By the Bev. Canon Jackson, F.S.A. 



43 



stone, made to last for centuries. I remember seeing an old monastic 

 farm-house taken down in which the roof-beams were neither more 

 nor less than entire oak-trees with the very outside bark still upon 

 them : only roughly squared to fit their place. There are also still to 

 be seen in this county barns built by them, wbich (if barns may so be 

 called) , are quite royal in their dimensions and architecture ; one at 

 Bradford-on-Avon in particular is worth going to see. Even the 

 spring of water that supplied their house had some solid building to 

 protect it. Of this there is a specimen at Lacock, another at Monkton 

 Farley, another at Edington near Trowbridge. So, if good durable 

 building shews good landlords, certainly the abbots were such. 



Did they make good use of their money in other respects ? Did 

 they spend it on their dress ? Certainly not. Your Benedictine 

 was content to walk about in a plain black loose gown of stuff 

 reaching down to his heels, with a cowl or hood of the same, to serve 

 as an umbrella ; with a scapulary, or cape of the same stuff, over the 

 shoulder : under the gown a white habit made of flannel. The 

 furniture of their room again was of the very simplest kind. 

 They were not allowed to make purses for themselves, and leave 

 comfortable nest-eggs to their relatives, in the shape of Three per 

 cents, or Railway debentures. They had no jointures to provide : 

 no younger son to put out into professions, no long school or college 

 bills from Eton or Oxford : no young damsels to be highly accom- 

 plished : no country-houses to be filled with costly pictures, statues 

 and bric-a-brac, no race-horses, four-horse drags or gaudy liveries : 

 so that not having calls of this kind for their money what did they 

 do with it ? They built with it Tintern, Fountains Abbey, Glas- 

 tonbury, and Malmesbury. 



In fact it was much the same case with them as the Latin poet 



Horace says it was in Rome, in its best days. 



" Privatus illis census erat brevis : 

 Commune magnum." 



That is : " in private individual fortune and expense they were 

 frugal, in what concerned the public, large and diginified." We 

 should deal most unjustly with the memory of these men, if we over- 

 looked the fact, that though our views in religion may be different 



