The letters MD seem to have been meant as part of the date marking the
time when the Church was repaired, and go far to prove the little
veneration shown to this once elegant structure by the neighbouring
people, and that its dilapidation was unusually rapid. Now, we will
suppose that the inscription MD means 1500, and allow that it was then in
complete repair, and that it was one of the first Abbeys dissolved, say
in 1538; for I do not read that Henry VIII. began his reformation among
the religious houses before that time; I find in Camden’s Britannia,
speaking of this place, the following passage:—“Save onely a little
Abbey, now wholly decaied, but standing most richly and pleasantly in a
vale, which among the woody hils cutteth itself overthwart in manner of a
crosse, whereupon it was called in Latin Vallis Crucis, that is, the Vale
of the Crosse, and in British, Lhane Gwest.” {62a}
Camden’s great work, Britannia, was published in 1586; and from these
facts I draw my conclusion that it was ransacked and destroyed soon after
its dissolution, as I suppose it was—
In complete repair, A.D. 1500;