Tintern Abbey, though one of the oldest of the Cistercian communities in this country, was never famous either for its wealth, or the number of its brethren; and at the dissolution it contained only thirteen monks, supported by a rental of between two and three hundred pounds at the highest calculation. { 158} It was founded in 1131 by Walter de Clare, and dedicated to the Virgin Mary; but the endowments were greatly increased by Gilbert de Strongbow, lord of Striguil and Chepstow, and afterwards earl of Pembroke. The religious colony consisted of Cistercians, otherwise called White Monks, introduced into England only three years before, where they formed an establishment at Waverley in Surrey. These brethren spread so luxuriantly, however, that in the reign of Henry VIII. there were thirty-six greater, and thirty-nine lesser monasteries, and twenty-six nunneries, of their rule.
The founder of the church was Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk; and it would appear that the choir was finished and consecrated before the rest of the building was complete, a circumstance not unusual at that time. The consecration took place in 1268; and in the body of the church the architecture is of a style long subsequent. The remains of the church are now the only interesting parts of the ruin, at least as a picture: and they are in fact what is called “Tintern Abbey;” although there are still fragments remaining here and there of the other parts of the pile. The church was built in the regular cathedral form; with a nave, north and south aisles, transept and choir, and a tower which stood in the centre.
Complete as the demolition is, there are at least vestiges, even in the most ruinous parts, which explain the original form, and even most of the details of the edifice. The very effects of time, as may be well supposed, are here among the principal advantages. The broken outlines, the isolated columns, the roofless walls, are all adjuncts of the picturesque; but added to these, there are the curtains, the canopies, the chaplets, coronals, festoons, of ivy, mosses and lichens, which give as much effect to a ruin, as rich draperies do to naked walls.
The tiles which formed the flooring have been removed; and a carpet of smooth turf laid down, on which fragments of columns, monuments, statues, and sculptures are scattered. This of course is not entirely the doing of time; but art is not displayed obtrusively enough to offend. A ruined edifice, it should be observed, although this is frequently forgotten by critics, is a work of man and nature _conjointly_; and the traces, therefore, of taste or ingenuity are not to be condemned, as if these were exercised in shaping a cliff or amending a cataract.