It was about this time that the Bishop of Hereford, then Prior of Llanthony, the better to rescue them from a gross insult and trespass by a powerful neighbour, and accommodate their numbers to the scanty means of subsistence within the Welsh border, drew off the major part of the canons from Llanthony, and gave them an asylum in his own palace.
[After describing, in graphic language, the distractions of the country, the robbery, violence, murder, and rapine, that were daily perpetrated in their immediate vicinity, and which threatened the very existence of the brotherhood, the flagrant desecration that immediately led to their removal to Hereford is thus recorded:—Est præterea et aliud quod animos innocentium plus omnibus hiis in fixorio angustiarum acerbiùs terrebat. Unus namque ex vicinis Wallensibus inimicorum minis et jaculis undignè impeditus, cùm nullus ei tutus ad latendum vel evadendum locus superesset, c̄ omni domo sua, ad Lanthoniam convolavit; hanc sibi constituens domum Refugii ut salvus fieret, quem inimici odio inexorabili persequentes non longè ab atrio in insidiis sedentes vigilantiùs opportunitatem observabant, quando in eum casu aliquo tandem oblatum irarum virus evomere prævalerent. Ipse verò in interiores officinas, quò securior redderetur, cum suis et ancillis, se ingessit; ità ut ubi Fratres reficere consueverant, ibi mulieres choros ducere, et cætera muliebria, ignominiosè tractare non erubescerent!
Quid facient milites Christi tot hostium cuneis tarn atrociter vallati! Ecce foris pugnæ, et intus timores! Non enim possunt ab intus fratres divinis officiis, præ ingratorum hostium insolentia, consueta veneratione interesse: Luget Martha quia pascere non permittitur: dolet Maria quia sanctæ refectionis epulis privatur; et præterea nimis timet ne in infirmioribus membris suis alicujus culpæ dehonestetur.]
The result of this, after two years’ residence at Hereford, was the foundation of the new monastery at Gloucester; but which it was at first intended should be only a cell, dependent on the Mother-Church on the Honddy. But inured to this species of daily warfare—familiar with the dangers of their position, and strong in the belief that they were objects of regard in the eyes of Him who would assuredly carry them, as he did the faithful of old, through all their troubles—they are said to have left the scene of their trials and privations with reluctance; and to have declared that the gardens of Hereford, and the vineyards of Gloucester, had no attractions for them like the barren rocks of “Ewias and the Honddy:”—
And when at last these holy men,
With lingering step and slow,
Had wound their way along the glen
Where Honddy’s[337] waters flow,
They halted—gazed—and heaved a sigh,
And dropt a parting tear—
“Oh, never till this hour,” they cry,
“Was Ewias’ vale so dear!
Through richer lands our feet may roam—
But long our hearts will pine,
And feel they have no earthly home
But Honddy’s hallowed shrine!
Oh, Blessed Mary, shield us well!
And, when the storm is past,
Grant we beside that hallowed cell
May lay our bones at last.”
The prayer was heard—their labours o’er,
Behold their nameless bier,
Beneath the Chancel’s grassy floor,
Where pilgrims drop the tear!