The Village Of Hurley, Five Minutes' Walk From The Lock, Is
As Old A Little Spot As There Is On
The river, dating, as it does, to
quote the quaint phraseology of those dim days, "from the times of King
Sebert and King Offa." Just past the weir (going up) is Danes' Field,
where the invading Danes once encamped, during their march to
Gloucestershire; and a little further still, nestling by a sweet corner
of the stream, is what is left of Medmenham Abbey.
The famous Medmenham monks, or "Hell Fire Club," as they were commonly
called, and of whom the notorious Wilkes was a member, were a fraternity
whose motto was "Do as you please," and that invitation still stands over
the ruined doorway of the abbey. Many years before this bogus abbey,
with its congregation of irreverent jesters, was founded, there stood
upon this same spot a monastery of a sterner kind, whose monks were of a
somewhat different type to the revellers that were to follow them, five
hundred years afterwards.
The Cistercian monks, whose abbey stood there in the thirteenth century,
wore no clothes but rough tunics and cowls, and ate no flesh, nor fish,
nor eggs. They lay upon straw, and they rose at midnight to mass. They
spent the day in labour, reading, and prayer; and over all their lives
there fell a silence as of death, for no one spoke.
A grim fraternity, passing grim lives in that sweet spot, that God had
made so bright!
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