DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61904#0225
RIEVAUX ABBEY.
213
miflals and breviaries in the moft exquifite caligraphy, and
embellifhed them with equally exquifite paintings ; it was not
alone in writing hiftories of faints and kings that they employed
their time; nor in carving beautiful cups and crucifixes for
their altars; nor in working gorgeous copes and chafubles; but
they extended their attention to all the more rude and matter-
of-facft arts and purfuits of ordinary life. They had farms and
mills, and cider-prefles, and fiftieries with weirs and traps.
Some of them, as Roger Bacon, Bifhop Groftefte of Lincoln,
Dunftan, and others, dived deep into the myfteries of chemiftry,
and other more occult arts, and nothing is better afcertained
than that out of the quiet of a monaftery came forth the
thunder of gunpowder. They had, too, thefe lt lazy monks,”
it now appears clearly, their mines and fmelting-houfes and
bloomeries. Not only does this huge heap of flags anddrofles
bear teftimony to the fa<St, but at Ayton Priory, and in the
Forge Valley, near Scarborough, remain the veftiges of thofe
mining and iron-fmelting concerns in which they were cut
fhort by the fummary commifiioners of Henry VIII. We
are informed by our friend J. G. Baker, of Thirfk, in York-
ihire, that a rock of from feven to twelve feet thick, running
through a range of hills near Scarborough, which one of thefe
monaftic brotherhoods worked before the diflblution of their
houfe, is now again being worked, and promifes to yield
twenty thoufand tons of iron ore to the acre, producing thirty
per cent, of metal, probably the beginning only of one of the
largeft iron-producing tradts in the country. Truly thefe
“ lazy monks” had their redeeming qualities ! They were not
all, it would appear, “ tarred with the fame brufh.” The
monaftic fyftem, though not the moft natural or wife of inftitu-
tions, was in fadt cenfurable not fo much for its inftitution as
for its corruption. It was the light of dark and barbarous
213
miflals and breviaries in the moft exquifite caligraphy, and
embellifhed them with equally exquifite paintings ; it was not
alone in writing hiftories of faints and kings that they employed
their time; nor in carving beautiful cups and crucifixes for
their altars; nor in working gorgeous copes and chafubles; but
they extended their attention to all the more rude and matter-
of-facft arts and purfuits of ordinary life. They had farms and
mills, and cider-prefles, and fiftieries with weirs and traps.
Some of them, as Roger Bacon, Bifhop Groftefte of Lincoln,
Dunftan, and others, dived deep into the myfteries of chemiftry,
and other more occult arts, and nothing is better afcertained
than that out of the quiet of a monaftery came forth the
thunder of gunpowder. They had, too, thefe lt lazy monks,”
it now appears clearly, their mines and fmelting-houfes and
bloomeries. Not only does this huge heap of flags anddrofles
bear teftimony to the fa<St, but at Ayton Priory, and in the
Forge Valley, near Scarborough, remain the veftiges of thofe
mining and iron-fmelting concerns in which they were cut
fhort by the fummary commifiioners of Henry VIII. We
are informed by our friend J. G. Baker, of Thirfk, in York-
ihire, that a rock of from feven to twelve feet thick, running
through a range of hills near Scarborough, which one of thefe
monaftic brotherhoods worked before the diflblution of their
houfe, is now again being worked, and promifes to yield
twenty thoufand tons of iron ore to the acre, producing thirty
per cent, of metal, probably the beginning only of one of the
largeft iron-producing tradts in the country. Truly thefe
“ lazy monks” had their redeeming qualities ! They were not
all, it would appear, “ tarred with the fame brufh.” The
monaftic fyftem, though not the moft natural or wife of inftitu-
tions, was in fadt cenfurable not fo much for its inftitution as
for its corruption. It was the light of dark and barbarous