Chapter 6

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.[143]

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 thepopulation, 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.

CRANMERdeplored “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.[144]

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 tobetter uses, and the unthrifty religious persons so spending the same, to be compelled to reform their lives.”[145]

Besides that at Canterbury, already noticed,[146]“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 peopleDavid-Darvel-Gatheren, which, according to an old legend or prophecy, was one day to fire a wholeforest. 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 wholeforest. 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.”[147]By frequent spectacles like this, the minds of the people were brutalized to a degree previously unknown in England.[148]

Fromthese 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 numerousexterior 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.[149]

INaddition 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 theScriptorium, 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 ofSt. Johnin golden letters with his own hands.

The Antiquariiin 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, thatAntiquariiwere 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 theAbbot. 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, calledBrodiatores, 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.”[150]

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 Gilbertinerule prohibited the employment of hired writers—more probably, as Mr. Fosbroke thinks, limners. “At St. Alban’s, however, suchlimners, 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, orlimner of a monke.”—Eclogue 2.[151]

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.”

Bookbindingwas 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 theDissolution, 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 ofPoems, 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.[152]

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.[153]Music, says Giraldus, was so prevalent in the middle age, that evenwhistlingbecame 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. SupposingBiblie, 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 thePrecentorof the priory of that cathedral, for retaining an English Testament,[154]

in disobedience to the general injunction of Cardinal Wolsey, to deliver up these prohibited books to the bishops of the respective dioceses.[155]

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.[156]In the monastic libraries the books were contained in painted presses or almeries. In theAbbatiallibraries, 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.[157]

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.[158]Coryatt saw a stuffed crocodile in an abbey”—the one solitary specimen, perhaps, of Natural History.[159]

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, todefendhis religion. If it be not permitted to read the poets and heathen authors, because they do not speak ofChrist, whom they did not know, with how much more reason ought we to prohibit heretical works? Yet the defenders of theFaithstudiously 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.”[160]

Monastic Wit.—Speaking of the wit and humour that often enliven theotherwise 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 binUnto a fest, where meet a public rout;Where those that are without would fain getin,And those that are within would fain getout.

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 aTiger,hart,ostrich,mermaid,ass, andswan; the initial letters of which make the name of the founder, T h o m a s.[161]

Abbey Seals.—That of Tinterne Abbey, as already noticed in this volume, page 75, is imperfect.[162]Of ecclesiastical and monastic seals, those of aroundform 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. ThePatron saintsubduing 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.[163]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 wereoften 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’sBajulus, 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.[164]

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.

CISTERCIANabbeys, according to Giraldus Cambrensis, avoided all the bad consequences ofcells, in the irregularities of their inhabitants, byhaving 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.[165]

Inreference to the introduction of Cistercian monks into England, we annexthe following from an old Chronicler:—“About this time,” says he, “by means of oneStephen Hardyng, a munke of Sherburne, an Englyshe man of the order of Sisteaux, or whyte munkes, had his beginning in the wildernesse ofCystery, 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.] “Thisorderwas after brought into Englande by one calledWalter Espeke, that founded the firste abbey of yᵗ religion atRyuall[Rivaux], about the yere of Grace xi.c.xxxi., the which shulde be about the xxxi. yere of the firsteHenry, 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 ofPolychronicon.”[166]

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 thecaput 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,”[167]it becamenecessary 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.”[168]

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.”[169]TheScriptoriumof 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.[170]

The pavementlately discovered in the Abbey Church ofTinterne, anddescribed 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-pavementhere 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.[171]

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 theClareandBigodshields. 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.[172]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.”[173]

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.”

Itwas 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, denominatedSeats; 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 seatsTinternewas 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 sevenA.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 ownnoteswiththose 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!”[174]

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 theabbeyembosomed 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 seenthrough 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:—

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