When the monastic system was introduced into the West, this was its leading and characteristic feature, and the same spirit which had selected the inhospitable island of Iona, induced the monk who issued thence for the conversion of Northumberland, to prefer the bleak sands of Lindesfarne to the present valleys of the adjacent continent.
It would be needless also to dwell upon the advantages derived from monastic establishments during the darker periods of history—their preservation of literature and religion—the solace they afforded to the way-farer and the pilgrim—the asylum they furnished to the poor, the sick, the impotent, and the aged—the influence which they exerted in alleviating, where they could not prevent, the various evils incident to a barbarous age—the peaceful arts which they cultivated, and especially that which enabled them to raise those august and sumptuous edifices, which still remain the grandest examples of architectural skill, and defy all approaches of the moderns to a parity of excellence.
The exercise of these and kindred virtues ought to redeem the monastic institution, when reviewed in a candid and equitable spirit, from the unmeasured obloquy and censure which the license and misrule of some of its branches in later times have drawn down upon it.
There is no doubt, however, that the very virtues, which originally inspired awe and attracted esteem, tended, by a natural process, frequently renewed, and always with similar results, to the gradual corruption and final overthrow of the monastic system.
Long before the Reformation the elements of discontent had been at work, and the clamour against the monasteries had been gradually acquiring force and fixedness, when in the person of
“the majestic lord
Who broke the bonds of Rome,”
was found a fitting instrument for the expression of the popular will.
In the year 1536, the lesser monasteries were doomed to destruction by the execrable tyrant who wielded the sceptre of England, and the Priory of Holy Island was included in the general wreck.
From that hour it dates its gradual decay and present state of irretrievable ruin. Sir Walter Scott has thus described it in “Marmion:”