“It is a remarkable circumstance,” he continues, “or rather a miracle, concerning Llanthony, that although it is on every side surrounded by lofty mountains, not stony or rocky, but of a soft nature, and covered with grass, yet Parian stones are frequently found there, and are called Freestones, from the facility with which they admit of being cut and polished; and with these the church is beautifully built. It is also wonderful, that when, after a diligent search, all the stones have been removed from the mountains, and no more can be found; yet, upon another search, a few days afterwards, they reappear in greater quantities to those who seek them.”
After some farther remarks on the manners of the monastic orders, the venerable author thus beautifully concludes:--“In these temperate regions I have obtained, according to the usual expression, a place of dignity, but no great omen of future pomp or riches; and possessing a small residence near the castle of Brecheinoc [Brecknock?], well adapted to literary pursuits, and to the contemplation of _eternity_,[327] I envy not the riches of Crœsus; happy and contented with that mediocrity, which I prize far beyond all the perishable and transitory things of this world.”
So far the monk of Llanthony--whose partiality is very excusable; but, unfortunately, the <g>act</g> or charter of Edward IV., uniting the two abbeys, gives a different colouring to the transactions between the two abbeys--mother and daughter. It recites that, owing to the depredations committed on the convent by the neighbouring inhabitants, and the frequent removal of the priors and other members of the convent, the religious functions were negligently performed, and acts of charity and hospitality to strangers no longer exercised: Also, that as John Adams, the prior, had profusely squandered away the revenues of the church, maintaining only four canons besides himself, who paid no attention to the holy duties of the establishment: And whereas all due regard and reverence were paid to the sacred offices of the church by the members of the monastery of new Llanthony near Gloucester, the king hereby grants all the lands--both in England, Wales, and Ireland--now appertaining to the convent of Llanthony in Wales, to the prior of the convent of Llanthony near Gloucester, to have and to hold for ever, on the payment of the fine of three hundred marks, and on condition that he maintains an establishment--dative and removable at will--of a prior and four canons, as the mother-church, for the purpose of performing religious service and mass for the souls of its founders. “Thus,” continues our author,[328] “in the short period of thirty years, we see the simple chapel of St. David transmuted into a spacious and elegant abbey; that same building nearly deserted, and another, still more magnificent, erected and translated from the solitary banks of the little river Hodni, to the rich and luxurious shores of the Severn.”