William of Llanthony—the warrior monk already noticed—appears to have had followers in his penance; for Peter Damian mentions a man who wore an iron corslet next his skin, had iron rings around his limbs, so that he performed with pain and difficulty his Metaneas, or penitential inclinations, and very often dashed his hands upon the pavement. In “Strutt’s Dresses” is a female pilgrim lying on the ground, apparently to perform this penance of slapping the ground. The lady of Sir Thomas More, in reply to her husband, who counselled her to desist from scolding her servants during Lent, replied that she wore a “Monk’s girdle,” and therefore had nothing to fear.[343] The virtues of the monk’s girdle, it appears, were equivalent to those of the cowl, already alluded to in our notice of Tinterne.
The revenues possessed by Llanthony appear to have been very considerable at the outset; but through negligence or mismanagement—or rather by the prejudicial influence of a rival abbey—they fell off gradually, and at the dissolution were valued at a sum[344] considerably less than those of Tinterne Abbey.
When we read, in the Monastic Annals, of entire districts, towns, and villages being conveyed to monasteries, we are surprised at the boundless liberality of the founders. But when we reflect that, at the time of these princely endowments, the land, in many instances, was neither cultivated nor peopled, the question of prodigal generosity is materially altered. At the period of transition, as it may be termed, when it passed from the hands of the feudal Baron to the Abbot or Prior, the products of the consecrated territory were often nothing more than wood and pasture; nor, until it had been long subjected to the system of agriculture, so generally practised and taught by the monks, was it brought into a state fit for the sustenance of man. If we compare—so far as written documents enable us—the state of agriculture and its population, when these lands were transferred to the Abbot, with the condition they were in when taken from him, we shall see very clearly to what a vast amount they had improved under monastic management; and how much cause there was to applaud the stewardship of the venerable monks, in whose hands the physical aspect of the country underwent an entire change. Theirs were truly the arts of peace. Obliged, by the rule of their order, to plant their convents in sterile and uncultivated wilds, where intercourse with more favoured districts was neither easy nor expedient, circumstances required that they should, like the apostles and fathers of old, depend for daily bread on the labour of their hands. While some went to prayer, others went to work; and thus the blessing of heaven and the bounty of earth were believed to descend upon them, and abide with them, in those sacred habitations which had sprung up under their hands, and exercised on everything around them a mild and harmonizing influence.
This spirit of improvement, however, varied according to the different Orders of which the great monastic brotherhood was composed. To those who—in imitation of the Baptist—desired to limit their physical wants to a diet of “locusts and wild honey,” or to whatever the unaided hand of Nature might place within their reach, were content to consume their days in fasting and prayer. And observing—as he probably did—that whenever wealth and luxury had increased in religious houses, strict discipline had as certainly relaxed, the Monk of Llanthony appears to have preferred the desert to any of those “seductive landscapes” into which it might have been, in some degree, converted by means of industry and manual labour. He had also before his eyes the baneful effects produced by the luxurious indulgences of New Llanthony upon the minds of the absent brothers, whose piety, that had preserved its fervour amongst rocks and glens, became vapid and lukewarm when transplanted to the rich landscapes of the Severn. Where riches abounded, “pride and license did much more abound.” It was better to continue a poor but pious friar on the banks of the Honddy, than become a luxurious wine-bibbing canon in the Vale of Gloucester.
The space, therefore, in which the most distant resemblance to ancient cultivation can be traced is comparatively small. It was, perhaps, under a strong conviction of great piety and great property being in their very nature antagonistic, that the “Province of Berkeley,” which the King had offered to the Canons of Llanthony, was so firmly declined. The vineyards, which it is understood were then common on the banks of the Severn, were not likely to fortify the mind against temptation, or reconcile the brotherhood to the abstinence and austerities of conventual life. But when he speaks of the tract as a “province,” we can easily imagine that, fertile as the native soil undoubtedly was, only a small portion of it was under cultivation; so that the annual revenue bore an exceedingly small proportion to its extent in acres. And so it was with the almost innumerable tracts of Church lands in every part of the kingdom; for until they were brought into cultivation and crop, their value was merely nominal. And how much is due to the skill and perseverance of the monks in the encouragement of agriculture? There is scarcely a hill or valley in the kingdom, from which their judicious exercise of plough, and spade, and mattock, did not produce its annual return in the necessaries of life. And hence the revenues, that in the course of years and centuries flowed in upon them, were the legitimate result of a liberal and vigilant economy. We are too apt to forget, whilst reckoning up the vast territories bequeathed from age to age to the church by penitent benefactors, that these same tracts were, in many instances, of little or no current value to their original owners; and that it was only by passing them into more skilful and industrious hands, that they became actually appreciable, as corn lands, orchards, and vineyards.
The Canons of Llanthony, in their local position, had neither the advantages of a fertile soil, nor the acquired habits, nor obligations of Rule, which rendered its cultivation imperative. Their revenues were drawn from a distance—some from remote parts in Ireland. But in their immediate neighbourhood, the monks had a brook and enclosed ponds that produced fish; forests that bred herds of deer, hares, and wild fowl; while patches of garden, orchard, and rye-field, supplied their table with that allowance of fruits and vegetables, herbs and roots, and coarse bread, which formed the daily items of their scanty fare. But when a stranger of note or a noble pilgrim arrived at the gate, the Prior’s table assumed the appearance of more than frugal hospitality; and all that forest or river could furnish for the entertainment of the honoured guest was liberally supplied.[345] As an established
Sanctuary—from which even the greatest offenders were not excluded—we have already noticed the shame and desecration inflicted upon Llanthony by a powerful native, who in the hour of despair had fled to its gate for shelter. To this disastrous visit no opposition could be offered. The sanctuary of St. John was alike available to all—to the guilty as well as to the innocent. And if it was too frequently a refuge for those who had set all laws at defiance, it was happily still more so to the sick and the friendless; to the helpless victim of oppression, who from the horns of the altar appealed to heaven for redress; and to the penitent, who could find no escape from the snares of evil associates, but in the confessional and the cloister. It had been a difficult task, in such circumstances, to discriminate between the claims of those who, in their distress, flew to the sanctuary—between great criminals and true penitents; and therefore it was better the gate should be open alike to all, than that one sincere penitent should be driven back into a world which, in the bitter hours of remorse, he had resolved to abandon. In such institutions there was a gentle union of wisdom and mercy, which the refinement of later times has done much to loosen, and little to perpetuate.
The Abbey Church from the East.
Of Llanthony, as it now appears, the following sketch is from the pen of a recent visitor; and the contrast is picturesque and striking:—