In one of the numerous expeditions by which the spirit of retaliation was kept up, and by which the religious houses were harassed and plundered, a soldier of the English army writes--“We lie here watching, praying, fasting, and freezing! We _watch_ in dread of the Welsh, who beat up our quarters every night; we _pray_ for a safe passage homeward; we _fast_, for hardly have we any food, the halfpenny loaf being raised to fivepence; and we _freeze_ for want of clothing, having only a linen tent to keep out the cold!” If such was the penance done by an officer of the “victorious army,” great must have been the sufferings endured by those who had to supply the “loaf,” as the monks of Llanthony had to do, either in substance or in coin. While the Abbey was yet faintly struggling to recover a healthy activity in its affairs, its temporal revenues, and spiritual offices, so great a dearth occurred all over Wales, that the Bishop of St. David’s is said to have died of grief; the Bishop of Llandaff to have been stricken blind; while the Bishops of Bangor and St. Asaph, on their sees being rendered utterly destitute, were reduced to the necessity of supplicating alms. The bondage and destitution of the Welsh at this period--the evils of want and war--are thus expressed by an old writer:--“The harp of the churchman is changed into sorrow and lamentation; the glory of our proud and ancient nobility is faded away.” It was about this time that the Bishop of Hereford, then Prior of Llanthony, the better to rescue them from a gross insult and trespass by a powerful neighbour, and accommodate their numbers to the scanty means of subsistence within the Welsh border, drew off the major part of the canons from Llanthony, and gave them an asylum in his own palace. [After describing, in graphic language, the distractions of the country, the robbery, violence, murder, and rapine, that were daily perpetrated in their immediate vicinity, and which threatened the very existence of the brotherhood, the flagrant desecration that immediately led to their removal to Hereford is thus recorded:--Est præterea et aliud quod animos innocentium plus omnibus hiis in fixorio angustiarum acerbiùs terrebat. Unus namque ex vicinis Wallensibus inimicorum minis et jaculis undignè impeditus, cùm nullus ei tutus ad latendum vel evadendum locus superesset, [=c] omni domo sua, ad <g>Lanthoniam</g> convolavit; hanc sibi constituens domum Refugii ut salvus fieret, quem inimici odio inexorabili persequentes non longè ab atrio in insidiis sedentes vigilantiùs opportunitatem observabant, quando in eum casu aliquo tandem oblatum irarum virus evomere prævalerent. Ipse verò in interiores officinas, quò securior redderetur, cum suis et ancillis, se ingessit; ità ut ubi <g>Fratres</g> reficere consueverant, ibi _mulieres_ choros ducere, et cætera muliebria, ignominiosè tractare non erubescerent!