is not surprising that many of the monastic priesthood preferred to endure fines, imprisonment, and even death, to the enjoyment of that life and freedom which could only be purchased by acts of apostacy. And on this portion of our subject we avail ourselves of an eloquent passage from one of the most popular works of the day:—

The conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity was the first of a long series of salutary revolutions. It is true that the church had been deeply corrupted both by that superstition, and by that philosophy, against which she had long contended, and over which she had at last triumphed. She had given a too easy admission to doctrines borrowed from the ancient schools, and to rites borrowed from the ancient temples. Roman policy and Gothic ignorance, Grecian ingenuity and Syrian asceticism, had contributed to deprave her; yet she retained enough of the sublime theology, and benevolent morality of her earlier days, to elevate many intellects, and to purify many hearts. Some things also which, at a later period, were justly regarded as among her chief blemishes, were in the seventh century, and long afterwards, among her chief merits. That the sacerdotal order should encroach on the functions of the civil magistrate, would, in our time, be a great evil. But that which in an age of good government is an evil, may, in an age of grossly bad government, be a blessing. It is better that mankind should be governed by wise laws well administered, and by an enlightened public opinion, than by priestcraft; but it is better that men should be governed by priestcraft than by brute violence,—by such a prelate as Dunstan, than by such a warrior as Penda. A society sunk in ignorance, and ruled by mere physical force, has great reason to rejoice when a class, of which the influence is intellectual, rises to ascendancy. Such a class will doubtless abuse its power; but mental power, even when abused, is still a nobler and better power than that which consists merely in corporeal strength. We read in the Anglo-Saxon chronicles of tyrants who, when at the height of greatness, were smitten with remorse; who abhorred the pleasures and dignities which they had purchased by guilt; who abdicated their crowns, and who sought to atone for their offences by cruel penances and incessant prayers. These stories have drawn forth bitter expressions of contempt from some writers who, while they boasted of liberality, were in truth as narrow-minded as any monk of the dark ages, and whose habit was to apply to all events in the history of the world the standard received in the Parisian society of the eighteenth century. Yet surely a system which, however deformed by superstition, introduced strong moral restraints into communities previously governed only by vigour of muscle, and by audacity of spirit; a system which taught even the fiercest and mightiest ruler that he was, like his meanest bondsman, a responsible being, might have seemed to deserve a more respectful mention from philosophers and philanthropists.

The same observations will apply to the contempt with which, in the last century, it was fashionable to speak of the pilgrimages, the sanctuaries, the crusades, and the monastic institutions of the middle ages. In times when men were scarcely ever induced to travel by liberal curiosity, or by the pursuit of gain, it was better that the rude inhabitant of the north should visit Italy and the East as a pilgrim, than that he should never see anything but the squalid cabins, and uncleared woods, amidst which he was born.

In times when life and female honour were exposed to daily risk from tyrants and marauders, it was better that the precinct of a shrine should be regarded with an irrational awe, than that there should be no refuge inaccessible to cruelty and licentiousness. In times when statesmen were incapable of forming extensive political combinations, it was better that the Christian nations should be roused and united for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, than that they should, one by one, be overwhelmed by the Mahometan power. Whatever reproach may, at a later period, have been justly thrown on the indolence and luxury of religious orders, it was surely good that, in an age of ignorance and violence, there should be quiet cloisters and gardens, in which the arts of peace could be safely cultivated; in which gentle and contemplative natures could find an asylum; in which one brother could employ himself in transcribing the Æneid of Virgil, and another in meditating the Analytics of Aristotle; in which he who had a genius for art, might illuminate a martyrology, or carve a crucifix; and in which he who had a turn for natural philosophy, might make experiments on the properties of plants and minerals. Had not such retreats been scattered here and there, among the huts of a miserable peasantry, and the castles of a ferocious aristocracy, European society would have consisted merely of beasts of burden, and beasts of prey. The church has many times been compared to the ark of which we read in the Book of Genesis; but never was the resemblance more perfect than during the evil time, when she rode alone, amidst darkness and tempest, on the deluge beneath which all the great works of ancient power and wisdom lay entombed; bearing within her that feeble germ, from which a second and more glorious civilization was to spring.

UNDER the blasting influence of an arbitrary power, that found its zealous instruments in the Commissioners appointed for that service, the suppression and confiscation of the English monasteries were quickly followed by a long train of national misery and degradation, of which lamentable evidence is found in the chronicles of that period. From these popular and authentic sources we extract the following picture:—

In the final seizure of the abbeys and monasteries of England, the richest fell first. In the spring of 1540, all the monastic establishments of the kingdom were suppressed, and the mass of their landed property was divided among courtiers and parasites. The gold and silver, and costly jewels of shrines, had partly gone in that direction, and had partly been kept for the king’s use. The troubled fountain of the Reformation, it has been said, sent forth two streams—the one of sweet, the other of bitter waters. “It is the duty of an impartial historian to dwell for a time by the bitter stream. Between the ignorant zealots of the new doctrines, and the rudeness of the men employed in the suppression, who were all most anxious for spoil, and who probably cared little for any form of religion, or any decency of worship, innumerable works of art were destroyed; magnificent specimens of architecture were defaced and left roofless. Statues and pictures, many of them the productions of Italian masters,—and which had, in the eye of taste, a sort of holiness independent of Saints and Madonnas,—were broken to pieces or burnt. The mosaic pavements of the chapels were torn up; and the same brutal hands smashed the painted windows, which, almost more than anything else, gave beauty and glory to our old abbeys and cathedrals. The church-bells were gambled for, and sold into Russia and other countries. Horses were tethered to the high altar; cattle were kept in stall in the very recesses of the shrines and the chapels; and these, according to good authority, were at times the least bestial of the occupants.” “The libraries, of which all the great houses contained one, numerously if not judiciously stocked,—but wherein existed, no doubt, many a book in manuscript, which we would now willingly possess,—were treated with the greatest contempt. And here we should wonder why the enlightened men who promoted the Reformation did not interfere, were we not convinced of the danger of opposing the king’s will, and the ruffianly character of the persons to whom the task of suppression and destruction was committed.” “Some books,” says Spelman, “were reserved to scour their candlesticks, some to rub their boots, some sold to the grocers and soapboilers, and some sent over the sea to bookbinders—not in small numbers, but at times whole shipfuls, to the wondering of foreign nations. A single merchant purchased, at forty shillings a-piece, two noble libraries, to be used as grey paper; and such as having already sufficed for ten years, were abundant enough for many years more.” Such is the testimony of an eye-witness.

All the abbeys were totally dismantled, except in those cases where they happened to be the parish churches also, or where they were rescued in part by the petitions and pecuniary contributions of the pious inhabitants, who were averse to the worshipping of God in a stable. Cranmer and Latimer in some cases petitioned the king; but, as it is proved by their letters, they were too dependent on the court, and too fearful of its wrath to do very much. Latimer was the bolder of the two; and even before the final dissolution, he ventured to condemn in public the practice, which Henry had already adopted, of converting some of the monasteries into stables, conceiving it a monstrous thing that abbeys, which were ordained for the comfort of the poor, should be kept for the king’s horses! “What hast thou to do with the king’s horses?” retorted a noble courtier of the right stamp—“Horses be the maintenance and part of a king’s honour, and also of his realm; wherefore, in speaking against them, ye are speaking against the king’s honour!” The following were the

Results.—The men who had recommended the wholesale spoliation of the church, had represented it as a never-failing fund, which would enable the king to carry on the government with none—or but the slightest taxes; and which would furnish him with the means of creating and supporting earls, barons, and knights, and of forming excellent institutions for the promotion of industry, education, and religion. But, in the event, the property was squandered in a manner which is scarcely accountable; for the king had the conscience to demand from parliament “a compensation for the expenses he had incurred in reforming the religion of the state:” and within a year after the completion of his measures, “the obsequious parliament voted him a subsidy of two-tenths and two-fifteenths for this express purpose. It is a striking fact, that none of the objects contemplated and spoken of were promoted by the money of the religious houses—always excepting the making and supporting of certain noblemen.” Pauperism increased; as the whole body of the poor, which had been supported by the monks, who had funds for that purpose, were thrown, clamorous and desperate—unprepared for, and unprovided with, employment—upon the wondering nation, which had not before been aware of the extent of the evil. Education declined most rapidly; the schools kept in the monasteries were at an end; while other schools, and even the universities, were deserted. Religion was not promoted; for nothing but miserable stipends were given to the preachers, and none but poor and unlettered men would accept the office. To preach at St. Paul’s Cross had been a great object of clerical ambition; but now there was a difficulty of finding a sufficient number of preachers for that duty: and about four years after the final suppression, Bonner, Bishop of London, wrote to Parker, then Master of Corpus College, importuning him to send him some help from Cambridge; and not long after—during the short reign of Edward the Sixth—Latimer said, “I think there be at this day ten thousand students less than were within these twenty years.”

In the Country, “the rural parishes were served by priests who had scarcely the rudiments of education.” Following an example set them by the king—who required Cromwell to give a benefit to a priest who was kept in the royal service, because “he had trained two hawks for his majesty’s pastime, which flew and killed their game very well”—the patrons of livings gave them to their menials as wages or rewards; to their gardeners, to the keepers of their hawks and hounds; or otherwise they let in fee both glebe and parsonage; so that whoever was presented to the benefice would have neither roof to dwell under, nor land to live upon, being but too happy if his tithes afforded him a chamber at an alehouse, with the worshipful society of the dicers and drinkers who frequented it. According to Latimer, the parish priest, under these circumstances, frequently kept an alehouse himself—thus uniting the more profitable calling of a tapster with that of a preacher of the gospel.

So completely were the funds absorbed, and so greedy were the courtiers to keep fast hold of what they got, that no proper recompense was reserved for Miles Coverdale and his associates, who translated and published the first complete English Bible—the greatest achievement of the age, and the measure that most effectually promoted the Reformation. Coverdale himself was left in great poverty; and the printers, in order to cover their expenses, were obliged to put a high price upon their copies—thus impeding the circulation of the book, and thwarting the wishes expressed by the king himself.

In addition to these lamentable facts, the destruction of the monasteries left important gaps in the physical accommodations of the people, which not a pound sterling of the spoil was devoted to fill up. The monasteries had been hospitals, infirmaries, and dispensaries for the poor; caravanseras to the wayfarer; and in the absence of inns, the badness of roads, and the thinness of the population, their value in this respect had been felt both by rich and poor. In many of the wilder districts, the monastery had served as a nucleus of civilization; and sociality, personal safety, and hospitality, were nowhere to be found but within these walls.

CRANMER deplored “the woeful dissipation of church property, which he would have applied to the uses of religion, education, and charity; but he had not often the courage to press this subject with the king, whose displeasure, more easily excited than ever, was equivalent to a death-warrant. The archbishop, however, did what he could with safety to himself; and Henry, startled perhaps by a popular outcry, resolved to appropriate a part of the spoil to the advancement of religion. Parliament passed an act for the establishing of new bishoprics, deaneries, and colleges, which were to be endowed with revenues raised on the lands of the monasteries. But it was too late; the money and lands were gone, or the king and his ministers needed all that remained. The number of new bishoprics was reduced from eighteen to six—those of Westminster, Oxford, Peterborough, Chester, Bristol, and Gloucester; and these were so scantily endowed, that they hardly afforded the new bishops the means of living.” At the same time fourteen abbeys and priories were converted into cathedrals and collegiate churches, with deans and prebendaries; but the king kept to himself a part of the lands which had been attached to them, and charged the Chapters with the obligation of contributing annually to the support of the poor, and the repairing of the highways.

The preamble of the act for the suppression of the lesser monasteries thus concludes: “Whereupon the said Lords and Commons, by a great deliberation, finally be resolved that it is, and shall be, much more to the pleasure of Almighty God, and for the honour of this his realm, that the possessions of such houses now being spent and wasted for the increase and maintenance of sin, should be used and committed to better uses, and the unthrifty religious persons so spending the same, to be compelled to reform their lives.”

Besides that at Canterbury, already noticed, “other shrines had been plundered, and certain miraculous images and relics of saints had been broken in pieces at St. Paul’s Cross, and the machinery exposed, by which some of the monks had deluded the superstitious people;” but now every shrine was laid bare; or, if any escaped, it was owing to the poverty of their decorations and offerings.

Among the rest of these condemned images, there was “a crucifix in South Wales, called by the common people David-Darvel-Gatheren, which, according to an old legend or prophecy, was one day to fire a whole forest. It happened at this time that there was one Forest, a friar, who, after taking the oath of supremacy, repented of the deed, and declared it unlawful; wherefore he was condemned as a relapsed traitor and heretic. Hitherto King Henry, ‘Defender of the Faith,’ had burned the Reformers, and hanged the Catholics; but on the present occasion, he could not resist the temptation to make a point, or to figure as a mighty engine of fate, and a fulfiller of prophecy.” “The miraculous image was accordingly conveyed from Wales to Smithfield, to serve as fuel with faggots and other materials; and there, on the twenty-second of May, 1539, the monk was suspended by the armpits; underneath him was made a fire of the image, wherewith he was slowly burned—and thus by his death making good the prophecy that the image should fire a whole forest. There was a pulpit erected near the stake, from which Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, preached a sermon; and there was also a scaffold in the centre for the accommodation of the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Lord Admiral Howard, the Lord Privy Seal, Cromwell, and divers others of the council; together with Sir Richard Gresham, Lord Mayor, and many citizens of repute, who stayed to witness the frightful execution.” By frequent spectacles like this, the minds of the people were brutalized to a degree previously unknown in England.

From these revolting details of a fierce and persecuting spirit—a spirit opposed in every sense to that of Christianity—we turn with pleasure to the inspiring influence which monastic times and institutions have been supposed to exercise over the dominions of poetry and the fine arts; and of this Warton has transmitted us a glowing sketch:—The customs, institutions, traditions, and religion of the middle ages were favourable to poetry. Their pageants, processions, spectacles, and ceremonies, were friendly to imagery, to personification, and allegory. Ignorance and superstition, so opposite to the real interests of human society, are the parents of imagination. The very devotion of the Gothic times was romantic. The Catholic worship, besides that its numerous exterior appendages were of a picturesque, and even of a poetical nature, disposed the mind to a state of deception, and encouraged, or rather authorized, every species of credulity. Its visions, legends, and miracles, propagated a general propensity to the marvellous, and strengthened the belief of spectres, demons, witches, and incantations. These illusions were heightened by churches of a wonderful mechanism, and constructed on such principles of inexplicable architecture, as had a tendency to impress the soul with every false sensation of religious fear. The savage pomp, the capricious heroism, of the baronial manners, were replete with incident, adventure, and enterprise; and the untractable genius of the feudal policy held forth those irregularities of conduct, discordancies of interest, and dissimilarities of situation, that framed rich materials for the Minstrel-muse.

The tacit compact of fashion, which promotes civility by promoting habits of uniformity—and therefore destroys peculiarities of character and situation—had not yet operated upon life; nor had domestic convenience abolished unwieldy magnificence. Literature, and a better sense of things, not only banished these barbarities, but superseded the mode of composition which was formed upon them. Romantic poetry gave way to the force of reason and inquiry: as its own enchanted palaces and gardens instantaneously vanished, when the Christian champion displayed the shield of truth, and baffled the charms of the necromancer.

The study of the classics, together with a colder magic and a tamer mythology, introduced method into composition; and the universal ambition of rivalling those new patterns of excellence, the faultless models of Greece and Rome, produced that bane of invention—imitation. Erudition was made to act upon genius; fancy was weakened by reflection and philosophy. The fashion of treating everything scientifically, applied speculation and theory to the arts of writing. Judgment was advanced above imagination, and rules of criticism were established. The brave eccentricities of original genius, and the daring hardiness of native thought, were intimidated by metaphysical sentiments of perfection and refinement. Setting aside the consideration of the more solid advantages, which are obvious, and are not the distinct subject of our contemplation at present, the lovers of true poetry will ask, What have we gained by this revolution? It may be answered, Much good sense, good taste, and good criticism: but in the meantime we have lost a set of manners, and a system of machinery, more suitable to the purposes of poetry, than those which have been adopted in their place. We have parted with extravagances that are above propriety; with incredibilities that are more acceptable than truth; and with fictions that are more valuable than reality.

IN addition to what has been already noticed in these pages, respecting the employment of the monks within the walls of their monasteries, and by which they daily contributed to the public good, we present to the reader the following epitome of their industrial habits, as recorded by monastic writers. In every conventual establishment there was a chamber called the Scriptorium, or writing-room; but it was sometimes applied to a more remote place, where there was room for other employments. The only persons who had free access to this apartment were the abbot, prior, sub-prior, and precentor. There was an especial benediction of the Scriptorium. Writing of books, as a monastic employment, is to be found in the earliest eras. Among British monks, St. David, the tutelary saint of Wales, had a study, or writing-room, and began the Gospel of St. John in golden letters with his own hands.

The Antiquarii in monasteries, were industrious men continually employed in making copies of old books, either for the use of the monastery, or for their own emolument. Du Cange says, that Antiquarii were those scribes who repaired, composed, and re-wrote books, old and obsolete with age, in opposition to the Librarii, who wrote both new and old books. Those of the religious community, who were found dull at the study of letters, were employed in writing and making lines. The monastic scribes were certain persons selected by the Abbot. The senior monks were employed on the church books; the junior monks in letter-writing, and matters which required expedition. Du Cange mentions a singular kind of scribes, called Brodiatores, who wrote books and letters in the manner of embroiderers, so lightly representing the object that it almost escaped the sight. It is to such writers, perhaps, that Petrarch thus alludes: “His writing was not wandering, nor loaded like that of writers of our age, who flatter the eye from afar, and fatigue it when near.”

To the credit of the monastic scribes, “very few instances of bad writing,” says the late Mr. Fosbroke, “have occurred during my researches.” In one manuscript, indeed, there was a shocking scrawl, which he took to be the writing of a nun, the lines being irregular, the letters of various size, and of rude make. Writing, after the Norman invasion, was neglected by the Anglo-Saxons. A neat running epistolary hand is quite modern, except among papers written by lawyers. Hamlet says—

“I once did hold it, as our statists do,
A baseness to write fair.”

The Gilbertine rule prohibited the employment of hired writers—more probably, as Mr. Fosbroke thinks, limners. “At St. Alban’s, however, such limners, or writers, had commons from the alms of the monks and cellarer, that they might not be interrupted in their work by going out to buy food.” These had the too frequent drunken habits of artisans, who (‘because every man,’ says Johnson, ‘is discontented with his avocation, from the obligation to pursue it at all times, whatever be the state of his mind’) too often abuse relaxation. Barclay, without knowing that stimulants—however injurious, in a prudential and medical view, and never a good means—prevent, by the providential extraction of good from evil, much hypochondriacal influence and tedium, which might end in madness or suicide, says—

“But if thou begin for drinke to call and crave,
Thou for thy calling such good rewarde shalt have,
That men shall call thee malapert or dronke,
Or an abbey loune, or limner of a monke.”—Eclogue 2.

Printing.—This invention occasioned the following results: The scribes having less employment, there were few good artists of this kind, and writing lost much of its former beauty. About the year 1546, when all the religious houses had been dissolved, limners and scribes were reduced to great distress for want of employment; for, besides printing, engraving, “invented about 1460, superseded the illumination of initials and margins. The last specimen was the sectionary of Cardinal Wolsey at Oxford. Besides the rule, it was inquired whether the monks had made, taken, and received the king’s age and succession, according to act of parliament; for they were obliged to record these, and the births of the royal family, as well as other public events.”

Bookbinding was generally very gorgeous; gold, relics, silver plate, ivory, velvet, and other expensive adornments, were bestowed upon the books relating to the church service—hence the vast amount of plunder derived from this source alone at the Dissolution, when the Vandal emissaries, hired for the work of destruction, stripped the sacred books of their gold, silver, and jewels, and sold them to the highest bidder. These ornaments, however, were not confined to the books of the Altar; for we hear of a book of Poems, finely ornamented, bound in velvet, and decorated with silver-gilt clasps and studs, intended for a present to the king.

Books were written on purple vellum, in order to exhibit gold or silver letters, and adorned with ivory tablets. The most common binding was a rough white sheepskin, lapping over the leaves sometimes, with or without immense bosses of brass, pasted upon a wooden board; and sometimes the covers were of plain wood, carved in scroll and similar work. There were formerly leaden books with leaden covers, and books with wooden leaves.

Music-schools, says Davies, were built within the church. Great pains were taken with the pupils, who were instructed in the musical service of the altar. Music, says Giraldus, was so prevalent in the middle age, that even whistling became a fashion and amusement, from being asked for by an archbishop. In his own time, as Erasmus informs us, “they introduced into the church a certain elaborate theatrical species of music, accompanied with a tumultuous diversity of voices. All,” says he, “is full of trumpets, cornets, pipes, fiddles, and singing. We now come to church as to a playhouse; and for this purpose ample salaries are expended on organists, and societies of boys, whose whole time is wasted in learning to sing,—not to mention the great revenues which the church squanders away on the stipends of singing men, who are commonly great drunkards, buffoons, and chosen from the lowest of the people. These fooleries,” he adds, “are so agreeable to the monks, especially in England, that youths, boys, &c., every morning, sing to the organ, the Mass of the Virgin Mary, with the most harmonious modulations of voice; and the bishops are obliged to keep choirs of this sort in their families.”

Libraries.—Mr. Nichols has made the following excellent remarks upon the library of Leicester Abbey:—From the catalogue it seems rather doubtful whether, in the library of this religious house, there might be any one complete collection of all the Holy Scriptures. Supposing Biblie, in the first article, to have included both the Old and the New Testaments, it was a tome defective and worn. The second consisted of each book of the Old Testament only; and the third contained the Gospels, without any mention of the Acts of the Apostles, of the Epistles, or of the Apocalypse. There is, however, a second mention of “Actus Aplor’ gloss’, Apocalyps’ gloss’, Eple Pauli [but of no other apostle] gloss’, Eple Canonice;” and among the last occurs the “Canticus Canticorum.” Perhaps, he adds, there might be some of those Augustine monks, to whom the divine oracles in the learned languages would have been of little use; and yet to these was not indulged a translation in English, there being in the Consistorial Acts at Rochester, the minutes of a rigid process against the Precentor of the priory of that cathedral, for retaining an English Testament,

in disobedience to the general injunction of Cardinal Wolsey, to deliver up these prohibited books to the bishops of the respective dioceses.

It is worthy of remark, that Petrarch, as we learn from his “Memoires,” whenever he made a long journey, carried his books along with him upon extra horses, as carefully as others, passing through the Desert, carry their provisions of daily food.

Leland’s story of the library of the Franciscans at Oxford has been often told: it was only accessible to the warden and bachelors of divinity; was full of cobwebs, moths, and filth; and contained no books of value, the best having been surreptitiously carried away. In the monastic libraries the books were contained in painted presses or almeries. In the Abbatial libraries, according to the catalogues given by Leland, there were only the following classics—Cicero and Aristotle, which were common; Terence, Euclid, Quintus Curtius, Sidonius Apollinaris, Julius Frontinus, Apuleius, and Seneca. From this disregard of the classics—not to the shameful destruction only of the monastic libraries at the Dissolution—probably ensued that loss of the Decades of Livy, &c., which has been so justly lamented.

Museum.—Adjoining the abbey library, says Erasmus, “was a certain small but elegant museum, which, upon the removal of a board, exhibited a fire-place if the weather proved cold, otherwise it appeared a solid wall. Coryatt saw a stuffed crocodile in an abbey”—the one solitary specimen, perhaps, of Natural History.

Upon the utility of profane learning in ecclesiastical studies, Petrarch has thus emphatically expressed himself:—“I know by experience,” he says, “how much human learning may contribute to give just notions, to make a man eloquent, to perfect his morals, and, what is more, to defend his religion. If it be not permitted to read the poets and heathen authors, because they do not speak of Christ, whom they did not know, with how much more reason ought we to prohibit heretical works? Yet the defenders of the Faith studiously peruse them. Profane literature, like certain solid aliment, does not hurt a good stomach, only a weak one. Reading, though wholesome to a sound mind, is poison to a feeble intellect. I know that letters are no obstacles to holiness, as some pretend. There are many roads to heaven. Ignorance is that which the idle take. The sciences may produce as many saints as ignorance. And surely we ought not to compare an ignorant devotion to an enlightened piety.”

Monastic Wit.—Speaking of the wit and humour that often enliven the otherwise dull uniformity of monastic writings—“I met with the following epigram,” says Mr. Fosbroke, “in a MS. of the Ashmole library, of which I have never seen a copy; but as it was in a collection of poems made in the sixteenth century, I cannot tell its age:”—

Marriage, saith one, hath oft compared bin
Unto a fest, where meet a public rout;
Where those that are without would fain get in,
And those that are within would fain get out.

Acrostics were known to the Greeks; but the monks used those of a hieroglyphical kind, which could seldom be divined unless by aid of the inventor himself. In the hollow stonework over the kitchen chimney of Kingswood Abbey in Wilts—already noticed in this work—are a Tiger, hart, ostrich, mermaid, ass, and swan; the initial letters of which make the name of the founder, T h o m a s.

Abbey Seals.—That of Tinterne Abbey, as already noticed in this volume, page 75, is imperfect. Of ecclesiastical and monastic seals, those of a round form generally denoted, according to Lewis and Blomfield, something of royalty in the possessor, or a more than ordinary extent of jurisdiction. Monasteries of royal foundation had commonly round seals; bishops and superiors of houses had usually oval seals; the former held the pastoral staff in their left hands, abbots in their right. The earliest conventual seals commonly bore mere rude representations of their patron saints; the more recent were highly finished, the most common device being the superior of the house praying to the patron saint, who was represented as looking down upon him. Previously to the reign of Edward the Third, the conventual seals represented their patron saints and abbots seated upon thrones; but after this period, they as constantly exhibited these figures sitting or standing beneath canopies and arches. The Patron saint subduing and treading upon the dragon, was symbolical of his overcoming sin. A star, the symbol of the Epiphany, and a crescent of the increase of the Gospel, are frequently introduced into the seals. In the Cistercian and Premonstratensian orders, the custody of the seal, though in general ill observed, was committed to the prior, and four others of the establishment elected for that trust.

Abbeys had not only different seals for different purposes, but these were often altered and changed; though, from the seal of Hyde Abbey being worth fifteen marks, the expense of having them engraved must have been extremely high. But so careless were the monks in the custody of it, that Matthew Paris mentions that it was thrown aside among a chest of papers. The abbot’s Bajulus, or domestic monk, was also the bearer of this seal. A silver seal and chain—‘sigillum argenti cum cathena’—is mentioned as that of a plain monk.

Luxury.—With respect to luxuries—which in some monasteries, it was alleged, were earned to a degree quite inconsistent with their professed abstinence—Thomas Pennant, Abbot of Basingwerk, is said to have given twice the treasure of a king in wine, and was profuse of more humble liquors. The apartments for the reception of persons of quality, according to Davies, were furnished in a most expensive and gorgeous manner. But their profuse expenditure in wine, it must be remembered, was in consequence of a too liberal hospitality; for, while the monks themselves were restricted to a meagre diet, their guests, when men of rank and influence, were plentifully regaled with whatever was best in cellar and larder; and the whole country furnished no better cooks or butlers than were to be found in conventual houses.

CISTERCIAN abbeys, according to Giraldus Cambrensis, avoided all the bad consequences of cells, in the irregularities of their inhabitants, by having none; and by remedying all defects by visitors and chapters. Yet the Abbey of Kingswood, already noticed, was a cell of Tinterne, and the scene of as many irregularities and abuses, perhaps, as the cells of any other monastic order. The brethren who stayed at cells were to be three in every place, or two at least. “In food, in clothing, and the tonsure, they did not vary from the common institution. They kept silence at table, and did not speak in the church. They sung compline at an early seasonable hour, in summer and winter; and did not run about the village or elsewhere.” It was thought a great grievance to be sent to remote cells, or from cell to cell; and scandalous tales were occasionally told of the licentious lives of some of the monks, whom the abbots had sent thither for penance and reformation.

In reference to the introduction of Cistercian monks into England, we annex the following from an old Chronicler:—“About this time,” says he, “by means of one Stephen Hardyng, a munke of Sherburne, an Englyshe man of the order of Sisteaux, or whyte munkes, had his beginning in the wildernesse of Cystery, within the Provynce of Burgoyne, as witnesseth Ranulph, munke of Chester: but other wryters, as Jacobus Philippus, and the auctor of Cronyca Cronycorū, Matheolus, with other sayen, yᵗ this Stephen was the second abbot of yᵗ place, and that it was founded by the means of one Robert, abbot of Molynēse, in the yere of Grace, M.lxxx.xviij, which, to follow their sayinge, shulde be in the ix yere of yᵉ reyne of this Kynge” [Rufus.] “This order was after brought into Englande by one called Walter Espeke, that founded the firste abbey of yᵗ religion at Ryuall [Rivaux], about the yere of Grace xi.c.xxxi., the which shulde be about the xxxi. yere of the firste Henry, than Kynge of Englande.” This last is the correct date of the introduction of white friars into this country, and he adds:—“Somewhat of their religion is towched in the x chapitre of the vii boke of Polychronicon.”

Abbey Windows.—Warton says the stem of Jesse was a favourite subject, and Sugerius thus proves it: “I have caused to be painted a beautiful variety of new windows from the first, which begins with the stem of Jesse in the caput ecclesiæ, or part where the altar was erected. Any miraculous events happening to persons were represented in their chapels and churches in stained glass, or such as happened within the knowledge of the erector. Common subjects were a genealogical series of benefactors; arms and figures of donors of lights; the seven sacraments of the Romish Church; many crowned heads, with curled hair and forked beards, represent the Edwards, Richard the Second, and Henry the Fourth; whole length figures with crowns and sceptres, Jewish kings, connected with some Scriptural history, universally so when in profile.” The principal subjects in the great window of Tinterne Abbey appear to have been arms and figures of the founder, and of a series of benefactors. The last fragment, after many years of desolation, was a shield of the Bigod family.

Cowls.—With respect to the habit, it is recorded that many noblemen, and others of high rank, gave directions that, after their decease, they should be dressed in monk’s gear, and be thus consigned to the grave. This was a very common practice in Wales; for as it was written, that “all were monks who shall gain heaven, or rather that there were none there but monks,” it became necessary to assume the garb at least, as a safe though surreptitious passport to those happy seats. It was usual in some cases to wear the garb during sickness only, and lay it aside on the return of health; in others, to keep it in reserve for their death. Lewis, Landgrave of Hesse, said to his attendants—“As soon as I am dead, put on me the hood of the Cistercian order; but take very diligent care not to do so while I am living.”

MSS., Books.—In addition to what has been already quoted on this subject, it was long a proverbial saying, that a convent without a library, was like a castle without an armoury. When the monastery of Croydon was burnt in 1091, its library, according to Ingulphus, consisted of nine hundred volumes, of which three hundred were very large. “In every great abbey,” says Warton, “many writers were constantly busied in transcribing, not only the service-books for the choir, but books for the library.” The Scriptorium of St. Alban’s Abbey was built by Abbot Paulin, a Norman, who ordered many volumes to be written there about the year 1080. Archbishop Lanfranc furnished the copies. Estates were often granted for the support of the Scriptorium. We find some of the classics written in the English monasteries very early. Henry, a Benedictine monk of Hyde Abbey, near Winchester, transcribed, in the year 1178, Terence, Boethius, Suetonius, and Claudian. Of these he formed one book, illuminating the initials, and forming the brazen bosses of the covers with his own hands. Other instances of the same kind are added. The monks were much accustomed both to illuminate and to bind books, as well as to transcribe them. “The scarcity of parchment,” it is afterwards observed, “undoubtedly prevented the transcription of many other books in these societies. About the year 1120, one Master Heugh, being appointed by the monastery of St. Edmondsbury, in Suffolk, to write and illuminate a grand copy of the Bible for their library, could procure no parchment for this purpose in England.” Paper made of cotton, however, was certainly in common use in the twelfth century; though no evidence exists that the improved kind, manufactured from linen rags, was known till about the middle of the thirteenth.

The pavement lately discovered in the Abbey Church of Tinterne, and described at page 42 of this volume, forms an interesting relic of its internal decorations. There is abundant proof, in the Norman centuries, that mosaic work was adopted as an embellishment of the high altar, and, as in the present instance, in the front of shrines. At first, these pavements exhibited scripture stories, painted upon glazed bricks and tiles of an irregular shape, fitted together as the colour suited, and upon the same plan as the glass in windows. By an improvement in the succeeding ages, the bricks, as in the specimen before us, were made equilateral, and about four inches square; which, when arranged and connected, produced an effect closely resembling the Roman designs, yet wanting their simplicity and taste. The wreaths, circles, and single compartments, retain marks of Gothic incorrectness, and of as gross deviation from the original as the Saxon mouldings.

At what period heraldic devices were introduced cannot be ascertained with precision; but it is probable that, when they were first carved or painted upon escutcheons, or stained in glass, the floors received them likewise as a new ornament. The arms of founders and benefactors were usually inserted during the middle centuries after the Conquest, when many of the greater abbeys employed kilns for preparing them, from which the conventual, and their independent parish, churches were supplied. Some writers have conjectured that the painted tiles were made by Italian artists settled in this country; and it has been thought that monks, having acquired the art of painting and preparing them for the kiln in the manner of porcelain, amused their leisure hours by designing and finishing them.

The altar-pavement here under notice is of an early period; but in those of a later age, when the branch of encaustic painting had reached perfection, the exquisite delicacy and variety of the colours—though seldom of more than two—are particularly discernible. The use of these painted bricks, or tiles, was confined to consecrated places, almost without exception; and those discovered since the Reformation have been all found upon the sites of convents, preserved either in churches or in houses, to which tradition confirms their removal.

Amongst the encaustic relics of a later date, family arms, impaled and quartered, as well as scrolls, rebuses, and ciphers, are very frequent. In the present instance, the tile exhibits a quartering of the Clare and Bigod shields. In others, the arms are interspersed with various devices, or single figures, such as griffons, spread eagles, roses, fleurs-de-lis, &c., of common heraldic usage, but not individually applied. It appears that in some instances they formed a kind of tesselated pavement, the middle representing a maze, or labyrinth, about two feet in diameter, so artfully contrived that a man, following all the intricate meanders of its volutes, could not travel less than a mile before he got from one end to the other. The tiles are baked almost to vitrifaction, and wonderfully resist damp and wear. Actual tesselated pavements once existed. A manuscript Anglo-Saxon Glossary, cited by Junius, says—“Of this kind of work, mosaic in small dies, little is used in England. Howbeit, I have seen of it a specimen upon church floors, before altars—as before the high altar at Westminster—though it be but gross.”

Abbey Wire-works.—Among the objects of local industry in Tinterne, to which the stranger’s attention is usually directed, the Abbey Wire-works are the most interesting. “These,” to quote the words of the late Mr. Thomas, “as well as the stately pile in their vicinity, amongst whose silent recesses the tourist has so often and fondly trodden, are also the dominions of Art. But how widely different is the scene! Here she is met with in her busy laboratory, controlling and directing the energies of mankind, and seizing upon the very subjects of nature—the gurgling water and the lambent flame—to make them tributaries to her ambitious designs; whilst there, in the precincts of that ruined fane, she is beheld indolently reclining in the flowery lap of her indulgent rival—just as we have seen the wasted form of a lovely maiden pillowed on the bosom of her elder sister, and gently languishing through the departing hours of her insidious disease.”

It was in the seventeenth century, during the times of the Stuart dynasty, that certain Swedish and German artisans, flying from continental tyranny, were induced to seek an asylum within the pale of the British constitution, and introduce into their adopted country the art of forging wire. They were received with open arms; locations were assigned them, denominated Seats; and a privilege of a vote in parliamentary elections, with an exemption from taxes, were constituted as part of the favours which our discerning government thought proper to confer. Of these seats Tinterne was one from the very first immigration; and here many of the descendants of the original settlers are still employed in the handicraft of their forefathers. Of the methods used in the manufacture of iron-wire before the introduction of improved machinery, tradition has preserved the following outline:—

“A large beam was erected across the factory, to which were affixed as many seats—in the form of large wooden scales—as there were men employed, who were fastened in them by means of a girdle round their bodies. The artificers were employed near each other, while between them stood a piece of iron pierced with holes of different dimensions, for reducing the wire to an appropriate size. The worked iron was heated; the beam was put in motion by a water-wheel; and as the workmen swung backwards and forwards, they passed and repassed the iron through the holes described with forceps, until it was reduced by force to the required diameter. The motion was regulated; and if any workman chanced to miss seizing the iron with his forceps, he suffered a considerable shock on the return of the beam.”

On the introduction of the improved system of wire factories, the nature of the contracts between the principals and their workmen underwent a necessary change. The struggle, however, was continued for some time, but ultimately subsided in the adoption of the present plan, and the alterations which it introduced. Under the management of the late Mr. Thompson—whose mausoleum forms a conspicuous object in the adjoining cemetery—the Tinterne Wire Works acquired a new impetus, which has been successfully kept up by his able and intelligent successor.

Natural History.—On this interesting subject, we take advantage of the following notes from the journal of the late Mr. Thomas of Tinterne:—April 2d, half-past seven A.M. Notwithstanding a cold north-easterly wind, with fugitive showers, I saw a nightingale, for the first time this year, on the road to Chapel Hill, perched upon the topmost branch of a budding thorn. He uttered one or two of those rich, cheerful, metallic notes, so characteristic of his song; and quickly returned to his busy search for food amongst the low bushes adjoining. One of my friends informed me that he had listened to its music the evening before; and another averred that he had heard the nightingale as early as the second week of March. If these accounts be true, which I have not the slightest reason to doubt, they seem to favour the idea that some of these lovely songsters hibernate amongst us. Naturalists, by common consent, name the last week of April as the period of their ordinary arrival in this island. It seems probable, however, that those which winter amongst us undergo some variation of plumage, which may lead a cursory observer—if he did not pass them by unnoticed—to confound them with the female redbreast, the hedge-sparrow, or some other unpretending bird.

In point of song from Nature’s choristers, says an enthusiastic admirer of the Wye, these woods might challenge all England. It is impossible to enjoy a higher treat of the kind than the harmony of these little warblers on a fine summer’s evening, when, on each side of the Wye, they seem to vie with each other in the richness and fullness of their notes. Mr. Heath had the following anecdote from Signor Rossignol, so celebrated for his imitations of the feathered tribes:—“While at Monmouth,” said he, “I often walked towards Hadnock at a late hour of the night, for the purpose of comparing my own notes with those which I attempted to imitate. First, I began with those of the blackbird, when every bird of that species within hearing would instantly awake as it were with the rapture of day. Then came the thrush, next the nightingale, and so on, until I had called forth the song of every bird in the woods; and thus I continued to amuse myself for an hour together. If, in the meantime, a traveller happened to be passing the road, he was immediately forced to conclude that he had quite mistaken the time of day!”

Walnut-trees.—The Abbey appears to have been sheltered and enriched in its prosperous days by extensive orchards; but of the lofty walnut-trees, that formerly spread their luxuriant branches in its vicinity, one only remains. These trees were of great age: under their shadow many generations of monks and pilgrims had found shelter and repose; but having long survived their patrons, and attained that fatal majesty which insured their destruction, the axe was applied with ruthless force to their stems; they were hewn down, burnt, or sold; and the rich soil, from which they had derived their strength and fertility for centuries, was converted into patches of cabbage and potato ground, profusely bordered with weeds, and enlivened with pigsties that, to imaginative tourists, perhaps, may recall the memory of Friar Bacon.

The Abbot’s Meadow.—“I have often felt incommunicable delight,” writes Mr. Thomas, “in a walk southward along the meadows skirting the Wye. During the bright summer evenings, the glorious sun tinges the summits of the encircling hills with his oblique golden rays, while a gentle breeze makes the ripening grass wave in elegant undulations. How sweet at that pensive hour to sit upon the sedgy bank, and hear the artless music of the feathery tribes! The reedwren chants his vesper-song; full many a robin swells it by his perennial response; whilst the inimitable thrush and tender cushat revive the thrilling echo on the distant cliff.”

During this concert, “you turn round to behold the abbey embosomed amidst apple-trees, and so singularly foreshortened that the beautiful western window appears through the eastern. The entrance of the western valley is at the same time so happily disposed, that the effulgent light of the setting sun is seen through the roseate windows, gilding the interior of the abbey with an unearthly brightness; whilst, to complete the scene, multitudes of noisy daws are seen careering in fanciful circles, high in the balmy air, before they retire to roost within the mantling ivy of the ‘roofless house of God.’”

At such an hour how appropriate the lines:—

“When day, with farewell beam, delays
Among the opening clouds of even,
And we could almost think we gaze
Through golden vistas into heaven;
Those hues which mark the sun’s decline,
So soft, so radiant, Lord, are thine!”—Moore.

At length a poetic sound breaks upon the ear—the whetting of a scythe; and how picturesque are the fields beyond! After passing through a succession of luxurious meadows, you arrive at the humble and ivied ruins of a Piscatory. This building is apparently of ancient date, and was intended to supply the monastery during those numerous fasts in which the good abbots were wont to exchange “the very best meat for the very best fish.” Soon after passing this ruin, the hitherto placid Wye falls noisily over a broad and shallow weir, and the steep wood encroaches upon its rocky bank. Our footsteps, therefore, pursue a sinuous path through its deep and pensive shade, until we somewhat suddenly emerge upon a tabular meadow, encompassed by an amphitheatre of ivied rocks, a stupendous rampart, at whose base the Wye is winding, and, at the same time, reflecting in its peaceful bosom the majestic scene.

Climate of Tinterne.—On this subject, a late intelligent medical practitioner at Tinterne says:—“I may here remark, that I am unacquainted with any warmer spot than this in England. Protected on the north and west by a steep hill, it is open alone to the east and south: it has therefore the sun upon it during the greater part of the day. On the third of February, 1839, at half-past 2 in the afternoon,” he adds, “while my thermometer on the mantel-shelf over the fire ranged at 60°, it rose to 99° outside the door. At nightfall, which ushered in a severe frost, the mercury fell to 44°. On the twenty-third of the same month, at 3 o’clock P.M., the thermometer ranged at 109° Fahrenheit, or nearly 34° Reaumur; at half-past 11 at night, the mercury fell to 45° Fahr. On the fifteenth of May, at 12.16 P.M., the thermometer on the mantel-shelf indicated 50° Fahr. At 3 P.M. a violent snow-storm came on, succeeded at nightfall by a nipping frost.” These facts sufficiently indicate

the capricious nature of the climate of Tinterne, where the transitions from a winter to a high summer temperature, and vice versa, are so frequent and remarkable.

Incidental Remarks.—During the plunder of this abbey church, which was long carried on with impunity, many interesting relics of antiquity appear to have been either mutilated, or carried off and sold. Among other fragments of ancient art, was a brass hand grasping a spear, taken from a tomb in the church in which was found a body entire, with leathern buskins, and buttons on the coat; but which, on exposure to the air, crumbled into dust. Human skeletons, we are told, were found in an orchard to the eastward, formerly the abbey cemetery. From the size of these—monks or soldiers—it was ascertained that their living owners must have been considerably beyond the common stature. On the legs of one of them were found cloth buskins in apparent preservation; while the metal studs, or buttons, it is added, were almost bright. No coffins were found; the bodies were simply deposited under large flat stones; and were probably of an order inferior to those interred within the church. Adjoining the north door, a portion of wall, long supposed to be the side of a cloister, was at last stripped of the ivy that covered it, and disclosed a range of fine Gothic windows. And when the rubbish that encumbered the entrance leading into the cross aisle was removed, two stones were found inscribed with the following memorials:—

Hic jacet Johannes de Lynas.
Hic jacet Henricus de Lancaut.

At the entrance by the west doorway a flight of steps was also discovered, which at the time was supposed to communicate with a vault, or crypt, under the church. But the passage was not explored; and the stone with which the opening was originally covered, was restored to its place. It is the opinion of antiquaries, however, that there is no crypt, or vault, under the church. Of

Tinterne village, which still seems to derive its support from casual visitors to the abbey, much cannot be said in commendation. Little, if any improvement seems to have been made for many years, owing, we were told, to the restrictions laid upon building. With encouragement in this respect alone—or even with the ordinary accommodations of a spacious inn—the place might speedily change its complexion, and become a cheerful and thriving hamlet. But, as in the days of Gilpin, it presents nothing inviting. The penury of the inhabitants may be less remarkable; “but they still occupy little huts raised among the ruins of the monastery, and seem as if a place, once devoted to indolence, could never again become the seat of industry.” “As we left the abbey,” says he, “we found the whole hamlet at the gate, either openly soliciting alms, or covertly, under pretence of carrying us to some part of the ruins which each could show, and which was far superior to anything which could be shown by any one else. The most lucrative occasion could hardly have excited more jealousy and contention.” In the present day, the duties of the abbey cicerone are performed by a sensible and well-informed guide, named Christian Payne.

Of the accommodations to be had at Tinterne Abbey in his day, Captain Barber has left the following reminiscence:—“Having despatched an attendant for a barber on my arrival at the inn, a blacksmith was forthwith introduced, who proved to be the only shaver in the place. The appearance of this man, exhibiting, with all the grim sootiness of his employment, his brawny arms bare to the shoulders, did not flatter me with hopes of a very mild operation; nor were they increased when he produced a razor that, for massiveness, might have served a Polyphemus. I sat down, however, and was plentifully besmeared with soap-suds. After this he attempted to supply the deficiency of an edge, by exerting his ponderous strength in three or four such vigorous scrapes as, without exciting my finer feelings, drew more tears into my eyes than might have sufficed for a modern tragedy. I waited no longer; but releasing myself from his iron gripe, determined to pass for a Jew Rabbi, rather than undergo the penance of another ‘shaving at Tinterne.’”

Plan of the Abbey.—The following simplified description may probably assist the reader to form a correct notion of the sacred and conventual buildings, of which the abbey was originally composed; and of the various compartments into which, in their former and perfect condition, these were so admirably arranged and subdivided:—

Entering the church by the west doorway, the visitor passes along the nave, with the “pillared aisles” on his right and left, and the newly-discovered pavement. In the distance, and directly opposite, under the great east window, is the high altar, as distinctly shown in the engraved illustration. Moving along the nave, he observes five distinct clustered pillars, surmounted by the magnificent arches, described in these pages. At the commencement of the north and south transepts, he will examine the bases of the four massive columns which formerly supported the great central tower; the doors and windows of the transepts; the sepulchral fragments scattered along the smooth grassy parterre of the choir; then, at the north-west corner of the north transept, he will ascend a few steps of a spiral staircase leading to the top of the church; and, from the gallery which runs round within the wall, look down on the scene before and beneath him. Descending to the transept floor, he will enter a door near the angle where the nave and north transept unite; and entering a passage northward, through a richly ornamented doorway, he will observe the following apartments, viz.:—

The Cloister on the left, forming a considerable quadrangle, the sides of which are of the same length as the nave of the church, on which it closely abuts, running parallel with it to the west doorway, and bordering the public road. Here, also, are some mutilated sepulchral effigies of ancient abbots, crosses, &c., from which the inlaid brasses have been sacrilegiously purloined. On the right hand of the visitor, as he enters, is the ancient

Vestry, or sacristy, an oblong chamber, divided into two compartments, the second of which opens by a doorway into the North Transept. Closely adjoining this on the north, is

The Chapter-house, of the same form and dimensions as the vestry, but not subdivided. Farther again on the right is a large hall, with the remains of five central pillars that supported the arched stone roof, supposed to be the ancient

Hospitium, or guest-chamber, already described in these pages. On the east of this, and running parallel with it, are the remains of offices or apartments—probably dormitories—the precise use of which has not been ascertained. Beyond, eastward, lay the Cemetery. Adjoining the Hospitium on the west, and connecting it with the Refectory, are several small buildings, with the remains of other dormitories on the upper floor. Immediately adjoining this, on the west, is the

Refectory, a spacious hall, in which the brethren, as already described, sat at table. The Lectern, or pulpit-desk, at which a reader presided during meals, is still visible about the middle of the west side. From the refectory, a tourniquet-door, for the passage of viands only, communicated with the kitchen; and close to this is the dole, where the indigent and wayfaring poor were daily supplied with victuals and refreshments. The kitchen runs parallel with the cloisters, and the west entrance of the church, along the public road leading to the ferry.

The Scale annexed to the Plan of the Abbey—as shown by the woodcut—will enable the reader to ascertain, with tolerable accuracy, the dimensions of all the compartments named.

As a specimen of the marvellous connected with these ruins, we cannot resist introducing another characteristic

Legend.—A party of gentlemen—horresco referens—who had inspected the abbey, employed several labourers to dig in the orchard adjoining, in hopes of discovering some antiquities. Part of one day and the following night were spent in this employment, when at last they were successful, and two human skeletons were discovered. Next day the same party resolved to celebrate their discovery by a dinner in the abbey. But scarcely had they commenced their sacrilegious repast, when a thick darkness overspread the horizon; deep thunder raised its tremendous voice, and shook the surrounding hills; lightnings flashed

throughout the ruin in sheets of livid flame; hail, succeeded by torrents of rain, deluged the plain, and

“Peal on peal
Crashed horrible, convulsing earth and heaven!”

During this sudden and tremendous visitation, the indignant spirit of Strongbow—accompanied by the spectral forms of many whose death-sleep had been thus wantonly disturbed—arose from the grave, and fixed his eyes upon the petrified strangers. Then raising his gauntleted hand, he pointed to the abbey door—which at the sight had mysteriously opened—and sternly beckoned the impious visitors to depart! The awful signal was instantly obeyed; and some crawling, others trembling—all pale and speechless, the daring adventurers rushed from his presence, they knew not how, and fled they knew not whither; while the savoury viands left behind them were instantly swept over the abbey walls in a whirlwind.

The Engraved Views of Tinterne Abbey.

I.—The West Entrance, a beautiful specimen of Decorated Gothic; the principal feature of which is the great west window, of which all visitors and writers on this subject have expressed their unqualified admiration. The stonework of this magnificent feature is nearly entire; the five mullions, tall, slender, and elaborately moulded, retain their original forms; and, terminating in the rich flowing tracery that fills and completes the arch, appear as if they wanted nothing but the ancient painted glass to restore the window to its primitive splendour. The ivy inserting itself into every joint, and hanging in graceful festoons, seems more like artificial garlands woven in honour of a fête day, than as the sure emblem and evidence of dilapidation and decay. Beneath this window is the richly-carved double doorway leading into the nave. On the right hand is another window communicating with the southern aisle, surmounted by a window of three compartments, and two buttresses terminating in pinnacles, of which only one remains. On the left hand is the north aisle, in form and dimensions exactly corresponding with the former, but much less perfect. Closely adjoining this were the abbey cloisters, the remains of which have been noticed in a former page.

II.—The Vale of Tinterne, as it is seen from a point—in the woods covering the left bank of the Wye—called the Devil’s Pulpit. This engraving conveys a most correct, beautiful, and comprehensive view of the abbey, and its circumjacent scenery. In the backgrounds is seen the hill country stretching westward towards Monmouth. On the left, crowning an eminence that overlooks the village and abbey, stands the church of Chapel-hill, with the characteristic feature of an immense yew-tree expanding its gloomy branches over the cemetery. Beneath is seen the public road from Chepstow running westward, and branching off in the village to right and left; the latter branch running along the hills towards Raglan, and the former following the course of the Wye to Monmouth. To the right, under the wooded rocks which appear to overhang its channel, the Wye is seen making a curve like a horseshoe, so as to form a peninsula, the outer rim of which, as described in the text, is lined with houses that rise one above the other, and planted here and there with tall poplars, and refreshed with numerous springs and rivulets, that, after murmuring down the rocks, throw their crystal tribute into the Wye. Here the river is seen enlivened with passage-boats, by means of which a daily communication between the villages above and below the abbey is kept open for the conveyance of market produce, or the convenience of passengers.

In the foreground lies the glory of the scene—the abbey and its appendages—the latter much curtailed; but once, as history informs us, enclosing the goodly space of thirty-four acres. The view looks down upon the conventual church, showing the nave and transepts in their cruciform proportions, with the magnificent east window opening upon some rich productive orchards, the ground of which was consecrated in former times as the abbey cemetery. Stretching along the river eastward is a luxuriant tract of pasture land, called the Abbots’ Meadows, already described. Nothing can be more soothing and tranquil than this scene, embosomed, as it is, among sylvan landscapes, and bordered by a river whose smooth yet swift-flowing waters are heard in the calm summer evening like distant music.

“And ever, as the summer sun goes down,
From bank to bank, amidst yon leafy bower,
The woodland songsters trill harmonious notes;
Till every tree that crowns the verdant steep,
Or shades the stream, that flows in amber light,
Sends forth its melody.”

III.—From the Chancel, westward. This is justly considered to be the most imposing view in the whole abbey; and is that to which every stranger visiting the ruins is conducted at the close of his survey. The point from which it is taken, is under the area of the great tower, near the further angle of the north transept and chancel. Looking through the lofty arches that supported the central tower, it takes in the west window, the window of the north aisle, the nave, and on the right, the doorway leading into the cloisters—of which an engraving is here given—with the massive clustered pillars, lofty and delicately moulded arches, in which an airy lightness, combined with strength and solidity, strike the spectator with feelings of awe and admiration, to which it is hardly possible to give expression—

“Silence sublime, and stillness how profound;
Yet every arch, with clustered ivy hung,
And every column, as thou gazest round,
Seems to address thee in thy native tongue;
Telling how first these mighty structures rose,
And how they fell beneath their Vandal foes.”

In the centre are the two sepulchral slabs, already described in another portion of the text; and on the left, leaning against the base of one of the pillars, is a mutilated statue, supposed to be that of Roger Bigod, or Gilbert de Clare, as shown in the woodcut, page 41. In various parts of the chancel, choir, and transepts, as well as in the nave and aisles, many dilapidated fragments are collected in heaps; among which the visitor will distinguish pieces of elaborate carving, particularly some ingenious and fancifully sculptured bosses, the connecting ornaments of the richly-groined roof that once overhung this gorgeous temple, and echoed back the anthems of its assembled choir.

IV.—From the Ferry, on the opposite or left bank of the Wye. On the foreground is the landing-place, from which a road, or bridle-path, winding along the wooded heights, already noticed in our description of the ‘Devil’s Pulpit,’ presents many picturesque, and some romantic points of view. The river is here the boundary line between the counties of Monmouth and Gloucester, or, anciently, between England and South Wales. Directly opposite, and terminating the causeway leading up from the ferry, is an archway, the ancient watergate of the abbey. Through this gate the monastery received its supplies from the barges that daily ascended and descended the river, or lay at anchor under the protection of the abbey; for here, we were told, there is depth of water—which is increased at every tide—sufficient to float vessels of seventy tons burthen. The grove, which occupies the space between the water and the abbey walls, consists chiefly of apple and pear-trees, which form a continuous girdle of orchards round the abbey church, and are particularly luxuriant and productive, on the site of the ancient burial-ground. The ring of offices with which the abbey was originally enclosed on nearly three sides, has almost disappeared, leaving only the foundations, upon which, from time to time, mean hovels have been hastily thrown together—ill adapted for the health, comfort, or even convenience of human beings.

The prominent features of the abbey as seen from this point, and taken in detail are—the nave, terminating in the great west window, with its own five lancet-pointed windows rising above the trees; the north transept, part of the south, and two windows of the chancel.

Following the course of the river eastward, richly-wooded rocks are seen, closing the landscape, and commanding the minute and beautiful view of the “Vale of Tinterne,” already given as an illustration. All beyond the white sail on the stream is a scene of richly-wooded rocks on the left bank, and on the right a wide expanse of smooth and verdant meadows. The hills, immediately overlooking the abbey on the south, possess the same picturesque character as those opposite, but are enlivened by more frequent habitations, and with more traces of industry and cultivation. The ferry-house, close to the watergate, presents some features of antiquity; and stands, probably, on the old foundation of what was occupied by the abbot’s Charon of the olden time. A glance at the debris, under which some of the monastic buildings here lie half buried, suggests an idea that, with due permission and encouragement, antiquaries could hardly fail to discover excellent “diggings” in these purlieus. But thus far the prying archæologist has been regarded with suspicion and distrust, and condemned to look upon the antiquities of Tinterne as treasures laid up for the benefit of future generations.

V.—Doorway leading into the Cloisters.—This beautiful specimen of art is one of the very finest in the abbey. The elegance of the design is only surpassed by the elaborate taste and skill displayed in its execution. The clustered mouldings of the doorway; the wavy multifoil outline of the inner arch; the beautifully carved ornament that surrounds the whole like a riband of delicate lacework; the whole crowned with the symbolic trefoil resting on the apex of the arch, present a combination of features—all harmonizing, and all elaborately adjusted to one another—rarely to be met with even among the masterpieces of Decorated Gothic.

Looking through this doorway, the window in the distance is that of the southern aisle, through which are seen the woods on the opposite hill; and inside the walls the ivy is seen climbing in verdant masses along the arches and pillars of the nave. Under the broken steps, where the group of figures is represented, are the remains of sepulchral stone-slabs, covering the resting-place of the old abbots, and formerly inlaid with the symbols of their holy office, as

represented in the engraving. But the brasses have long since disappeared, and left only the empty grooves to which they had been so elaborately adjusted by the skilful artists of that day. Brasses, or Latten, are considered to be good illustrations of the architecture of their period, owing to the designs of canopies, crosiers, &c. delineated upon them. They are seldom to be met with in any reign prior to that of Edward the Second; nor did they become general till towards the close of the fourteenth century, when the effigies are commonly surmounted by arched canopies, ogee-shaped and crocketed, of the same kind of inlaid work elaborately engraven. These subsequently vary, according to the style of the age, and in general rather preceding than following it. Of the brasses, which—owing to the rank and character of its founder and benefactors, as well as its abbots and others—must have formed no inconsiderable feature in the decorations of Tinterne Abbey, not a fragment remains.

Where Latten marked the abbots’ grave,
And sculpture spread her trophies round it;
Rank weeds in wild luxuriance wave,
And mock the gaudy shrine that crowned it.
Here, they who for the Cross had died,
And they who led the way to glory—
Here mitred pomp, and martial pride,
Have not a stone to tell their story.

VI.—Doorway leading into the Sacristy.—This is a double doorway—a specimen of the Early English—divided by a moulded shaft, with a circular opening, or quatrefoil, over it. The outer arch is deeply ‘recessed,’ consisting of five or six successive shafts, or mouldings, on either side, without capitals, and meeting above at the centre of the arch. The inner arches are foliated, and the cusps richly fluted. Clasping this elegant and massive structure, the ivy has so incorporated itself with the masonry, that—massive as it is—art must gradually yield to that natural process which seems to make every root of ivy, if once insinuated between the jointed stones, act like a fulcrum for their dislodgment—

“Ha, ha!” laughs the Ivy, “let men uprear
Their ‘Castles and Abbeys,’ far and near;
Pile upon pile, let their fabrics rise,
Darkening the earth, and mocking the skies;
Lifting their turrets so haughtily—
Boasting their grandeur—but what care I?
Buttress and bastion, cloister and hall—
I conquer them all—I conquer them all!”

VII.—The Refectory.—Of this building enough remains to show, that, in their palmy days, the Abbots of Tinterne had a truly noble hall for their private and state entertainments. Of refectories in general, some account has been already given at page 51 of this volume. Of the style of architecture employed in this dining-hall, the numerous windows, with their mullioned partitions, tall shafts, and foliated arches, face-shafts, and corbel heads along the walls, from which sprang the lofty groined vault that covered and connected the whole, present a tolerably distinct picture.

“Along the roof a maze of mouldings slim,
Like veins that o’er the hand of lady wind,
Embraced in closing arms the key-stone trim,
With hieroglyphs and cyphers quaint combined,
The riddling art that charmed the Gothic mind.”

With regard to the minor details, we may notice the dole, a small double aperture, near the archway on the left; and on the opposite side, is another door through which the dishes were handed in from the kitchen. Near the dole is a low-arched doorway in the eastern wall, showing the passage by which communication was kept up with the adjoining offices, the hospitium, the locutorium, and the dormitories. The situation of the reading-desk, or lectern, will be seen by referring to the new plan of the abbey here introduced; and this closes our notice of the engraved illustrations.

“On the whole,” says Grose, summing up his observations on Tinterne, “though this monastery is undoubtedly light and elegant, it wants that gloomy solemnity so essential to religious ruins; it wants those yawning vaults and dreary recesses, which strike the beholder with religious awe—make him almost shudder at entering them, and call into his mind all the tales of the nursery. Here, at one cast of the eye, the whole is comprehended, nothing is left for the spectator to guess or explore; and this defect is increased by the ill-placed neatness of the poor people who show the building, and by whose absurd labour the ground is covered over by a turf, as even and trim as that of a bowling-green, which gives the building more the air of an artificial ruin in a garden, than that of an ancient decayed abbey.”

“How unlike,” he adds, “the beautiful description of the poet!—

‘Half-buried there lies many a broken bust,
And obelisk and urn, o’erthrown by time,
And many a cherub here descends in dust,
From the rent roof and portico sublime;
Where reverend shrines in Gothic grandeur stood,
The nettle or the noxious nightshade spreads;
And ashlings, wafted from the neighbouring wood,
Through the worn turrets wave their trembling heads.’”

These objections have been repeated by other writers of unquestionable taste; but we may venture to predict, that among the numerous strangers who annually resort to these deserted shrines, few will return home without expressions of unqualified admiration of “Tinterne, as it is.” The care employed by its noble owner in arresting the progress of decay, is creditable to his taste and reverence for antiquity. Had these ruins been consigned, as some would have had them, to the wasting hand of time, their vaulted wonders would long ere now have fallen piecemeal into the area beneath; but wherever a stone is observed to be losing its hold, the hand of art is immediately applied to restore it to its original place: and thus, what might have passed away in a few inclement seasons, has been propped up and secured for the delight of many generations to come.

And lo, these mouldering fragments to sustain,
Her graceful network nature’s hand hath hung;
Bound every arch with a supporting chain,
And round each wall her living verdure flung;
And o’er the floor that sepulchres the dead—
The saints and heroes of departed years;
The flower of memory lifts its modest head,
And morning sheds her tributary tears.—W.B.

Poetical Votaries.—Having quoted so largely from chroniclers and other prose writers in the preceding pages, we must not quit the subject of Tinterne Abbey, without selecting a few stanzas from those minstrels who have sought and found inspiration on the spot. Wordsworth, from whose poem on the Wye we have already quoted, addresses the following

Lines to a Cistercian Monastery.

‘Here man more purely lives, less oft doth fall,
More promptly rises, walks with nicer heed,
More safely rests, dies happier; is freed
Earlier from cleansing fires, and gains withal
A brighter crown.’ On yon Cistercian wall
That confident assurance may be read;
And, to like shelter, from the world have fled
Increasing multitudes. The potent call
Doubtless shall cheat full oft the heart’s desire;
Yet, while the rugged age on pliant knee
Vows to rapt Fancy humble fealty,
A gentler life spreads round the holy spires;
Where’er they rise the sylvan waste retires,
And aëry harvests crown the fertile lea.

Tinterne Abbey on the Wye.

Sudden the change; at once to tread
The grass-grown mansions of the dead.
Awful to feeling, where, immense,
Rose ruin’d grey magnificence;
The fair wrought shaft all ivy-bound,
The tow’ring arch with foliage crowned,
That trembles on its brow sublime,
Triumphant o’er the spoils of time.
There, grasping all the eye beheld,
Thought into mingling anguish swell’d,
And checked the wild excursive wing,
O’er dust or bones of priest or king;
Or rais’d some Strongbow warrior’s ghost,
To shout before his banner’d host.
But all was still. The chequered floor
Shall echo to the step no more;
No airy roof the strain prolong,
Of vesper chant or choral song—
Tinterne! thy name shall hence sustain
A thousand raptures in my brain;
Joys, full of soul, all strength, all eye,
That cannot fade, that cannot die.—Bloomfield.

Evening at Tinterne Abbey.

A pilgrim, at the vesper hour,
I stood by Tinterne’s hallowed tower;
While o’er the walls, in golden hue,
The setting sun its farewell threw;
Then, paling slowly, flushed and fled,
Like a smile from the cheek of the recent dead.
* * * *
’Tis night—on the ivy-mantled walls
The shadows deepen, and darkness falls;
And forth from his roost, in the fretted aisle,
The solemn owl wheels round the pile;
But no lighted shrine, no vesper-song,
Is seen, or heard, these aisles among;
For hymnless now the day returns,
And voiceless sets on their nameless urns;
Nor laud, nor chant, nor matin chime,
Retard the fleeting steps of time.
* * * *
The Shrine, from which the anthem rushed,
When evening glowed, or morning blushed,
Like them, who reared the pile on high—
A landmark pointing to the sky;
Like them, by slow and sure decay,
That shrine is crumbling o’er their clay.—W.B., 1848.

The Abbey by Moonlight.

I tread the moonlit abbey! Oh, my soul,
How nobly art thou struggling to be free,
Spurning the temple’s, and the world’s control,
And feeling most inadequate to thee
The loftiest dome, the grandest scenery;
O’er views that would oppress thee or appal,
Rising, like light bark o’er the mounting sea;
And where, if weak or mortal thou wouldst fall,
Expanding to survey and compass more than all!

Palace of Piety! Devotion here
Should wear a crownèd angel’s robe of white,
And antedate the ardours of a sphere,
Where all is tranquil as this noon of night!
The moon—the regal moon—intensely bright,
Shines through the roseate window of the west;
Each shaft, an artificial stalactite
Of pendent stone, with slumber seems oppressed,
Or with a charmèd dream of peaceful rapture blessed.

And through thy lofty arch, a single star
Is gazing from a depth of spotless blue,
As if to learn how soft thy splendours are,
And feel them deeply, as I fain would do!
While now supine upon thy pave of dew
I let thy loveliness my soul pervade,
And pass with unimpeded influence through
Its quiet depths, like moonlight through thy shade,
To haunt with beauty still that shrine of hopes decayed.

Forgive me, abbey of the watered vale—
Forgive that, when I feel my spirit swell
With an unwonted energy, I fail
To hymn thy desolated glories well!
Not yet the chrysalis has burst its shell—
Not yet expanded its immortal wings;
The restless rudiments of vast powers tell
The soul a deathless thing; from earth she springs,
But fast and feebly falls, the while of thee she sings.
J. C. Earle, St. Edmund’s Hall, Oxford.

Tinterne Vesper-Hymn.

Like crimson on the dimpled Wye
Sleeps the glowing summer sky;
O’er the landscape, widely thrown,
Belted rock, and mountain cone;
Hamlet, tower, and haunted stream,
Are basking in the vesper-beam;
And holy friars, robed in white,
Cross them in the waning light—Ave Maria!

Now, along the abbey walls,
Soft the purple gloaming falls;
Aloft, on every turret’s height,
In the dim and doubtful light,
Here retiring, there advancing,
Weeds are waving, wings are glancing,
And yon effigies of stone
Seem to hail the vesper-tone—Ave Maria!

Deeper yet, and deeper still,
From winding stream, and wooded hill,
Shadowy cliff and rippling weir,
Nature’s music fills the ear;
Notes of mingling praise and prayer
Float along the solemn air,
Where, from cloistered arches dim,
Swells the everlasting hymn—Ave Maria!

Hark, ’tis midnight! but, unsleeping,
Here their faithful vigil keeping;
Pale white friars raise again,
In lengthened chant, the solemn strain!
Hark! throughout the sacred dwelling,
High the mingled notes are swelling;
Angels, stooping from the sky,
Bear the sacrifice on high—Ave Maria!—W. B. 1849.