<g>William</g> of Llanthony--the warrior monk already noticed--appears to have had followers in his penance; for Peter Damian mentions a man who wore an _iron_ corslet next his skin, had iron rings around his limbs, so that he performed with pain and difficulty his _Metaneas_, or penitential inclinations, and very often dashed his hands upon the pavement. In “Strutt’s Dresses” is a female pilgrim lying on the ground, apparently to perform this penance of slapping the ground. The lady of Sir Thomas More, in reply to her husband, who counselled her to desist from scolding her servants during Lent, replied that she wore a “Monk’s girdle,” and therefore had nothing to fear.[343] The virtues of the monk’s girdle, it appears, were equivalent to those of the _cowl_, already alluded to in our notice of Tinterne. <g>The revenues</g> possessed by Llanthony appear to have been very considerable at the outset; but through negligence or mismanagement--or rather by the prejudicial influence of a rival abbey--they fell off gradually, and at the dissolution were valued at a sum[344] considerably less than those of Tinterne Abbey. When we read, in the Monastic Annals, of entire districts, towns, and villages being conveyed to monasteries, we are surprised at the boundless liberality of the founders. But when we reflect that, at the time of these princely endowments, the land, in many instances, was neither cultivated nor peopled, the question of prodigal generosity is materially altered. At the period of transition, as it may be termed, when it passed from the hands of the feudal Baron to the Abbot or Prior, the products of the consecrated territory were often nothing more than wood and pasture; nor, until it had been long subjected to the system of agriculture, so generally practised and taught by the monks, was it brought into a state fit for the sustenance of man. If we compare--so far as written documents enable us--the state of agriculture and its population, when these lands were transferred to the Abbot, with the condition they were in when taken from him, we shall see very clearly to what a vast amount they had improved under monastic management; and how much cause there was to applaud the stewardship of the venerable monks, in whose hands the physical aspect of the country underwent an entire change. Theirs were truly the arts of peace. Obliged, by the rule of their order, to plant their convents in sterile and uncultivated wilds, where intercourse with more favoured districts was neither easy nor expedient, circumstances required that they should, like the apostles and fathers of old, depend for daily bread on the labour of their hands. While some went to prayer, others went to work; and thus the blessing of heaven and the bounty of earth were believed to descend upon them, and abide with them, in those sacred habitations which had sprung up under their hands, and exercised on everything around them a mild and harmonizing influence.