Constructing History across the Norman Conquest: Worcester, c.1050--c.1150 (Writing History in the Middle Ages, 9) 9781914049040, 9781800105416, 9781800105423, 1914049047

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Contents
Illustrations
Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Framing the Past: Charters and Chronicles at Worcester, c.1050-c.1150
Identities in Community: Literary Culture and Memory at Worcester
Preserving Records and Writing History in Worcester’s Conquest-Era Archives
Constructing Narrative in the Closing Folios of Hemming’s Cartulary
Worcester’s Own History: an Account of the Foundation of the See and a Summary of Benefactions, AD 6
Worcester and the English Reception of Marianus Scotus
History Books at Worcester, c.1050-1150, and the Making of the Worcester Chronicle
Poetry in the Worcester Chronicula (TCD MS 503)
Networks of Chronicle Writing in Western Britain: The Case of Worcester and Wales
Bibliography
Index of Manuscripts
General Index
Other Volumes in the Writing History in the Middle Ages Series

Citation preview

Writing History in the Middle Ages Volume 9

CONSTRUCTING HISTORY ACROSS THE NORMAN CONQUEST

YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS York Medieval Press is published by the University of York’s Centre for Medieval Studies in association with Boydell & Brewer Limited. Our objective is the promotion of innovative scholarship and fresh criticism on medieval culture. We have a special commitment to interdisciplinary study, in line with the Centre’s belief that the future of Medieval Studies lies in those areas in which its major constituent disciplines at once inform and challenge each other.

Editorial Board (2022) Peter Biller, Emeritus (Dept of History): General Editor T. Ayers (Dept of History of Art): Co-Director, Centre for Medieval Studies Henry Bainton: Private scholar K. P. Clarke (Dept of English and Related Literature) K. F. Giles (Dept of Archaeology) Shazia Jagot (Dept of English and Related Literature) Dr Holly James-Maddocks (Dept of English and Related Literature) Dr Harry Munt (Dept of History) L. J. Sackville (Dept of History) Elizabeth M. Tyler (Dept of English and Related Literature): Co-Director, Centre for Medieval Studies Hanna Vorholt (Dept of History of Art) J. G. Wogan-Browne (English Faculty, Fordham University) Stephanie Wynne-Jones (Dept of Archaeology)

All enquiries of an editorial kind, including suggestions for monographs and essay collections, should be addressed to: The Academic Editor, York Medieval Press, Department of History, University of York, Heslington, York, YO10 5DD (E-mail: [email protected]) Details of other York Medieval Press volumes are available from Boydell & Brewer Ltd. Writing History in the Middle Ages ISSN 2057-0252 Series editors Laura Cleaver, Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London Elisabeth van Houts, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge History-writing was a vital form of expression throughout the European Middle Ages, and is fundamental to our understanding of medieval societies, politics, modes of expression, cultural memory, and social identity. This series publishes innovative work on history-writing from across the medieval world; monographs, collections of essays, and editions of texts are all welcome. Other volumes in the series are listed at the back of this book.

Constructing History across the Norman Conquest Worcester, c.1050–c.1150

Edited by Francesca Tinti and D. A. Woodman

Y O RK MEDIEVAL P RE S S

© Contributors 2022 All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner

First published 2022

A York Medieval Press publication in association with The Boydell Press an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620-2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com and with the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York ISBN 978 1 914049 04 0 (hardcover) ISBN 978 1 800105 41 6 (ePDF) ISBN 978 1 800105 42 3 (ePUB) A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate Cover image: By permission of the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, MS 157, p. 383.

Contents List of Illustrations vi List of Contributors viii Preface ix Acknowledgements x Abbreviations xi 1

Framing the Past: Charters and Chronicles at Worcester, c.1050–c.1150 1 Francesca Tinti and D. A. Woodman

2

Identities in Community: Literary Culture and Memory at Worcester Thomas O’Donnell

31

Preserving Records and Writing History in Worcester’s Conquest-Era Archives Jonathan Herold

61

3

4

Constructing Narrative in the Closing Folios of Hemming’s Cartulary 92 Francesca Tinti

5

Worcester’s Own History: an Account of the Foundation of the See and a Summary of Benefactions, AD 680–1093 Susan Kelly

6

Worcester and the English Reception of Marianus Scotus C. Philipp E. Nothaft

7

History Books at Worcester, c.1050–1150, and the Making of the Worcester Chronicle Laura Cleaver

8

Poetry in the Worcester Chronicula (TCD MS 503) D. A. Woodman

9

Networks of Chronicle Writing in Western Britain: the Case of Worcester and Wales Georgia Henley

121 150

174 200

227

Bibliography 271 Index of Manuscripts 295 General Index 297 v

Illustrations Framing the Past: Charters and Chronicles at Worcester, c.1050–c.1150, Francesca Tinti and D. A. Woodman Fig. 1: London, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii fol. 167r.

10

Fig. 2: OCCC MS 157, p. 273.

18

Fig. 3: TCD MS 503, fol. 50v.

23

Preserving Records and Writing History in Worcester’s Conquest-Era Archives, Jonathan Herold Fig. 1: Worcester Cathedral Muniments B. 812.

80

Worcester and the English Reception of Marianus Scotus, C. Philipp E. Nothaft Fig. 1: OCCC MS 157, p. 70.

160

Fig. 2: OCCC MS 157, p. 71.

161

Fig. 3: OCCC MS 157, p. 56.

164

History Books at Worcester, c.1050–1150 and the Making of the Worcester Chronicle, Laura Cleaver Fig. 1: The relative size (approximate) of various manuscripts.

178

Fig. 2: OCCC MS 157, p. 77b.

179

Fig. 3: OCCC MS 157, p. 77c.

180

Fig. 4: BL MS Royal 5 B. iii, fol. 30r.

182

Fig. 5: BL Cotton MS Nero E. i, fol. 3r

185

Fig. 6: BL Cotton MS Nero C. v, fol. 98r.

187

Fig. 7: OCCC MS 157, p. 189.

188

Networks of Chronicle Writing in Western Britain: the Case of Worcester and Wales, Georgia Henley Fig. 1a: BL Cotton MS Domitian A. i, fol. 149v.

vi

264

Illustrations Fig. 1b: BL Cotton MS Domitian A. i, fol. 150r.

265

Fig. 2: Quire 11, BL Cotton MS Domitian A. i, fols. 138–54.

267

Full credit details are provided in the captions to the images in the text. The editors, contributors and publisher are grateful to all the institutions and persons for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any omission, and the publisher will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.

vii

Contributors Laura Cleaver is Senior Lecturer in Manuscript Studies at the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. Georgia Henley is Assistant Professor of English at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. Jonathan Herold teaches in the Faculty of Arts of Trinity College, University of Toronto, and in the Department of History, York University Glendon Campus. Susan Kelly is the Fitch Senior Research Fellow at the School of History in the University of East Anglia. C. Philipp E. Nothaft is a research fellow at Trinity College Dublin. Thomas O’Donnell is Associate Professor of English and Medieval Studies at Fordham University. Francesca Tinti is Ikerbasque Research Professor at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU. David Woodman is Fellow and Senior Tutor at Robinson College, Cambridge.

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Preface We developed the idea for this collection of essays during several conversations about the remarkable historical works which were compiled at Worcester between c.1050 and c.1150. In the period following the Norman Conquest of 1066 various ecclesiastical centres in England looked to their past and produced narrative texts which stretched back to the time before the Conquest, while also trying to make sense of that event and its consequences. Such works have naturally attracted the attention of numerous modern historians, but we felt that no one had hitherto attempted to address the distinct features that characterised the Worcester community’s initiatives in this area. In particular we were struck by the fact that it was not just the Conquest that triggered them there and that, although the changes that were introduced after 1066 clearly played a major role in the development of the Worcester ‘historical atelier’, Worcester stands out because of the continuity in ‘constructing history’ that can be identified across the whole period. In other words, 1066 was less of a caesura, and this continuity did not just characterise the production of such narrative works as chronicles, but is especially visible in activities like archival organisation and record-keeping. In order to explore this topic in detail, and from a number of complementary angles, we decided to gather a group of scholars, expert on different aspects of the Worcester documentary, literary, artistic and historical production in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, with whom we could collaborate to cast further light on the context and reasons for these specific developments. We have thus been able to produce a volume which examines the strategies and the rationale behind the construction of history at Worcester across the Norman Conquest, while bearing in mind parallel developments at other ecclesiastical centres as well as the connections that the Worcester church established with other contemporary communities. Francesca Tinti David Woodman October 2021

ix

Acknowledgements References to plague are not uncommon in Worcester’s Chronica Chronicarum. Its entry for 987 is particularly memorable for its description of a ‘fever in men and a plague in livestock … [which] afflicted all England very greatly and raged indescribably throughout English territory’. As we embarked upon the writing of this book, we could not have imagined that the world would soon afterwards fall victim to the covid-19 pandemic and the severe restrictions on life that came with it. We are therefore all the more grateful to our contributors, editors and publishers for their patience while we were bringing the book to completion. Francesca Tinti would like to thank the Warden, Fellows and Librarians of All Souls College, Oxford for the generous support provided in the course of her Visiting Fellowship in Trinity term 2021, during which time she completed her writing for this volume. David Woodman is grateful for two visiting academic positions, one held at Trinity College, Dublin, and the other at Harvard University, both of which enabled his work on this volume.

x

Abbreviations ANS ASC ASE BCS BL BnF Bodl. Lib. CC CCCC CCCM CCSL cf. EEA 33

EHR EME JEH JW, Chron.

KCD MGH SS n. s. OCCC ODNB

OMT OV, HE

Anglo-Norman Studies Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Anglo-Saxon England Cartularium Saxonicum, ed. W. de G. Birch, 3 vols. (London, 1885–93) British Library Bibliothèque nationale de France Bodleian Library Chronica Chronicarum; and see ‘JW, Chron.’ Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina compare English Episcopal Acta 33: Worcester 1062–1185, ed. M. Cheney, D. Smith, C. Brooke and P. M. Hoskin (Oxford, 2007) English Historical Review Early Medieval Europe Journal of Ecclesiastical History John of Worcester, The Chronicle of John of Worcester: II, The Annals from 450 to 1066, ed. R. R. Darlington and P. McGurk, trans. J. Bray and P. McGurk, OMT (Oxford, 1995); III, The Annals from 1067 to 1140, ed. and trans. P. McGurk, OMT (Oxford, 1998) Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici, ed. J. M. Kemble, 6 vols. (London, 1839–48) Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores new series Oxford, Corpus Christi College H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, eds., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, from the Earliest Times to the Year 2000, 61 vols. (Oxford, 2004) Oxford Medieval Texts Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall, 6 vols., OMT (Oxford, 1969–80)

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Abbreviations PL RS S

s.a. TCD TNA TRHS WM, GP

WM, GR

WM, VW

Patrologiae cursus completus. Series (latina) prima, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols. (Paris, 1844–64) Rolls Series P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks 8 (London, 1968) (and see also www.esawyer. lib.cam.ac.uk) sub anno Trinity College, Dublin The National Archives, Kew Transactions of the Royal Historical Society William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum: I, Text and Translation, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom with R. M. Thomson, OMT (Oxford, 2007); II, Introduction and Commentary, R. M. Thomson, OMT (Oxford, 2007) William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum: I, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom, OMT (Oxford, 1998); II, General Introduction and Commentary, R. M. Thomson, OMT (Oxford, 1999) William of Malmesbury, Vita Wulfstani, in William of Malmesbury, Saints’ Lives. Lives of SS. Wulfstan, Dunstan, Patrick, Benignus and Indract, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson, OMT (Oxford, 2002), pp. 1–155

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1 Framing the Past: Charters and Chronicles at Worcester, c.1050–c.1150 Francesca Tinti and D. A. Woodman

The Worcester church – from the late Anglo-Saxon period through to the early Anglo-Norman – was a community of great importance, both at local and national level.1 In the mid-tenth and early eleventh centuries, before the time addressed in this volume, three of Worcester’s bishops ascended to the highest ranks of ecclesiastical life and took part in some of the most significant cultural and political events then happening. Dunstan, who held the Worcester bishopric in 958–9, later became archbishop of Canterbury, and was at the forefront of the monastic reform movement; he clearly also held a position of influence in secular circles, becoming a central figure during King Edgar’s reign, at a time when the English kingdom was gaining greater definition.2 Oswald, who held the Worcester see from 961 to 992, and in plurality with the York archiepiscopal see from 971 to 992, was a man of similarly elevated stature.3 Like Dunstan, he was instrumental in the spread of the tenth-century Benedictine reform and his holding of the York church in plurality demonstrates the confidence invested in him by successive kings of England in handling this sensitive northern institution. But possibly the most famous of all Worcester bishops from this time was Wulfstan I, who held the see from 1002 to 1016 and was simultaneously archbishop of York. A large corpus of works connected to Wulfstan I has fortunately survived, with the result that we can gain a good sense of Wulfstan’s role as a ‘homilist and statesman’,4 and as someone who bridged the political chasm 1 The

research carried out by Francesca Tinti for this chapter is part of the activities of the research project PID2020-115365GB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, funded by the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación and based at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU. 2 G. Molyneaux, The Formation of the English Kingdom in the Tenth Century (Oxford, 2015). 3 N. Brooks and C. Cubitt, eds., St Oswald of Worcester: His Life and Influence (London, 1996). 4 D. Whitelock, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan, Homilist and Statesman’, TRHS 24 (1942), 25–45. On the bishops of Worcester in the late Anglo-Saxon period see also F. Tinti,

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Francesca Tinti and D. A. Woodman between the reigns of Æthelred Unræd, of the West Saxon line, and Cnut, of Scandinavian extraction. By the later eleventh century, therefore, Worcester was a place of national importance, and it had long been so. This book covers the period in the Worcester church’s existence from c.1050 to c.1150, embracing the episcopacies of Ealdred (1046–61), Wulfstan II (1062–95), Samson (1096–1112), Theulf (1113–23) and Simon (1125–50). These years – bridging the Norman Conquest – arguably witnessed some of the most fundamental changes to the ecclesiastical and political landscape of the English kingdom in medieval times. Much ink has been spilled in trying to understand the extent of change across the country engendered by this military conquest.5 Worcester occupies a position of central importance in this debate, not least because of the remarkable tenure of the see by Wulfstan II, a bishop who managed better than most to navigate the political vicissitudes following the Battle of Hastings and who went on to live for nearly a decade longer than William the Conqueror himself. Wulfstan II has rightly attracted a lot of scholarly attention.6 One muchcelebrated feature of his tenure as bishop of Worcester is his promotion of a number of archival and literary activities, explicitly aimed at preserving the memory of past events through written records. References to the bishop’s sponsoring of such initiatives can be found in several sources, of which the most informative are Hemming’s Cartulary and Orderic Vitalis’s Ecclesiastical History. The former, produced shortly after the bishop’s death in 1095, contains a text entitled Enucleatio libelli, which famously provides a detailed description of Wulfstan’s efforts to repair and organise the charter archive of the Worcester church.7 Orderic, on the other hand, reports that when he visited Worcester in the early twelfth century, a monk named John was working – at Wulfstan’s command – on a continuation of the world chronicle by Marianus Scotus.8 These two texts attest to some of the principal Sustaining Belief: The Church of Worcester from c.870 to c.1100 (Farnham, 2010), pp. 19–67. 5 A. Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 1995); H. M. Thomas, The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation, and Identity 1066–c.1220 (Oxford, 2003); and G. Garnett, Conquered England: Kingship, Succession, and Tenure 1066–1166 (Oxford, 2007). 6 See for instance E. Mason, St Wulfstan of Worcester, c.1008–1095 (Oxford and Cambridge, MA, 1990) and N. Brooks and J. Barrow, eds., St Wulfstan and his World (Aldershot, 2005). 7 For text and translation see F. Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię commendaretur: Memory and Cartularies in Eleventh-Century Worcester’, in Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald, ed. S. Baxter, C. Karkov, J. L. Nelson and D. Pelteret (Farnham, 2009), pp. 475–97 (at pp. 492–7); for a detailed discussion, see also Jonathan Herold in this volume. Hemming’s Cartulary survives in London, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fols. 119–200. 8 See OV, HE iii.2.159–60 (ed. and trans. Chibnall, II, 186–9): ‘Ioannes Wigornensis a

2

Framing the Past: Charters and Chronicles at Worcester strategies through which the church of Worcester ‘constructed history’ in the period covered by this publication, that is, through record-keeping and chronicle production. It is through an analysis of these activities, which, as will emerge further below, were closely intertwined, that we would like to open this volume.9

Charter preservation Efforts towards systematic organisation and preservation of the Worcester charter archive pre-date our period, since the earliest extant English cartulary, usually referred to as Liber Wigorniensis, was compiled at Worcester in the early eleventh century, most likely during the episcopate of Wulfstan I.10 Liber Wigorniensis is the outcome of a remarkable initiative aiming to organise geographically the Worcester title-deeds and keep track of the beneficiary succession for the numerous estates which had been leased out by Bishop Oswald in the second half of the tenth century.11 It is interesting, however,

puero monachus, natione Anglicus, moribus et eruditione uenerandus, in his quae Mariani Scotti cronicis adiecit, de rege Guillelmo et de rebus quae sub eo uel sub filiis eius Guillelmo Rufo et Henrico usque hodie contigerunt honeste deprompsit … Iohannes acta fere centum annorum contexuit, iussuque uenerabilis Wlfstani pontificis et monachi supradictis cronicis inseruit; in quibus multa de Romanis et Francis et Alemannis aliisque gentibus quae agnouit; utiliter et compendiose narratione digna reserauit.’ (‘John, an Englishman by birth who entered the monastery of Worcester as a boy and won great repute for his learning and piety, continued the chronicle of Marianus Scotus and carefully recorded the events of William’s reign and of his sons William Rufus and Henry up to the present … John, at the command of the venerable Wulfstan bishop and monk, added to these chronicles events of about a hundred years, by inserting a brief and valuable summary of many deeds of the Romans and Franks, Germans and other peoples whom he knew.’) For further discussion of the role of Wulfstan in initiating the project, see the chapters below by Tinti and by Cleaver. 9 For the full range of texts produced and used by those at Worcester, see the chapter below by O’Donnell. 10 This survives as London, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fols. 1–118. Liber Wigorniensis was bound together with the later Hemming’s Cartulary in or before the fifteenth century; see N. Ker, ‘Hemming’s Cartulary: A Description of the two Worcester Cartularies in Cotton Tiberius A. xiii’, in Studies in Medieval History Presented to F. M. Powicke, ed. R. H. Hunt, W. A. Pantin and R. W. Southern (Oxford, 1948), pp. 49–75, at p. 55, reprinted in N. Ker, Books, Collectors and Libraries: Studies in the Medieval Heritage (London, 1985). Both cartularies were printed in Hemingi Chartularium ecclesiæ Wigorniensis, ed. T. Hearne, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1723). The manuscript can be accessed online at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer. aspx?ref=cotton_ms_tiberius_a_xiii_fs001r. 11 S. Baxter, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the Administration of God’s Property’, in Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: The Proceedings of the Second Alcuin Conference, ed. M. Townend (Turnhout, 2004), pp. 161–205.

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Francesca Tinti and D. A. Woodman that the latest charter to have been copied into Liber Wigorniensis – a lease of Bishop Ealdwulf (992–1002) – is dated 996 (S 1381) and that although a number of folios were left blank at the end of several sections, no efforts were made to copy leases which are known to have been issued by Ealdwulf’s successors in the course of the eleventh century.12 That is not to say that no further records were added to Liber Wigorniensis after the five original scribes involved in its production stopped working on it, but most of these additions belong to the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, that is, following the above-mentioned major campaign of archival activities promoted by Wulfstan II.13 This suggests two points of interest for present purposes: firstly, that Liber Wigorniensis was the product of a specific moment, meant to address early eleventh-century preoccupations, and secondly, that Wulfstan II was probably right when, according to Hemming’s report, he accused former keepers of the Worcester archive of negligence, given the ‘putrefied’ conditions in which he found several of the charters kept in the scrinium of the monastery.14 In other words, the enthusiasm with which the archive was perused and organised in the early eleventh century in order to produce Liber Wigorniensis does not seem to have continued to characterise the Worcester cathedral community, or its leadership, in subsequent decades. This is hardly surprising if we can trust Wulfstan II’s testimony about the limited number of monks (‘little more than twelve’) that he found at Worcester when he joined the community there.15 The archival efforts of the early eleventh century, however, left an important mark, as attested by the surviving fragments of a second eleventhcentury cartulary from Worcester known as Nero-Middleton or St Wulfstan’s Cartulary.16 This was the first outcome of Wulfstan II’s active engagement with the Worcester archive; as Hemming reports, the bishop arranged for damaged charters to be repaired and for those which had been taken away to be searched out. Afterwards, he ordered them in two volumes, separating original title-deeds from Oswald’s leases, and had them copied in the Bible (bibliotheca) of the church, ‘so that, if the originals should go missing (as

12 These

include S 1384, S 1385, S 1388, S 1392, S 1393, S 1394, S 1395, S 1396, S 1397, S 1399, S 1405, S 1406, S 1407, S 1408 and S 1409. For the suggestion that Liber Wigorniensis may not have been at Worcester, but at York, for the greatest part of the eleventh century, see Herold’s chapter below. 13 For a tabular representation of the contents of Liber Wigorniensis, see Baxter, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan’ pp. 192–205. Baxter’s dating of the additions is based on Ker, ‘Hemming’s Cartulary’, pp. 51–5. 14 See Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię’, pp. 494–5; see also below, n. 30 and Herold’s chapter in this volume. 15 This is explicitly stated in a charter issued by Wulfstan in 1089: EAA 33, no. 8. For a discussion see Tinti, Sustaining Belief, p. 48 and Tinti’s chapter below. 16 The fragments are preserved in London, BL, Cotton MS Nero E. i, part 2, fols. 181–4 and London, BL, Additional MS 46204.

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Framing the Past: Charters and Chronicles at Worcester sometimes happened), their contents would be saved from oblivion’.17 The surviving fragments of Nero-Middleton attest to such an organisation of the records and, most importantly, show that the ordering of the charters in it largely reflects the one which had also been adopted for the production of Liber Wigorniensis. Whether this was due to the use of the earlier cartulary as a guiding tool, or, as suggested by Jonathan Herold in this volume, the fact that both cartularies independently mirror the organisation of the archive, is uncertain; what is significant, however, is that the systematisation that can be observed in the early eleventh-century cartulary was still deemed useful when the second one was produced. On palaeographical grounds Nero-Middleton has been dated by several scholars to Wulfstan II’s episcopacy, with Peter Stokes narrowing the possible time frame to the 1070s–80s.18 That a need to check the archive and recover original title-deeds should have emerged after the Norman Conquest is hardly surprising. The opening of Hemming’s Enucleatio libelli refers to ‘the lands which the French invaded’ as the primary reason for looking back to the past and writing a detailed account of the ways in which, and the reasons why, the church of Worcester had lost several of its estates.19 However, as Francesca Tinti has shown, the rationale behind the production of Nero-Middleton markedly differs from that characterising Hemming’s Cartulary, in that the former, or at the least its surviving fragments, do not incorporate any explicit claim to lost estates. Indeed, Nero-Middleton appears to have had mainly a memorial function, significantly heightened by its being copied into what was most likely an ancient Bible of the church of Worcester. Furthermore, several of the texts preserved in the extant portions of the cartulary are shortened versions of charters which had previously been copied in Liber Wigorniensis.20 This aspect would seem to reinforce the impression that Nero-Middleton was not produced to fulfil an administrative or judicial function. Even so, its surviving folios contain one item which is unique to this cartulary and which allows one to appreciate the ways in which the cathedral community was looking back at its history in the years that followed the Conquest of 1066. The text in question is an Old English list of grants in favour of the Worcester church, which was written by a scribe different from, but not noticeably later than, the one responsible for copying the preceding charters.21 The list names 17 Tinti,

‘Si litterali memorię’, pp. 494–5. communication. 19 This narrative account is provided in another text contained within the first section of Hemming’s Cartulary (Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fols. 119r–131r) and entitled Codicellus possessionum. It was printed in Hemingi Chartularium, ed. Hearne, I, 248–81. 20 For a detailed comparison see Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię’ and Tinti, Sustaining Belief, pp. 125–36. Cf. Herold in this volume. 21 The list survives in the right-hand column of Cotton MS Nero E. i, part 2, fol. 184v. This can be accessed online at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer. 18 Personal

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Francesca Tinti and D. A. Woodman sixteen main estates and their respective grantors; behind most of its items it is possible to identify one or more Anglo-Saxon charters from the Worcester archive. A detailed analysis of this text’s features has already been conducted elsewhere,22 but it is worth emphasising here a few main aspects. First, the process of selection and organisation of the records which led to the writing of the list differs from the one adopted by the compilers of Liber Wigorniensis and Nero-Middleton: while in the cartularies the charters are organised into sections corresponding to the different shires where the lands of the church of Worcester lay, in the list the ordering proceeds clockwise, irrespective of administrative divisions. Furthermore, when several charters dealing with the same estate were available, the author of the list summarised the contents of just a selected few. Finally, the use of the vernacular, instead of the Latin employed in the original records, points towards a more independent framing of the past. The Nero-Middleton Cartulary allows one to identify some significant, though still relatively timid, attempts at ‘repackaging’ the history of the Worcester landed estates. In fact, it is in the final years of the eleventh century that it is possible to witness a number of markedly bolder initiatives in this area. Pride of place must obviously go to Hemming’s Cartulary, produced shortly after Wulfstan’s death in January 1095. As we have seen, Hemming is our main source on the role played by the bishop in preserving and repairing the Worcester archive, but the principal focus in the opening folios of the cartulary is on denouncing the circumstances in which the church of Worcester had lost several of its estates in the course of the eleventh century, as detailed in the cartulary’s very first text, entitled Codicellus possessionum.23 Hemming mentions on more than one occasion that he had composed the Codicellus following the bishop’s repeated invitations to preserve the memory of those events, but in spite of the frequent mentions of Wulfstan’s inspirational role, the main goal of the cartulary was the protection of the lands that had been set aside for the sustenance of the cathedral monastic community, as opposed to the episcopal estate. It was in fact in Wulfstan’s time that the division of the mensa between bishop and cathedral chapter was properly achieved, even though moves in that direction had been made earlier on.24 Hemming’s Cartulary thus allows us to witness the process through which the monastic community acquired a distinct identity in the late eleventh century, laying the foundations for the institution which would later be known as the cathedral priory.

aspx?ref=cotton_ms_nero_e_i!2_f001r. The possibility that the list continued on a subsequent folio cannot be ruled out, and thus that it contained more items. See Tinti, Sustaining Belief, pp. 132–4, n. 156. 22 Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię’, pp. 485–8. 23 See above, n. 19. 24 Tinti, Sustaining Belief, p. 214.

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Framing the Past: Charters and Chronicles at Worcester In the above-mentioned Enucleatio libelli, Hemming’s account of Wulfstan’s reorganisation of the charters and their subsequent copying into the Bible of the church of Worcester is followed by a reference to Wulfstan’s order to group separately the documents dealing specifically with the monastic estates, which is what – Hemming says – he had done in ‘this little codex’, that is, his cartulary: Hoc quoque iuxta uelle et imperium suum patrato, precepit adhuc omnia priuilegia et cirographa terrarum quę proprie ad uictum monachorum pertinent separatim ex his congregari, eaque similiter in duobus uoluminibus eodem ordine adunari, quod in hoc codicello eius, ut predixi, imperio pro modulo meę paruitatis studiosus lector fecisse me animaduertere potest.25

Yet, while these two activities are mentioned in close succession, it is important to bear in mind that they were in fact separated by several years if, as it seems, Nero-Middleton dates from the 1070s–80s and Hemming’s Cartulary was produced after Wulfstan’s death in 1095. Hemming was obviously keen to describe the initiative to compile a cartulary dealing with the monks’ estates as the result of obedience to the bishop’s command, thus enhancing the work’s credibility at a time of profound insecurity.26 One wonders whether such an authoritative endorsement was evoked also because of the noticeable proportion of forgeries and spurious charters which the cartulary contains and which set it quite apart from the other, earlier eleventh-century compilations.27 The past was very much ‘reframed’ by Hemming and his colleagues; among their most obvious interventions are the many cases in which the Worcester monks are anachronistically described as the beneficiaries of early land grants, pre-dating the time when Bishop Oswald began to transform the cathedral community into a monastic one.28 Other cases involve the manipulation of pre-existing records through the borrowing of their formulae and the substitution of the place-names they

25 ‘Having

thus accomplished this too, according to his will and command, besides he ordered all the privileges and chirographs of the lands properly belonging to the monks’ sustenance to be gathered separately from the others, and, similarly, ordered in two volumes, which the attentive reader can see I have done in this booklet, as I said, according to his order and through my modest means’; Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię’, pp. 494–5. 26 On the monks’ preoccupations and insecurities in the aftermath of Wulfstan’s death see Tinti’s chapter in this volume. 27 For a more detailed analysis see F. Tinti, ‘From Episcopal Conception to Monastic Compilation: Hemming’s Cartulary in Context’, EME 11 (2002), 233–61. 28 See, for example, S 145 and S 406. See also J. Barrow, ‘The Chronology of Forgery Production at Worcester from c.1000 to the Early Twelfth Century’, in St Wulfstan and his World, ed. Barrow and Brooks, pp. 105–22.

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Francesca Tinti and D. A. Woodman featured with others referring to estates which, according to the Codicellus possessionum, had been alienated from the Worcester church.29 As well as claims to lost monastic lands, Hemming’s Cartulary contains charters providing evidence for lands that had been assigned to the monks’ sustenance by the last two English bishops of Worcester, namely Ealdred and Wulfstan II. This is what the closing section of the cartulary focuses on, as discussed below in Tinti’s chapter. It is in these final folios that we can see most clearly how charters and narrative texts interplay to sustain the monks’ claims. The same strategy, however, can also be found employed at the start of the cartulary, given the close relationship that Hemming himself established between his narrative in the Codicellus possessionum and record-keeping activities. It is probably not by chance that the word negligentia is used in the Enucleatio both in connection with archival carelessness and poor tenurial management leading to land losses: Erat namque idem reuerentissimus pater noster, licet secularium rerum minime cupidus, huius monasterii plurimum studens semper utilitatibus et ne sua, ut quorundam predecessorum suorum, negligentia, comissa sibi ęcclesia damnum aliquid posteris temporibus pateretur, pro posse suo precauebat prouidus. Unde et scrinium monasterii coram se referari fecit, diligenterque omnia antiquorum priuilegia et testamenta de possessionibus huius ęcclesię perscrutatus est, ne forte custodum negligentia putrefacta, aut iniquorum auaritia forent distracta.30 (Emphasis ours)

One further element, among the many interesting features of Hemming’s Cartulary, is worth mentioning here, as it provides another example of the ways in which the history of past land transactions was repeatedly reframed to serve specific, newly emerging needs of the Worcester church. We are referring to the insertion of lists of donations, a feature which we have already discussed in connection with the Nero-Middleton Cartulary. Hemming contains two lists which, as their headings reveal, focus on lands allegedly donated to the monks of Worcester. The first one, on fol. 167r–v, is a list of kings, from Penda of Mercia to William II, with the duration of their respective reigns in years.31 It is probable that this was all the infor 29 See

S 181, based on the formulae of S 180. our most reverend father, though least desirous of worldly things, was always zealous for the advantage of this monastery, and he providently guarded with all his power against the eventuality that by his negligence, as had happened by that of certain of his predecessors, the church committed to him should suffer any future loss. Wherefore he caused the chest of the monastery to be brought to him and diligently went through all the privileges and testaments of men of old concerning the possessions of this church, in case they had decayed because of their keepers’ negligence or had been taken away because of the greed of wicked men’; Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię’, pp. 494–5. 31 Later hands added further names up to Edward I. The list was printed in Hemingi Chartularium, ed. Hearne, II, 369–70. 30 ‘For

8

Framing the Past: Charters and Chronicles at Worcester mation that the list was originally meant to convey. Subsequently, however, Hand 2, that is, the scribe whom various scholars, including Neil Ker, have identified with Hemming himself, added the names of several estates in the right-hand column (Fig. 1). Following these additions, a rubricated heading was inserted; this reads: ‘DE REGIBVS MERCIORVM. QVANTO TEMPORE REGNAVERVNT. ET DE TERRIS QVAS HVIC MONASTERIO DEDERVNT’ (‘Concerning the kings of the Mercians, how long they reigned and the lands which they gave to this monastery’). A second list, which is entirely the work of Hand 2 and is preserved on fol. 176r, purports to record the donations made to the ‘MONACHIS, HIC DEO ET SANCTĘ MARIĘ SERVIENTIBVS’ (‘to the monks in this place serving God and Holy Mary’) by successive bishops of Worcester, from the late seventh-century Seaxulf to Samson.32 Both lists attest explicitly to the bold strategies employed by Hemming to ‘construct history’. Regnal and episcopal lists are relatively common features of Anglo-Saxon and early Anglo-Norman manuscripts,33 but the ways in which these were adapted in the cartulary to support the monks’ claims to their landed estate are novel and remarkable. These late eleventh-century efforts had a long-lasting effect on the ways in which subsequent generations of Worcester monks looked back to their past. This is evident, for instance, in the Latin account of the foundation of the episcopal seat at Worcester and the possessions granted ‘by kings, sub-kings and by men of good memory’ which opens the chief, twelfthcentury manuscript of the Chronica Chronicarum (hereafter CC), namely OCCC MS 157.34 The text is edited, translated and commented upon by Susan Kelly in this volume; as she notes, a comparison between the estates mentioned in Hemming’s lists and in OCCC MS 157’s account reveals some overlapping of information as well as several differences, which can be explained bearing in mind that Hemming was specifically dealing with the lands the monks were claiming in the late eleventh century, while the account of the see’s foundation and subsequent grants, copied in the second quarter of the twelfth century,35 32 Two

further bishops’ names after Samson were added in the twelfth century. This is edited in Hemingi Chartularium, ed. Hearne, II, 390–1. See also Ker, ‘Hemming’s Cartulary’, p. 60. 33 See D. N. Dumville, ‘The Anglian Collection of Royal Genealogies and Regnal Lists’, ASE 5 (1976), 23–50; D. N. Dumville, ‘The West Saxon Genealogical Regnal Lists: Manuscripts and Texts’, Anglia 104 (1986), 1–32; R. I. Page, ‘Anglo-Saxon Episcopal Lists’, 3 parts, Nottingham Medieval Studies 9 (1965), 71–95, and 10 (1966), 2–24. 34 For the regnal and episcopal lists in Worcester’s OCCC MS 157, see below, pp. 15–16. 35 The two bifolia into which the text was copied form a separate quire of OCCC MS 157, and, as Kelly notes, may represent the last addition to the manuscript. This is the work of two collaborating scribes, called C4 and C5 in JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xxix), and dating to the second quarter of the twelfth century. In a

9

Fig. 1: London, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii fol. 167r © The British Library Board.

Framing the Past: Charters and Chronicles at Worcester had more comprehensive aims. What is especially interesting about the text in OCCC MS 157, for our current purposes, is its last entry.36 This provides the information about the lands that Wulfstan II had recovered and assigned to the monks, which is also given in the last section of Hemming’s Cartulary, as discussed in Tinti’s contribution to this volume. Just as in Hemming, the last donation to be mentioned here is that concerning the church at Westbury, which Wulfstan had given to the Worcester monks in 1093.37 This is the last entry in the account of benefactions opening OCCC MS 157, notwithstanding the fact that subsequent bishops of Worcester, namely Samson, Theulf and Simon, had made further donations to the cathedral priory by the time this text was copied.38 As Kelly notes, the list is clearly another product of the intense archival activities which took place in the late eleventh century; its copying and inclusion at the very beginning of the main surviving manuscript of the CC attests to the long-lasting significance of those activities. It would seem that the ‘snapshot’ of the Worcester landed estate taken by Hemming and his colleagues continued to be the one that the cathedral priory chose to promote in subsequent decades.

Chronicle production The impulse to systematise archival records at Worcester spanned both the pre- and post-Conquest periods.39 The Worcester community may also have been involved in the writing of chronicles before the Norman Conquest. The possible connections of the ‘D’ version of the ASC (or of a copy like it) to Worcester have been noted by scholars and an argument has recently been made for the previous existence there of a now lost Worcester version of the ASC.40 personal communication Professor Teresa Webber has noted that ‘the character of the handwriting is very similar to what one finds in charters from the 1120s until the early 1150s, at the latest’. 36 This is C65 in Kelly’s edition and translation below. 37 EEA 33, no. 11. 38 The grants of land that the Worcester bishops are known to have made to the monks throughout this period include: EEA 33, nos. 22, 26, 36, 41, 98, 99, 101, 103, 105, 106, 107. 39 There is a large literature about the various motivations of authors in writing their texts both before and after 1066. For an important overview which puts England into its European setting, see T. O’Donnell, M. Townend and E. M. Tyler, ‘European Literature and Eleventh-Century England’, in The Cambridge History of Early Medieval English Literature, ed. C. A. Lees (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 607–36. 40 For the possible connection between the ‘Northern Recension’ of the ASC and Worcester, see below, n. 50 and Cleaver’s chapter in this volume, pp. 174–99. For accounts of the texts being read and produced at Worcester across the period concerned see, for example, E. A. McIntyre, ‘Early-Twelfth-Century Worcester

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Francesca Tinti and D. A. Woodman The ASC survives in six principal copies (labelled A to F). A seventh – known as ‘G’ – is a copy of A, while there is also a fragment (‘H’) and annals related to the textual tradition that have been added to an Easter table (‘I’).41 First produced at King Alfred’s court in the late ninth century, the different manuscript copies subsequently evolved in complex ways. The individual versions show points of contact with each other (in terms of text that is shared or very similar), but the precise textual relationships are difficult now to reconstruct and continue to be the subject of much debate. A famous set of annals has been inserted into the B, C and D versions of ASC. Known as the ‘Mercian Register’, or the ‘Annals of Æthelflæd’,42 they span the years 902 to 924 in B and C, where they have been imported as a block, and the years 902 to 926 in D, where they are amalgamated with other annals. As the nomenclature suggests, these annals are primarily concerned with events in Mercia and with the actions of Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, who died in 918. In discussing the possible places where these annals may have been composed, Pauline Stafford has recently suggested either the Mercian court of the late 920s or the Worcester see of the same period. In favour of the latter, Stafford draws attention to some linguistic similarities of parts of these annals with the extant work of Wærferth, bishop of Worcester in the late ninth and early tenth centuries.43 Cathedral Priory, with Special Reference to the Manuscripts there’ (unpublished D.Phil thesis, University of Oxford, 1978); R. Gameson, ‘Book Production and Decoration at Worcester in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’, in St Oswald of Worcester, ed. Brooks and Cubitt, pp. 194–243; idem, ‘St Wulfstan, the Library of Worcester and the Spirituality of the Medieval Book’, in St Wulfstan and his World, ed. Barrow and Brooks, pp. 59–104; M. Lapidge, ‘Surviving Booklists from Anglo-Saxon England’, in Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies Presented to Peter Clemoes on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. M. Lapidge and H. Gneuss (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 33–89 (repr. in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: Basic Readings, ed. M. P. Richards (New York and London, 1994), pp. 87–167); and P. Jackson, ‘The Vitas Patrum in Eleventh-Century Worcester’, in England in the Eleventh Century: Proceedings of the 1990 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. C. Hicks (Stamford, 1992), pp. 119–34. 41 See, for example, S. Keynes, ‘Manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Volume I, c.400–1100, ed. R. Gameson (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 537–52 (at p. 552 for the shelfmarks of the manuscripts themselves). 42 Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, with Supplementary Extracts from the Others, ed. C. Plummer and J. Earle, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1892–9; reissued in 1952), II, lxxii–lxxiii and P. Stafford, ‘“The Annals of Æthelflæd”: Annals, History and Politics in Early Tenth-Century England’, in Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Brooks, ed. J. Barrow and A. Wareham (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 101–16. 43 P. Stafford, After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles & Chroniclers, 900–1150 (Oxford, 2020), pp. 64–70 (at pp. 69–70). On the work of Wærferth, see J. Bately, ‘Old English Prose Before and After the Reign of Alfred’, ASE 17 (1988), 93–138; M. Godden, ‘Wærferth and King Alfred: The Fate of the Old English Dialogues’, in Alfred the Wise: Studies in Honour of Janet Bately on the Occasion of her Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed.

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Framing the Past: Charters and Chronicles at Worcester In her major new study of the different versions of the ASC, Stafford has suggested that there are other indications that Worcester was a pre-Conquest centre of chronicling and she hypothesises the existence of a ‘lost Worcester chronicle’. In 1983, after an analysis of the twelfth-century Worcester CC, Cyril Hart had suggested that its annals up to 1017, rather than being first composed in Worcester in the twelfth century, were actually produced at Ramsey Abbey in the early eleventh century and later found their way into the CC.44 Hart labelled these annals ‘WC1’ and conjectured, on the basis of their distinctive style (which Hart could not detect in the remaining, post-1017 annals of the CC), that they may have been written by Byrhtferth of Ramsey himself (although Hart acknowledged that this could not be certain).45 In arguing his case, Hart drew attention to the similarity of parts of the CC annals with Byrhtferth’s Vita S. Oswaldi, written between 997 and 1002.46 Michael Lapidge, in his edition of the Vita S. Oswaldi and his assessment of the relationship of that text with overlapping material in the CC, speculated that ‘both authors were drawing independently on a set of annals for the years 958–92, and that these annals provided the framework for the annals recorded by John’.47 Stafford’s work on the ASC has taken these matters further: her detailed analysis of the tenth-century annals in the CC, compared against related material in the Vita S. Oswaldi, and also against overlapping matter in ASC C and D (where, at different moments, the CC annals appear related to these ASC versions, if not so closely that they were derived directly from them), has suggested to her that there was once a lost chronicle that provided material for them all.48 Although, as Stafford states, the exact shape and chronological limits of this lost chronicle cannot now be recovered with accuracy, the way the annals of this period focus on Ottonian affairs and on royal consecrations indicates that it could be linked with Worcester, where these were subjects

J. Roberts and J. L. Nelson with M. Godden (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 35–51; and D. F. Johnson, ‘Alfredian Apocrypha: The Old English Dialogues and Bede’, in A Companion to Alfred the Great, ed. N. G. Discenza and P. E. Szarmach (Leiden, 2015), pp. 366–95. 44 On the authorship of the CC, which has in the past been attributed in part to Florence, and which more recently has been accepted as mainly the work of John of Worcester, see below, pp. 25–6. 45 C. Hart, ‘The Early Section of the Worcester Chronicle’, Journal of Medieval History 9 (1983), 251–315. 46 For discussion of Hart’s argument, see JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, lxxix–lxxxi). 47 Byrhtferth of Ramsey, The Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine, ed. and trans. M. Lapidge, OMT (Oxford, 2009), pp. xlii–xliii (where an attribution to Byrhtferth of this set of annals underlying the Vita S. Oswaldi and the CC is also considered); and see p. lxviii for the date of composition of the Vita S. Oswaldi. See also M. Lapidge, ‘Byrhtferth and Oswald’, in St Oswald of Worcester, ed. Brooks and Cubitt, pp. 64–83. 48 See also H. H. Howorth, ‘The Chronicle of John of Worcester, Previously Assigned to Florence of Worcester’, Archaeological Journal 73 (1916), 1–170 (at pp. 167–8).

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Francesca Tinti and D. A. Woodman of particular concern.49 For Stafford, there could well have been a (now lost) Worcester version of the ASC which provided material for a variety of sources that do still exist.50 By the twelfth century we are on much firmer ground when it comes to Worcester’s chronicling activities. The above-mentioned OCCC MS 157 (hereafter referred to by its editorial siglum, C), compiled at Worcester towards the middle of the twelfth century, is of course best known for its text of the CC, the archetype for all extant copies of that chronicle. As discussed further below, the CC has been attributed variously to the Worcester monks Florence and John. The CC itself begins on p. 77c of C and continues for the remainder of the manuscript, until p. 396.51 Material relating to Britain begins properly on p. 242 where there is an account of the arrival of the AngloSaxons, and this is where the modern OMT edition also begins. It is important not simply to consider the CC on its own, but also to place it in the wider context of C’s contents, in order to demonstrate just how ambitious an historical project this was.52 C opens, as we have seen,53 with a text (incorporated as a separate quire) concerning the establishment of the Worcester see, providing a Worcester focus that is highlighted in various ways throughout the manuscript. It is interesting for showing the twelfth-century Worcester monks’ views about their own see’s origins and about the gifts of land that had purportedly been made to it at various points. In C this text forms the opening to the whole manuscript, kept separate from the CC itself. But in TCD MS 503, better known as the Chronicula (its conventional editorial siglum is G), thought to be written mostly in the hand of John of Worcester himself, a large part of the very same text is inserted in the midst of its abbreviated version of the CC, following its annal for 668, on fol. 51v. This provides

49 Stafford,

After Alfred, pp. 135–48. also Stafford, After Alfred, pp. 95–7 for interesting comments about the possible role of Cenwald, bishop of Worcester, in mid-tenth-century chronicling efforts. Given that successive archbishops of York held the Worcester see in plurality, we need also to take account of possible links between the so-called ‘Northern Recension’ of the ASC and Worcester: ibid., pp. 106–34, at pp. 124–8 for the connection of the ‘Northern Recension’ with the archbishops of York, and at p. 131 for the possible connection with Worcester. For interesting comments about a mid-eleventh-century Mercian/West Midlands chronicle that may have continued this lost Worcester chronicle, and which lies behind ASC C, D and also behind CC, see ibid., pp. 198–9. And see P. Stafford, ‘The Making of Chronicles and the Making of England: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles after Alfred’, TRHS 27 (2017), 65–86. 51 For the mixed foliation/pagination of C, see JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xxi–xxii). 52 See The Winchcombe and Coventry Chronicles: Hitherto Unnoticed Witnesses to the Work of John of Worcester, ed. and trans. P. A. Hayward, 2 vols. (Tempe, AZ, 2010), I, 11–98 and A. E. Lawrence-Mathers, ‘John of Worcester and the Science of History’, Journal of Medieval History 39 (2013), 255–74. 53 Above, pp. 9–10. 50 See

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Framing the Past: Charters and Chronicles at Worcester some indication of how John felt the Chronicula differed from the CC. But it also attests to the vitality of the writing of history at Worcester, that texts were revisited, emended and could be reused in different contexts. As will be seen, this revisiting of material was a hallmark of the twelfth-century ‘Worcester historical workshop’.54 An array of different items follows this text about the Worcester see’s origins in C. There are genealogical lists of continental rulers (pp. 4a–4b), consular tables (pp. 5–29, l. 16, in which a variety of events are recorded), a list of popes that has been inserted by John of Worcester over erasure (p. 29, l. 17–34a), the names of the disciples of Christ (pp. 36–7a), a list of Hebrew bishops and the bishops of Jerusalem (pp. 37b–8), an elaborate genealogical tree that begins with Adam and ends with Woden and seven of his sons (p. 47), computistical texts (p. 55), then computistical tables of various kinds on pp. 56–71, followed by a copy of Bede’s De locis sanctis and then, on p. 77b, an impressive line drawing of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, accompanied by a text discussing the dimensions of the cross.55 The chronicle of Marianus Scotus, which also began with consular tables, a list of popes and Easter tables, formed the main source of inspiration for parts of this material.56 But, in transferring these lists and tables from Marianus into C, the Worcester compilers updated what they found as well as inserting other items.57 And they also added episcopal lists, royal genealogies and summary accounts of kingdoms, all of which are concerned with England. On p. 39 of C can be found episcopal lists set within four arcades labelled, ‘Cantia’, ‘East Saxonia’, ‘East Anglia’ and ‘Suth Saxonia’; p. 41 has episcopal lists for the bishops of Wessex; p. 43 has further episcopal lists, with the words ‘Hecana’, ‘Hwiccia’, ‘Mercia’, ‘Middanglia’, ‘Lindissis’ and ‘Suthanglia’ written across the top of the page; on p. 45 episcopal lists for Northumbria and the ‘terra Pictorum’ can be found, placed within arcades that are divided into different episcopal sees, and on the right-hand side of the page are short accounts (relying on Bede) of St Paulinus, St Aidan and St Chad.58 Page 48 sees the beginning of the English royal genealogies, with that for Kent first. It is accompanied by a summary account of the kingdom’s history. On p. 49 are the genealogies for the East Anglians and East Saxons, again with summary accounts, on p. 50 those for the Mercian kings; p. 51 has a genealogy for Lindsey, accounts concerning Northumbria and a genealogy at the bottom of the page that 54 For this description, see M. Brett, ‘John of Worcester and his Contemporaries’, in The

Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern, ed. R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford, 1981), pp. 101–26. 55 For a list of the contents of C, from which the current details are taken, see JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xxii–xxviii). For a reproduction of the Crucifixion drawing, see Fig. 2 of Cleaver’s chapter below. 56 On Marianus Scotus and the influence of his work on the CC, see below, pp. 16–19. 57 Lawrence-Mathers, ‘John of Worcester’, pp. 261–2. 58 JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xxv).

15

Francesca Tinti and D. A. Woodman begins with Woden and extends to the immediate descendants of the Deiran, Bernician and West Saxon kingdoms.59 The genealogy for the kings of Deira and Bernicia follows on p. 52 (together with summary accounts), while p. 53 has the genealogy and accounts for the kings of Wessex. Finally, on p. 54, is a partial genealogy of the Godwines and also of the Norman kings up to Henry I; and, on the left-hand side of the page, is a brief narrative description of the series of kings after Edward the Confessor.60 Taken as a whole, these episcopal lists, royal genealogies and summary accounts provide remarkable evidence for the way that twelfth-century Worcester historians were distilling the historical texts in front of them to create order and understanding of the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman past. There are interesting connections between these preliminary items concerning England and the annals in the main CC, as the OMT volumes indicate. As we have seen, C’s principal item, from a prologue on p. 77c until the end of the manuscript, is a chronicle (the CC) which takes as its model the universal chronicle of Marianus Scotus, both in terms of its contents and the very way that the chronicle is set out.61 Marianus was an Irish monk who spent time on the continent at various religious houses, ultimately dying in Mainz in the early 1080s. Marianus’s chronicle begins with a prologue and is then divided into three books: the first two books explore chronological issues, suggesting that the date of Jesus’s Incarnation had occurred twentytwo years before the time reckoned by Dionysius Exiguus, while the third book puts this chronological theory into practice, attempting to re-date by twenty-two years various events from the Incarnation to Marianus’s own time. As part of the third book, Marianus gives prominence to his new dating system, but also keeps the Dionysian dates and likewise provides the dates of the reigning Roman emperors and their imperial years.62 We know that from the late eleventh century the work of Marianus was having an impact in England, as Philipp Nothaft shows below.63 Robert, 59 Ibid.,

p. xxvi. These preliminary items were partly printed in Florentii Wigorniensis Monachi Chronicon ex Chronicis, ed. B. Thorpe, 2 vols. (London, 1848–9), I, 231–80. A new edition, which takes into account all surviving copies, is in preparation for volume one of the OMT series: JW, Chron. 61 For the role of Bishop Wulfstan II in encouraging the writing of this Marianan-type chronicle (as recorded in Orderic Vitalis), see above, n. 8. 62 P. Verbist, ‘Reconstructing the Past: The Chronicle of Marianus Scottus’, Peritia 16 (2002), 284–334 and C. P. E. Nothaft, ‘An Eleventh-Century Chronologer at Work: Marianus Scottus and the Quest for the Missing Twenty-Two Years’, Speculum 88 (2013), 457–82. 63 See pp. 150–73. For the rather limited appeal of Marianus’s work, see M. Brett, ‘The Use of Universal Chronicle at Worcester’, in L’Historiographie médiévale en Europe: actes du colloque organisé par la Fondation Européenne de la Science au Centre de Recherches Historiques et Juridiques de l’Université Paris I du 29 mars au 1er avril 1989, ed. J.-P. Genet (Paris, 1991), pp. 277–85. And see the work of Anne Lawrence-Mathers and 60 Ibid.

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Framing the Past: Charters and Chronicles at Worcester bishop of Hereford (1079–95), became an advocate of Marianus’s new dating system and himself composed the Excerptio de Chronica Mariani concerning Marianus’s views on chronology.64 A link between Robert and Worcester is not hard to find, since both the CC itself and the work of William of Malmesbury describe the close bond that existed between Robert and Bishop Wulfstan.65 London, BL Cotton MS Nero C. v (known by the siglum, N) contains one copy of Marianus’s chronicle.66 The manuscript has been connected in various ways with Hereford.67 And the insertion into N of records concerning the ordination of Wulfstan in 1062 and the deaths of Wulfstan and Robert in 1095 may further suggest that the manuscript had a Worcester connection at some stage.68 If N was not the actual exemplar of C, at least it represents the textual tradition on which C was drawing.69 Marianus’s influence on C is made clear from its very layout, for C shares the Marianan method of providing various chronological anchors: the Marianan date on the left-hand side of the page and rubricated, with the corresponding Dionysian date on the right-hand side of the page in black ink, and then also details of the reign of the relevant emperor (with the opening of a new emperor’s reign marked by the use of an enlarged capital ‘R’ in ‘Romanorum’, either in green or red ink). The names of the relevant consuls are also provided, and records of the deaths of the popes and of their successors, as are details about the solar cycle. The physical demarcation on the page of the Marianan date on one side and the Dionysian date on the other allows a reader quickly to navigate both dating systems and to locate

her assessment that William of Malmesbury privately accepted Marianus’s revised chronology, even if he did not deploy it in his public-facing writings: ‘William of Malmesbury and the Chronological Controversy’, in Discovering William of Malmesbury, ed. R. M. Thomson, E. Dolmans and E. A. Winkler (Woodbridge, 2017), pp. 93–105. 64 W. H. Stevenson, ‘A Contemporary Description of the Domesday Survey’, EHR 22 (1907), 72–84; J. Barrow, ‘A Lotharingian in Hereford: Bishop Robert’s Reorganisation of the Church of Hereford 1079–1095’, in Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology at Hereford, ed. D. Whitehead, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 15 (Leeds, 1995), pp. 29–49; and A. Cordoliani, ‘L’activité computistique de Robert, évêque de Hereford’, in Mélanges offerts à René Crozet à l’occasion de son soixante-dixième anniversaire, ed. P. Gallais and Y.-J. Riou, 2 vols. (Poitiers, 1966), I, 333–40. 65 JW, Chron. s.a. 1095 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 74–7) and WM, GP iv.164–5 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom, I, 458–61). And see Brett, ‘The Use of Universal Chronicle’. 66 Another copy, in which the hand of Marianus himself can be found, is Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Pal. lat. 830. 67 The exact nature of the connection has been debated; see Nothaft’s summary of the position below, pp. 154–5. 68 JW, Chron. (ed. McGurk, III, xviii, n. 5). See also the comments in JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, lxiv–lxv) as to whether or not N could be C’s exemplar. 69 JW, Chron. (ed. McGurk, III, xviii); and Nothaft and Cleaver below.

17

Fig. 2: OCCC MS 157, p. 273. By permission of the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Framing the Past: Charters and Chronicles at Worcester particular events belonging to particular years.70 Before the year 450, C is heavily dependent on the work of Marianus for its contents, but after this date C begins to insert material from a greater range of sources, many of which have a focus on England.71 The transition is marked in the manuscript by a set of rubricated capitals. English sources used include, among others, Bede, Asser, various versions of the ASC, the Lives of saints, William of Malmesbury’s GP and GR and Eadmer’s Histora Novorum.72 According to Darlington and McGurk, three principal Worcester scribes were involved in the copying of C, and the same three scribes also made changes to the text at various points and added entries in the margins. C1 was responsible for the vast majority of text on p. 5 to p. 363 (the annals to 1102), the hand of C2 can be found on pp. 364–79, l. 35 (the annals for 1102–1128); C2 stops with the word ‘promisit’ (‘promised’) before a rubric beginning ‘De iuramento iam mutato…’ (‘Concerning the oath now altered’), while that of C3, which has been identified as the hand of John of Worcester,73 was responsible for p. 379, l. 36–p. 396 (the annals from part-way through 1128 to 1140), and also for some of the preliminary pages.74 Subsequent copies made either directly or indirectly from C include: a single leaf from the Evesham Almonry Museum (E); TCD MS 502 (H), written towards the middle of the twelfth century at Coventry; London, Lambeth Palace MS 42 (L), a late twelfth-century manuscript from Abingdon; Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Bodley 297 (B), a manuscript that was composed at Bury St Edmunds before 1143; and CCCC MS 92 (P), which was written at Abingdon after 1174 and was later at Peterborough. (TCD MS 503 (G), the Chronicula, is a related text which will be discussed below.) That C was a work in progress, and that the monks in charge of its composition were aiming to update and expand its contents, is instantly clear from the numerous textual emendations and marginal additions that scatter its pages. But, by detailed comparison of these further manuscript copies of C, scholars have been able to recreate with unusual accuracy the different stages that comprised the writing of C.75 C currently ends part-way through its annal for 1140. H and L end in 1131 and their annals for 1128–31 are substantially different to those currently in C. Because the difference in annals between HL and C occurs at just the moment in C when C3 erased a portion of text and rewrote it, it appears 70 See

Fig. 2.

71 Winchcombe

and Coventry, ed. Hayward, I, 68–9. R. R. Darlington and P. McGurk, ‘The “Chronicon ex Chronicis” of “Florence” of Worcester and its Use of Sources for English History before 1066’, ANS 5 (1982), 185–96 and volumes two and three of JW, Chron.. 73 For John of Worcester’s hand, see N. R. Ker, ‘William of Malmesbury’s Handwriting’, EHR 59 (1944), 371–6 and McIntyre, ‘Early-Twelfth-Century Worcester’, pp. 173–93. 74 For all of these details, see JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xxix–xxxiv). 75 See in particular Brett, ‘John of Worcester’; JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, lxvii–lxxiii) and Winchcombe and Coventry, ed. Hayward, I, 68–71. 72 See

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Francesca Tinti and D. A. Woodman that HL’s annals 1128–31 must represent how C originally ended, before the revision and continuation by C3.76 Thus comparison between C’s current text and variations in HL reveals an early stage in C’s composition that would otherwise have been obscured. HL were not copied directly from C and may descend from a common exemplar, perhaps E itself (of which there is only a single sheet surviving).77 The editors of the CC have shown that this early stage in its evolution (represented by HL) – which they have dated c.1131 – saw additions being made to the original text from the Norman Annals, from Hugh of Fleury’s Historia ecclesiastica, of materials concerning Durham related to, or taken from, Symeon of Durham’s Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius hoc est Dunhelmensis ecclesie and of details from William of Malmesbury’s GP. All three principal scribes – C1, C2 and C3 – were involved in making these additions and alterations to C, which found their way into the copies H and L. The text known as the Historia Regum, which, in its annals for 848 to 1118, relies mainly on the CC, may preserve a stage in CC’s evolution that is earlier still than that represented by HL.78 A later stage of composition than HL is represented by the manuscript witnesses B and P. B is thought to be a direct copy of C made when C was taken to Bury St Edmunds. P is a later copy that has a more complicated textual relationship, being close both to L and to a copy of C that was made after it had been copied by B at Bury.79 From these copies, we learn that at this stage William of Malmesbury’s works, the GR and GP, were extensively used and that the Visio Eucherii was added to annal 741 and the Hadrianum to the 773 annal. Most of these additions (made as alterations, interlineations and marginal notes to the text of C) are in the hand of C3. As Darlington and 76 Brett,

‘John of Worcester’, pp. 106–7. and JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, lxviii) and Winchcombe and Coventry, ed. Hayward, I, pp. 69–71. 78 Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, pp. 119–22; JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, lxxi–lxxiii) and D. A. Woodman, ‘Annals 848 to 1118 in the Historia Regum’, in The Battle of Carham: A Thousand Years on, ed. N. McGuigan and A. Woolf (Edinburgh, 2018), pp. 202–30. On the Historia Regum, see, for example, P. Hunter Blair, ‘Some Observations on the Historia Regum Attributed to Symeon of Durham’, in Celt and Saxon: Studies in the Early British Border, ed. N. K. Chadwick (Cambridge, 1964), pp. 63–118 and D. Rollason, ‘Symeon of Durham’s Historia de Regibus Anglorum et Dacorum as a Product of Twelfth-Century Historical Workshops’, in The Long TwelfthCentury View of the Anglo-Saxon Past, ed. M. Brett and D. A. Woodman (Farnham, 2015), pp. 95–111. And see further, S. Mereminskiy, ‘William of Malmesbury and Durham: The Circulation of Historical Knowledge in Early Twelfth-Century England’, in Discovering William of Malmesbury, ed. Thomson et al., pp. 107–16. For the famous list of Worcester monks (including Wulfstan, Hemming, Florence and John) recorded in the Durham Liber Vitae, see The Durham Liber Vitae: London, British Library, MS Cotton Domitian A. VII, ed. D. Rollason and L. Rollason with A. J. Piper, 3 vols. (London, 2007), I, 104 and 241. 79 Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, pp. 108–9 and JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, lxviii). 77 Ibid.

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Framing the Past: Charters and Chronicles at Worcester McGurk note, C3 occasionally left his jottings in the upper margins of C, to help indicate where changes should be made to the main text.80 They also suggest that the ‘B layer [should be dated] between 1133 and 1143’.81 There are further layers of chronicling activity in C which are harder to date. Mention has already been made above of the preliminary episcopal lists, royal genealogies, summary accounts and marginal annals in Easter tables that occur in C before the copy of the CC begins. The relationship of this material to the CC, and the complexity of understanding at what point in the whole chronicle enterprise they were written – i.e. whether before, during or after the annals in CC – has been discussed in brief by the OMT editors. Their analysis of all of this preliminary matter, including discussion of the latest events noted in the marginal annals and the royal accounts and the latest bishops’ names in the episcopal lists, has revealed at least the possibility of a stage in the writing of the chronicle completed by c.1100, although this is not certain.82 The CC’s use of text drawn from Eadmer’s Historia Novorum provides evidence for another possible stage in CC’s composition. Eadmer’s text can be found inserted in CC, both as marginal additions and as main text, in various parts of the annals from 1091 to 1121. Because Eadmer did not complete his work until October 1122, it must have been at some point after that date that CC made use of it in its annals.83 Palaeographical observations (concerning how these borrowings from Eadmer were entered into C by two of the main scribes, C1 and C2) have suggested to Darlington and McGurk that this was a relatively early addition to the CC, even if it is difficult to date it more narrowly than at some point after 1122.84 These different layers of text in C, and the three main scribes that can be identified as being at work in C (with six hands in total), show both that the CC was a ‘living’, ever-changing text and that it was being modified as a result of interactions and exchanges of manuscripts made with other centres in England – places like Bury St Edmunds, Canterbury, Malmesbury and Durham. In her chapter below, Laura Cleaver discusses such matters in greater detail, makes suggestions concerning the intended function of the CC and hypothesises that there may once have been more copies of the CC than currently survive. TCD MS 503 (G) demonstrates John of Worcester’s continued composition of annals in addition to his work in the CC. The manuscript itself is written principally in John’s own hand, which begins on fol. 37r and ends on fol. 113v,

80 JW,

Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, lxix–lxx). p. lxxiii. 82 Ibid., pp. lxxiv–lxxxi (at p. lxxxi for discussion of a slightly different model, that this early layer of chronicling activity may have begun after the period 1103 × 1106). 83 For the version of the Historia Novorum used by CC, see M. Brett, ‘A Note on the Historia Novorum of Eadmer’, Scriptorium 32 (1979), 56–8. 84 JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, lxxiii–lxxiv). 81 Ibid.,

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Francesca Tinti and D. A. Woodman l. 23, in the annal for 1123. A second scribe was responsible for adding, on fols. 1v–36v, a set of preliminary texts, including summary accounts of kingdoms, royal genealogies and episcopal lists that are closely related to those found at the beginning of C.85 This second scribe also added a continuation to the annals in G, on fols. 113v, l. 24 (annal 1123) to fol. 115r, l. 24 (annal 1125) and again from fol. 116v, l. 17 (annal 1126) to fol. 151v (annal 1141); this material is connected in various ways to Gloucester. The smaller contributions of two further scribes can be found on fols. 115v–116v.86 The text describes itself as a Chronicula and as having been excerpted from the main CC.87 To a large extent this description, of the Chronicula as an abbreviation of the CC, is correct. But there are important differences between the two texts. The most apparent is that of the Chronicula’s chronological format, since the text is structured according to the reigns of the emperors and the Marianan year in which each emperor came to power.88 This has the result that many entries from chronologically distinct annals in the CC are placed together under one entry in the Chronicula, as long blocks of text. Because of the way that the CC is structured (by emperor’s reign, and by Marianan and Dionysian dates), it would have been an easy task to compile the Chronicula in this manner by reference to the CC. Other differences concern the Chronicula’s sources. It opens with a geographical description of Britain that is not in the CC but is closely connected to the F version of the ASC.89 Further similarities with the F version of the ASC can be found at various points. It also makes greater use of Hugh of Fleury. Parts of the preliminary items in C (i.e. of the summary accounts of kingdoms and the royal genealogies) can be found in the main text of the Chronicula, and, from fol. 64v to fol. 73v, much fuller summary accounts of

85 Ibid.,

p. lxvii. these details, see ibid., pp. lxii–lxiii. 87 See, for example, fol. 64v of G: ‘Que uel quot in Anglia dudum extitere regna uel quorum regum imperio sunt subiecta, priusquam huius regis Æthelstani tempore in unum sunt coadunata, succincte perstringimus in hac chronicula nostra, ut dum de his questio fuerit oborta prompta querentibus reddantur responsa’ (‘In this chronicle of ours, we are briefly touching upon what and how many kingdoms formerly existed in England, or the rule of which kings they were subjected, before they were united into one at the time of this king, Æthelstan, in order that, whenever a question arises about these things, ready replies can be given to those asking the question’); and fol. 111v: ‘Huius subtili scientia et studiosi laboris industria preeminet cunctis chronicarum chronica, hec etiam de ipsa maiori collecta chronicula’ (‘Because of his meticulous learning and the hard work of his scholarly toil, the chronicle of chronicles excels them all, as does this chronicula, assembled from the actual larger one’). 88 Occasionally, the equivalent Dionysian year to the Marianan year listed is provided in G. For an image of the way that G is set out, see Fig. 3. 89 See fols. 37r–38r of G. Comparison of passages of text in the Chronicula that are connected to ASC F suggests that it was not the F version itself that was the ultimate source for the Chronicula, but a text close to it: Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, pp. 123–4. 86 For

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Fig. 3: TCD MS 503, fol. 50v © The Board of Trinity College Dublin.

Francesca Tinti and D. A. Woodman kingdoms are inserted in the midst of the Chronicula’s annals, which again rely on the equivalent texts in C. The Chronicula is also marked by its insertion of accounts of miracles not found in the CC, and, perhaps most strikingly of all, by a sequence of verses which express a fondness for the Anglo-Saxon past (concerning Edward the Confessor, Harold, son of Godwine, and Wulfstan II), the interest of which is discussed in greater detail below.90 Because the Chronicula incorporates various layers of text which we know were made at a later stage of the CC’s composition, it has been suggested that it must have been written in about the late 1130s.91 John’s purpose in writing the Chronicula remains elusive. At the end of fol. 71v, in a passage of text that provides a summary account of the kingdom of the Deirans and how it passed under the control of various viking kings, the following two sentences can be found: Horum omnium acta pessima, qui nosse uoluerit, seriatim pleniusque reperiet scripta in cronicarum chronica. Huic uero libello dumtaxat utiliora studuimus inserere. (‘Whoever wants to know the very worst deeds of all these men, will find them written in chronological order and more fully in the chronicle of chronicles. But at any rate, in this little book, we have been concerned to insert only the more useful matters.’)

In John’s own view, then, the Chronicula’s text focused on what were, for him, the ‘more useful’ (‘utiliora’) events, and any reader was reminded that the CC could also be consulted if a more detailed account were needed. For Weaver, who was writing in the early twentieth century, the Chronicula’s purpose was ‘perplexing’.92 More recently, the suggestion has been made that this was a portable manuscript designed to be carried by a traveller and that, because there are marked Gloucester interests and associations in the annals added after John’s hand stops in annal 1123, it was perhaps even intended as a gift for Gilbert Foliot (abbot of Gloucester from 1139).93 Thanks to the work of Paul Hayward, it is possible to extend the list of works known to have been produced by the Worcester historical workshop in this period. He has demonstrated that the Chronicula was not the only abbreviated chronicle to have been composed. Hayward’s careful textual analysis of the Winchcombe and Coventry Chronicles has revealed that, where they share certain entries, they can be shown to rely on a now lost version of the

90 See Chapter 8. For the inclusion of miracle episodes in the last stage of the CC added

by John of Worcester, see the comments of O’Donnell below, pp. 55–7. and Coventry, ed. Hayward, I, 74. 92 The Chronicle of John of Worcester 1118–1140: Being the Continuation of the ‘Chronicon ex chronicis’ of Florence of Worcester, ed. J. R. H. Weaver (Oxford, 1908), p. 5. 93 Winchcombe and Coventry, ed. Hayward, I, 74–5. 91 Winchcombe

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Framing the Past: Charters and Chronicles at Worcester CC that was compiled in Worcester at about the same time.94 For Hayward, this ‘common root’ was probably produced by John himself and possibly in the period from the mid 1120s to 1130, while he was still working on the CC, and before many of the later layers of that text had been added.95 A text of a slightly different, but nevertheless related, character may also be attributed to Worcester. The text itself is known as the Cronica de Anglia and it survives in a late twelfth-century manuscript from Rievaulx Abbey.96 Hayward demonstrates that this chronicle was probably produced at Worcester, possibly again by John himself, in the period from mid-1125 to September 1137. Like the Chronicula, it draws on several different parts of C, not just the main chronicle itself, but also on the preliminary items. Parts of its text also seem closer to the Chronicula than to the CC. In the same way as additions from William of Malmesbury’s GP are inserted into C, the Cronica de Anglia also has passages that rely on William’s work. Fascinatingly, Hayward shows that the overlap between these three texts – namely William of Malmesbury’s GP, the CC and Cronica de Anglia – is of such a kind that there must have been a now lost set of notes on which the CC and the Cronica de Anglia were independently relying for their extracts from the GP. He also shows that passages of text that are related to each other, but with notable differences, in the CC, the Chronicula and in Cronica de Anglia provide evidence that there must have been a further version of the CC that no longer survives.97 One particularly thorny issue concerning the CC has been the question of its authorship. Entries in 1118 and 1138 in the CC itself credit the Worcester monks Florence and John respectively with roles in the composition of the CC, and the testimony of Orderic Vitalis, as we have seen, suggests that when he visited Worcester he saw John at work on the text.98 That John had a major role in its production is clear from the facts that he himself rewrote the annals for 1128 to 1131 and then extended the chronicle until 1140, that he can also be found making emendations throughout C, and that he wrote the associated Chronicula.99 But the scale of the project, spanning the time from

94 Ibid.,

esp. pp. 63–98. p. 96, where Hayward highlights that the common root lacks, for example, the northern material that was added in C at a later stage and also the entries from Hugh of Fleury. 96 The manuscript now survives in two parts, both in the BL (one in MS Royal 6. C. viii and one in Cotton MS Vitellius C. viii); see P. A. Hayward, ‘The Cronica de Anglia in London, British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius C.VIII, fols. 6v–21v: Another Product of John of Worcester’s History Workshop’, Traditio 70 (2015), 159–236, with an edition of the text on pp. 197–236. 97 Ibid., pp. 179–82. 98 JW, Chron. s.a. 1118 and 1138 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 142–3 and 244–5 respectively); and OV, HE iii.2.159–61 (ed. and trans. Chibnall, II, 186–9), quoted above, n. 8. 99 JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xvii–xviii). 95 Ibid.,

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Francesca Tinti and D. A. Woodman when it was initiated by Bishop Wulfstan II until c.1140,100 the different stages in its production, and the various hands identifiable as being at work on the text perhaps suggest that both Florence and John (and possibly others) may have played a role: if so, one should perhaps consider referring to the text by the title used by those at Worcester, the Chronica Chronicarum.101 We know precious little about John of Worcester himself. From the ending of the CC that was erased and rewritten by John, a few details can be discerned. The entry for 1131, which occurs on the same page of C which has illustrations and accounts of the famous dream visions of King Henry I, narrates that John learnt the details of these dreams directly from the royal physician Grimbald, who had been present in the king’s chamber when the dreams took place, and who subsequently described them to Godfrey, abbot of Winchcombe, when both Grimbald and John were themselves at Winchcombe.102 The later entry for 1134, in providing detail about a miraculous episode, again notes that John learned about it while he ‘was once exiled at Winchcombe, from the most learned abbot of St Valéry’.103 Unfortunately, the dates of John’s time at Winchcombe cannot be ascertained.104 We also know, from the annal for 1132, that John had a close relationship with another Worcester monk, Uhtred, who had been the community’s precentor. John was close by when Uhtred died in early April 1132, and he was able to provide a moving account of his final moments.105 John’s rewriting of the end of the CC is also valuable because it provides first-hand detail of the devastation and terror wrought by the Anarchy of King Stephen’s reign, and the attacks on Worcester and its citizens.106 The CC is a text of vital importance for its record of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman history, containing, for example, unique detail about aspects of the reign of Æthelred Unræd (d. 1016).107 As Georgia Henley demonstrates in her chapter below, the CC is of interest for the particular attention it gives to the history of Wales and for ‘a monastic network of communication that spanned the Welsh marches’. It is also significant for its use of sources. At its core, and until the early twelfth century, is a Latin translation of the Old 100 John’s rewritten annals at the end of the CC must have been completed in the period

1140 × 1143 on the basis of the 1134 annal’s reference to Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, as currently in position as papal legate: ibid., p. lxix. 101 JW, Chron. s.a. 1118 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 142–3); cf. the comments in Winchcombe and Coventry, ed. Hayward, I, 71. 102 JW, Chron. s.a. 1131 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 200–1). 103 Ibid., s.a. 1134 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 214–16). 104 JW, Chron. (ed. McGurk, III, 202, n. 9 and 214, n. 6). 105 JW, Chron. s.a. 1132 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 206–9). For possible reasons why Uhtred may have been revered by his Worcester brethren, see Lawrence-Mathers, ‘John of Worcester’, p. 268. 106 JW, Chron. s.a. 1139 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 272–9). 107 Darlington and McGurk, ‘The “Chronicon ex Chronicis”’, pp. 193–4.

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Framing the Past: Charters and Chronicles at Worcester English annals in the ASC. The exact relationship between the CC and extant versions of the ASC is difficult to discern: it is at times closer to one version than another, but that correlation is not constant or straightforward.108 As its title implies, CC is a ‘chronicle of chronicles’, and it was based on more than one version of the ASC (‘… Anglicarum cronicarum … repperimus textu’, ‘we have found in the text of the English chronicles’).109 The work of Stafford, noted above, has suggested that there may have been a now lost Worcester version of the ASC which formed at least one basis for the CC’s annals into the tenth century. Close comparison between the CC’s annals and those in corresponding versions of the ASC therefore provides important information about the shape of the ASC and about previous versions of the ASC that may once have existed (even if it is impossible to be precise about the limits and contents of such a lost chronicle). The CC also made use of works by Bede (particularly his Historia ecclesiastica), and, for the later Anglo-Saxon period, of a variety of saints’ lives, including those by B, Adelard and Osbern on Dunstan, that by Byrhtferth on Oswald, Abbo of Fleury’s Passio Sancti Eadmundi and Osbern’s Vita of Ælfheah. The CC relied quite extensively on Asser’s Vita Ælfredi, and, because the manuscript copy of Asser’s work was almost completely destroyed in the 1731 fire at Ashburnham House, the CC constitutes one of three important medieval witnesses to its original text (in addition to later transcripts).110 The CC also mined William of Malmesbury’s GP, GR and his De antiquitate Glastonie ecclesiae,111 as well as Eadmer’s Historia Novorum,112 thus providing evidence of how the works of these Anglo-Norman historians were received soon after their production. As well as English sources, detail is also taken from, for example, the Norman Annals, the work of Hugh of Fleury (as noted above) and miraculous episodes that took place on the continent.113 Thomas O’Donnell, in his chapter below, explores the ‘omnivorous intellectual climate’ at Worcester and the attention that the CC gives to papal, imperial, Frankish and Norman history, as well as to English entries, making important comments about the varied sense of identity at Worcester and the mixed ethnicity of its inhabitants. The

108 Ibid. 109 JW,

Chron. s.a. 734 (ed. Darlington and McGurk, trans. Bray and McGurk, II, 184–5). Life of King Alfred, Together with the Annals of Saint Neots Erroneously Ascribed to Asser, ed. W. H. Stevenson, rev. edn (Oxford, 1959), pp. xi–xxxii; Darlington and McGurk, ‘The “Chronicon ex Chronicis”’, pp. 189–90. 111 For the CC’s use of William Malmesbury’s copy of the Liber pontificalis, see R. M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, 1987), pp. 119–36. 112 See above, p. 21. 113 For the ‘Norman Annals’, see The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, Volume 17: The Annals of St Neots with Vita Primi Sancti Neoti, ed. D. Dumville and M. Lapidge (Cambridge, 1985), pp. xliii–xlvii. 110 Asser’s

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Francesca Tinti and D. A. Woodman CC, in its annals for 1133 and 1138, exhibits an interest in astronomy and mathematics that connects it ultimately to the world of Arabic learning. The former annal borrows a phrase from a text called De Dracone, which concerns the course of the moon. It was composed by Walcher of Malvern (d. 1135) on the basis of work in the early twelfth century by Petrus Alfonsi,114 and a copy of it can be found in Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Auct. F. 1. 9 (on fols. 96r–99r), a Worcester manuscript in which the CC hands of C2 and of John of Worcester appear. The latter annal refers to the astronomical tables of a ninth-century Arabic astronomer, al-Khwārizmī, a translation of which was produced by the twelfth-century scholar Adelard of Bath, and also appears in Auct. F. 1. 9 (on fols. 99v–159v).115 These allusions connect Worcester to a web of European learning and betray something of the ambitions of the Worcester monks in their composition of chronicles.116 C, the principal copy of the CC, is also notable for its use of illustrations, including, on p. 77b, an image of the Crucifixion, on p. 380 a diagram of sunspots, and, most famously of all, on pp. 382–3, an illustrated account of the dream visions of King Henry I while he was in Normandy, and also of his escape from a storm at sea. This was a conspicuously early example of the harnessing of images to illuminate accompanying historical text.117 The evidence regarding the composition of chronicles at Worcester provides at first glance the impression of a community that was, by the early to mid-twelfth century, strikingly industrious. Behind the making of C we can assume that there must have been whole sets of working notes and libelli and, as we have seen, there may well have been other copies of the CC once in existence, some of which may have been sent to other centres of learning across the country. But the contents of C – and associated texts – are much more important than that. For they collectively reveal that the Worcester community was at the forefront of various newly emerging intellectual developments: a

114 Walcher

of Malvern: De Lunationibus and De Dracone; Study, Edition, Translation, and Commentary, ed. C. P. E. Nothaft (Turnhout, 2017), pp. 13–15 and 66–7. 115 R. Mercier, ‘Astronomical Tables in the Twelfth Century’, in Adelard of Bath: An English Scientist and Arabist of the Early Twelfth Century, ed. C. Burnett (London, 1987), pp. 87–118; and C. Burnett, ‘Mathematics and Astronomy in Hereford and its Region in the Twelfth Century’, in Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology at Hereford, ed. Whitehead, pp. 50–9. 116 See further O’Donnell, Townend and Tyler, ‘European Literature’, passim. 117 C. M. Kauffmann, ‘Manuscript Illumination at Worcester in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, in Medieval Art and Architecture at Worcester Cathedral, ed. G. Popper, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 1 (Leeds, 1978), pp. 43–50; J. Collard, ‘Henry I’s Dream in John of Worcester’s Chronicle (Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 157) and the Illustration of Twelfth-Century English Chronicles’, Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010), 105–25; Lawrence-Mathers, ‘John of Worcester and the Science of History’, 255–74; and P. McGurk, ‘Illustrations in the “Chronicle of John of Worcester”’, Source: Notes in the History of Art 33 (2014), 28–33.

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Framing the Past: Charters and Chronicles at Worcester new method of chronology (represented by the work of Marianus), even if it did not in the end receive wide acclaim; the use of new scientific methods for observing and describing astronomical phenomena, drawing ultimately on Arabic learning; and the inclusion of sophisticated illustrations alongside chronicle text, in ways that were both innovative and that encouraged readers to reflect more thoughtfully on the text in front of them.

This chapter has focused, in two parts, on the Worcester community’s records of charters in its cartularies and its production of chronicles. But that is not intended to imply that these aspects of Worcester’s writing of history should be considered separately. The two strands of research, credited by Worcester texts to the guiding force of Bishop Wulfstan II, need to be considered together and in the context of the Worcester community’s major investigation into the past via the wide range of texts at their disposal. This embraced saints’ lives, computistical texts, patristic works, accounts of miracles and so on. It also involved the use of Latin and of Old English. This was a community of significant scholarly ambition, immersed in research and the writing and re-writing of various different texts. The community was also well connected. Exchanges of manuscripts, and the incorporation of texts within the CC (and in other contexts), reveal the vibrancy of literary and historical endeavour that existed both within Worcester itself and in conjunction with different religious communities in Britain and across Europe. This is vividly revealed by the 1122 mortuary roll of Abbot Vitalis of Savigny. Composed in order to announce and commemorate the abbot’s death, it was sent to different communities in France and England and eventually accrued some two hundred tituli. The inscription from Worcester reads: Anima eius et animae omnium fidelium defunctorum per misericordiam Dei requiescant in pace. Amen. Orate pro nostris, pro domno Vulstano et Samsone, episcopis; pro domno Thoma priore, pro Florentio et Henrico, Agelrico, Mauro, Symeone, monachis, et omnibus aliis.118

This short entry is of interest because of the prominence afforded to Bishop Wulfstan II and Florence, presumably the same Florence who was credited with a degree of involvement in the composition of the CC. But it is also

118 Rouleaux

des morts du IXe au XVe siècle recueillis et publiés par la Société de l’Histoire de France, ed. L. Delisle (Paris, 1866), p. 313 (no. 87), which may be translated as follows: ‘May his soul and the souls of all the faithful dead rest in peace, through the Lord’s mercy. Amen. Pray for us, for Dom. Wulstan and Samson, bishops; for Dom. Thomas, the prior, for Florence and Henry, for Æthelric, Maurice, Symeon, monks, and for all the others’.

29

Francesca Tinti and D. A. Woodman important for its demonstration of the wide network of communities across France and England with which Worcester was connected. The chapters in this book show how, in writing texts across c.1050–c.1150, members of the Worcester community drew on these literary connections when constructing their own versions of history.

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2 Identities in Community: Literary Culture and Memory at Worcester Thomas O’Donnell

This chapter analyses memorial writing at Worcester between 1050 and 1150 as products of, and tools for, monastic practices of memory that were ramified throughout a wide range of the monks’ cultural activities.1 Like many sites of tenth-century reform, Worcester had adopted new usages gradually, unevenly, and in ways constrained by local conditions.2 Nevertheless, the pontificates of Bishops Ealdred (1041–61) and Wulfstan II (1062–95) mark an intensive phase of this institutional development. During this period, Worcester monks vastly expanded their store of practical texts for a monastic life in line with the ideals of the tenth-century Benedictine movement in England. As part of this process the monks multiplied the literary connections to centres in West Francia, Flanders and Lotharingia, regions that had shaped the community’s religious practices since the mid-tenth century. The late eleventh- and early twelfth-century community’s reputation among modern scholars as a bastion of conservative cultural nationalism, because of its unusually deep store of Old English texts and the long tenure of Wulfstan II, underplays these important examples of central medieval England’s 1 I

would like to thank this volume’s editors and Elizabeth M. Tyler for their invaluable help completing this chapter. All errors are my own. 2 F. Tinti, Sustaining Belief: The Church of Worcester from c.870 to c.1100 (Farnham, 2010); J. Barrow, ‘English Cathedral Communities and Reform in the Late Tenth and Eleventh Centuries,’ in Anglo-Norman Durham, 1093–1193, ed. D. Rollason, M. Harvey and M. Prestwich (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 25–39; J. Barrow, ‘The Community of Worcester, 961–c. 1100’, in St Oswald of Worcester: Life and Influence, ed. N. Brooks and C. Cubitt (London, 1996), pp. 84–99. For summary accounts of central medieval monastic reform, see R. Kramer, ‘Monasticism, Reform, and Authority in the Carolingian Era’ and S. Vanderputten, ‘Monastic Reform from the Tenth to the Early Twelfth Century’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West, ed. A. I. Beach and I. Cochelin (Cambridge, 2020), pp. 432–49 and 599–617. That the twelfth-century Worcester monks themselves identified their religious practice with monasticism will be obvious from the texts surveyed below. I am not denying, however, that communities of canons and secular clergy could also avail themselves of similar practices.

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Thomas O’Donnell richly ‘international’ character and require nuancing, if they should not be abandoned altogether.3 A picture of Worcester’s literary culture as the fruit of its long, essentially outward-looking development as a monastic institution – rather than a product of irredentist ardour and the shock of Conquest – is in keeping, however, with historical studies of its cartularies, its annalistic writing, and its book collecting as a whole.4 It also bears out Elaine Treharne’s point that post-Conquest Old English writing was not antiquarian but responded to contemporary needs in contemporary ways.5 Worcester’s manner of embracing its monastic transformation in its literature can be surprising. Rather than propose a monastic identity that was altogether homogeneous (still less homogeneously ‘English’), the authors and scribes of Worcester’s literary culture brought texts together whose contents emphasised the diverse origins and experiences of the individuals within the community. A text like Hemming’s Cartulary seems to articulate a consolidated collective identity towards the end of Worcester’s long process of reform,6 while the CC attributed to John of Worcester presents key ethnic and political features of the community’s identity as though they were subject to frequent augmentation, revision and dispute. A close inspection of an even wider range of Worcester’s memorial texts only deepens this latter impression. For the members of Worcester’s twelfth-century community, the social, political and ideological commitments of the monastery must have remained an open question capable of only provisional, subjective answers. Insofar as it sustained an ethnically diverse and sometimes politically divided community, such openness would have been all for the better. Moreover, there is no clear opposition between Latin and English-language works at Worcester as vehicles of identity or authority; texts in one language would borrow forms and ideas from the other and as texts in both languages cultivated a broad range of social and cultural associations in ways that 3 A





separate but related question is the way that an overriding concern to identify Englishness in our early medieval sources obscures other forms of medieval identity, including race, and the way that perpetuates racism in Medieval Studies. For commentary, see M. Rambaran-Olm, ‘Anglo-Saxon Studies [Early English Studies], Academia and White Supremacy’, Medium https://medium.com/@mrambaranolm /anglo-saxon-studies-academia-and-white-supremacy-17c87b360bf3. 4 Tinti, Sustaining Belief; The Winchcombe and Coventry Chronicles: Hitherto Unnoticed Witnesses to the Work of John of Worcester, ed. and trans. P. A. Hayward, 2 vols. (Tempe, AZ, 2010); R. Gameson, ‘Book Production and Decoration at Worcester in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries,’ in St Oswald of Worcester, ed. Brooks and Cubitt, pp. 194–243; and R. Gameson, ‘St Wulfstan, the Library of Worcester and the Spirituality of the Medieval Book’, in St Wulfstan and his World, ed. J. S. Barrow and N. P. Brooks (Aldershot, 2005), pp. 59–104. 5 E. Treharne, Living Through Conquest: The Politics of Early English, 1020–1220 (Oxford, 2012), pp. 122–46. 6 F. Tinti, ‘From Episcopal Conception to Monastic Compilation: Hemming’s Cartulary in Context’, EME 11 (2002), 233–61.

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Identities in Community informed each other. Worcester offers a particularly fine example of the close interaction between Latin- and English-language literary cultures during the early Anglo-Norman period, thanks especially to the vernacular’s continued authority as a learned language.7 Finally, the omnivorous intellectual climate supported by Worcester’s monasticism drove the community’s literary culture towards an imaginatively and philosophically complex relationship to its past. The Worcester monks can frequently be observed drawing ideas and forms from one element of their memorial work (for example, recordkeeping or saints’ lives) in order to complement and reinforce another (for example, devotion or theology). In lieu of a comprehensive overview of Worcester’s literary culture, which would be impossible in such a short format, this chapter will focus on exploring these themes with reference to Hemming’s Cartulary, the CC, the Cotton-Corpus Legendary, the community’s Old English homiletic corpus and its copies of Gregory the Great’s Dialogues in Latin and Old English.8

Monachizatio Twelfth-century historians at Worcester dated its monastic refoundation to 969. The CC records the entry of monasticism at Worcester with an uncharacteristically ringing period: ‘sanctus Oswaldus … clericos Wigornensis ecclesie monachilem habitum suscipere renuentes de monasterio expulit, consentientes uero hoc anno, ipso teste, monachizauit’ (‘saint Oswald … expelled from the monastery the clerks of the church of Worcester who refused to receive the monastic habit, but those who consented, in this year, according to his own words, he monasticised’).9 Unfortunately for the triumphalist certainty of this passage, the lines have been inserted in OCCC MS 157 over an erasure and spill over into the margins in an uncharacteristically compressed script, as Julia Barrow has noted; their basis in historical event is similarly contrived.10

7 N.

Watson, ‘The Idea of Latinity’, in The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Latin Literature, ed. R. J. Hexter and D. Townsend (Oxford, 2012), pp. 124–48 (pp. 129–32). 8 For long-form studies of Worcester’s literary and historical culture, see E. A. McIntyre, ‘Early-Twelfth-Century Worcester Cathedral Priory, with Special Reference to the Manuscripts there’ (unpublished D.Phil thesis, University of Oxford, 1978) and M. L. Rampolla, ‘A Vision of the Past: Crisis and Historical Consciousness in Worcester 1095–c.1140’ (unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Toronto, 1984). For the possibility that a lost version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was maintained at Worcester, see above, Tinti and Woodman’s chapter, pp. 10–14. 9 JW, Chron. s.a. 969 (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, 418; my translation). 10 J. Barrow, ‘How the Twelfth-Century Monks of Worcester Perceived their Past’, in The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. P. Magdalino (London, 1992), pp. 53–74 (pp. 59–60). The addition is in the hand of ‘C1’, the manuscript’s primary scribe: JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, 418).

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Thomas O’Donnell Charter evidence indicates that Oswald did not expel the cathedral secular clerks at all but instead settled monks within the cathedral precinct alongside the clerks. The monks only achieved complete dominance over the clerks perhaps as late as the mid-eleventh century episcopate of Bishop Ealdred.11 The development of monasticism at Worcester over this long period was sustained by connections to Oswald’s dedicated Benedictine foundations in England, like Ramsey and Winchcombe and to places like Évreux, Fleury, Cologne, Fulda and Mainz, as is evident in the community’s liturgy and book collecting.12 Given the broadly ‘international’ character of the literary culture of central medieval elites in England, there is no necessary contradiction between these English, Norman and German imperial elements. Despite the gradualness of the change towards Benedictinism initiated by Oswald, Wulfstan II’s time as prior and then as bishop (1062–95) marks a definite change in the community’s self-image. The break with the past is apparent in the community’s documentation, its physical footprint (as the clerical St Peter’s was pulled down to make way for an enlarged St Mary’s) and its relation to its bishop, as the community makes frequent reference to its common life in documents and begins to project a new collective monastic voice.13 An unheralded enlargement of the community from a little over a dozen monks to fifty was another startling change contemporary to the monastic takeover.14 Such rapid growth entailed the admission of monks of many different ethnic backgrounds and political sympathies.15 The Durham Liber Vitae includes a list of Worcester monks copied between 1096 and 1112, or just after Wulfstan II’s pontificate.16 Among the sixty-eight names in the list, which includes entries for the bishops and four men of uncertain 11 Barrow,

‘How the Twelfth-Century Monks’; Barrow, ‘English Cathedral Communities’; Barrow, ‘The Community of Worcester, 961–c.1100’; and Tinti, Sustaining Belief, pp. 55–7. 12 See Tinti, Sustaining Belief, pp. 20–5. For the liturgy, see A. Corrêa, ‘The Liturgical Manuscripts of Oswald’s Houses’, in St Oswald of Worcester, ed. Brooks and Cubitt, pp. 285–324, and J. P. Crowley, ‘Latin Prayers Added into the Margins of the Prayerbook British Library, Royal 2.A.XX at the Beginnings of the Monastic Reform in Worcester,’ Sacris Erudiri 45 (2006), 223–303. For Fleury and German imperial influences on Worcester books, see Gameson, ‘Book Production’, pp. 196–7, 203–5, 220–2; Gameson, ‘St Wulfstan’, pp. 81, 94; and R. Gameson, ‘The Circulation of Books Between England and the Continent, c. 871 – c. 1100’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Volume I, c.400–1100, ed. R. Gameson (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 344–72 (pp. 362–3). 13 Tinti, Sustaining Belief, pp. 58–65 and 214–22. For changes to Worcester’s book production at this time, see Gameson, ‘Book Production’, pp. 217–18. 14 Tinti, Sustaining Belief, p. 56. 15 Ibid., pp. 66–7. Cf. E. Mason, St Wulfstan c.1008–1095 (Oxford and Cambridge, MA, 1990), p. 222. 16 The Durham Liber Vitae: London, British Library, MS Cotton Domitian A. VII, ed. D.

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Identities in Community connection to Worcester, there are some obviously English names, like ‘Godricus’, ‘Goduuinus’, ‘Leouricus’ and ‘Ordricus’. Names with Frankish,17 Irish,18 Norman,19 and Scandinavian20 associations also occur, alongside many Hebrew or Latin names that were probably adopted by monks at the time of their profession, like ‘Moyses’, ‘Benedictus’, ‘Samuel’ and ‘Vincentius’. While naming evidence is not by any means a sure sign of ethnic origin, it does suggest the range of cultural and linguistic affiliations within the community. Such evidence makes it difficult to accept an idea of a single cultural politics based on a single category of ethnic belonging at work within Worcester.21 Indeed, the presence of so many different affiliations was a potential source of conflict within the community, especially considering the ethnic divisions that dominated the politics of the post-Conquest period.22 The Worcester church’s monastic conversion created many challenges for the community, including the defence of their communal property rights against their bishops and neighbours and maintaining pastoral care in a climate increasingly hostile to monastic preaching. Not the least urgent among these was the need to foster the ‘one heart and one mind’ enjoined by their Rule in a potentially fractious, multi-ethnic and politically diverse community. The community’s literary culture was one important means by which the monks answered this need. Following a brief introduction to the constitution of Worcester’s literary culture, as I understand it, and its complicated relationship both to Worcester personnel and to practices of memory, the remainder of this chapter will focus especially on the different ways memorial practices could mediate potential conflicts based on competing identities at Worcester. By troubling modern expectations of a univocal ‘English’ voice at Worcester, I am less concerned with Normanness or Frankishness, per se, than with drawing attention to the complexity and variety of thought, expression, and reception at Worcester, which our modern critical fascination with Englishness has so often obscured.

Rollason and L. Rollason with A. J. Piper, 3 vols. (London, 2007), I, 104, 241, and III, 127. 17 ‘Karolus’, ‘Henricus’, ‘Gilebertus’, ‘Arnulfus’, ‘Martinus’ (?). 18 ‘Colu(m)banus’, ‘Patricius’. 19 ‘Willelmus’, ‘Warinus’, ‘Rogerius’. Obviously the namestocks of Franks and Normans would overlap considerably. 20 ‘Hem(m)ingus’, ‘Vlf’, ‘Vhtredus’. 21 Cf. Rampolla, ‘Vision’, pp. 62–3 (Worcester’s point-of-view is ‘purely English’); McIntyre, ‘Early-Twelfth-Century Worcester’, p. 196; A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England c.550 to c.1307 (London, 1974), p. 147. 22 H. Thomas, The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation, and Identity 1066–c.1220 (Oxford, 2003), pp. 46–55, 201–13, 382.

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Thomas O’Donnell

Central medieval literature and memory Worcester’s literary culture would have embraced a wider range of text-types than is usually thought of today under the rubric ‘literature’: ‘the boundaries between edifying, critical, devotional, entertaining, practical, institutional, private, original, and derivative texts were highly fluid in the Middle Ages, although modern compartmentalisations and sensibilities still work to keep them apart’.23 Worcester’s extant literary remains include verse, chronicles, cartularies, saints’ lives, miracle stories, theology, philosophy, wisdom collections, computistical treatises and homiletic and pastoral corpora in both Latin and Old English. Despite the ‘historical’ bent of this chapter’s selections, it is necessary to keep in mind the artificiality of modern generic divisions when exploring the context and meaning of individual works; as we shall see, homilies and theology could veer into historical topics, and histories might reflect pastoral or computistical concerns. Older works the monks read alongside their own original products also need to be taken into account. Indeed, it is in the copying and adaptation of exogenous books in this period that Worcester can seem most distinctive – such as the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, the Collationes of John Cassian, the Cotton-Corpus Legendary, the Chronicon of Marianus Scotus, the Historia Monachorum and the Vitas Patrum, not to mention the priory’s extensive Old English holdings. These acquisitions are evidence of Worcester’s robust bibliographic connections to other centres in England, Lotharingia, Flanders and northern Francia. As Mary Swan demonstrated in her study of Old English texts associated with Worcester and as Martin Brett showed in his study of John of Worcester, the literary culture of Worcester was shaped by the mobility of exemplars, scribes and books over the monastery’s wide social network.24 Drawing a thick line around the category of Worcester cathedral priory books would be unwarranted in any case. Even when the presence of known Worcester hands like Coleman’s or John’s in a certain book provides direct evidence that it was available to members of the Worcester community, such a book would have found multiple uses both within the monastery and in the monastery’s external network of laity, secular clergy and other religious, so that we ought not to think of any book as only for pen-wielding men like Coleman or John. Any attempt to demarcate Worcester’s literary culture with 23 P.

Borsa, C. Høgel, L. B. Mortensen and E. Tyler, ‘What Is Medieval European Literature?’, Interfaces: A Journal of Medieval European Literatures 1 (2015), 7–24 (p. 9). 24 M. Swan, ‘Mobile Libraries: Old English Manuscript Production in Worcester and the West Midlands, 1090–1215’, in Essays in Manuscript Geography: Vernacular Manuscripts of the English West Midlands from the Conquest to the Sixteenth Century, ed. W. Scase (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 29–42; M. Brett, ‘John of Worcester and his Contemporaries’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern, ed. R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford, 1981), pp. 101–26.

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Identities in Community reference to a stable corpus of texts for the exclusive use of monks would be a mistake. Formal and generic range, multiple use and a porous boundary between the cloister and its wider social networks are to be presumed for Worcester’s literary culture in these years. These are features that it shares with the literary cultures of many other contemporary monastic settlements.25 Beyond its informational content and social associations, Worcester’s Benedictinised literary culture reveals itself in the ways it embeds its ‘historical’ work as one part of its engagement with memoria. In the modern reception of the medieval idea of memoria, several distinct but interrelated versions of memory have presented themselves. First, there is what is usually called ‘collective memory’, which describes the knowledge shared by a group about a wide range of topics that includes practical knowledge as well as information about the past and its meaning.26 Discordant collective memories often distinguish groups from one another. Aleida Assmann would divide this broad category of knowledge between social memory, which is a body of knowledge generated through social interactions between individuals over a lifetime; political memory, which is a more durable form of knowledge ‘geared towards political action’ via the creation of ideologies and political identities; and cultural memory, which describes the ‘archived’ memories owned collectively but worked on most intensively by specialists found in museums or libraries.27 At medieval Worcester, collective memory would have included – in addition to liturgical melodies, ritual gestures, the text of the Bible, the path to the latrines and so on – information intimately connected to the community’s understanding of its mission, such as the minutiae of the Rule, exempla from the lives of saints and accounts of the community’s

25 T.

O’Donnell, ‘Monastic History and Memory’, in Medieval Historical Writing: Britain and Ireland, 500–1500, ed. J. Jahner, E. Steiner and E. M. Tyler (Cambridge, 2019), pp. 35–50. For ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ social networks within central medieval monasteries, see I. Cochelin, ‘Monastic Daily Life (c. 750–1100): A Tight Community Shielded by an Outer Court’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism, ed. Beach and Cochelin, pp. 542–60. 26 The foundational discussions are M. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed., trans. and with an introduction by L. A. Coser (Chicago and London, 1992) and J. Fentress and C. Wickham, Social Memory (Oxford and Cambridge, MA, 1992). For the social memory of medieval monasteries, see P. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton, NJ, 1994); E. van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe 900–1200 (Basingstoke, 1999); and B. Pohl, ‘“One single letter remained in excess of all his sins …”: Orderic Vitalis and Cultural Memory’, in Orderic Vitalis: Life, Works, and Interpretations, ed. C. C. Rozier, D. Roach, G. E. M. Gasper and E. van Houts (Woodbridge, 2016), pp. 333–51. For the term’s ambiguity, see M. Lauwers, La mémoire des ancêtres, le souci des morts: morts, rites, et société au Moyen Âge (Diocèse de Liège, XIe–XIIIe siècles) (Paris, 1997), pp. 125–6. 27 A. Assmann, ‘Memory, Individual and Collective’, in The Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis, ed. R. E. Goodin and C. Tilly (Oxford, 2006), pp. 210–24 (quotation on p. 215).

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Thomas O’Donnell foundations; the community’s properties and its place within the Worcester countryside; and the community’s relationship with its patrons, neighbours, clients and lay flock. When written down, such information was scattered across works of many different genres at Worcester; analysis of the collective memory requires us to consider the community’s records of its past holistically. The ideological flexibility of collective memory, moreover, can alert us to ideological diversity where other approaches (like New Historicism) tend to emphasise a limited range of discourses or ideologies (‘resistance’ to Norman bishops or clerks, for instance).28 Individual memory is often contrasted with collective memory, but this too is an oversimplification according to Assmann. Like collective memory, individual memories are of various kinds, including personal knowledge of our daily lives and ideas we have learned through study. If collective memory usually refers to a body of knowledge cultivated by groups through social practices, individual memory can refer to knowledge as well as to the cognitive processes for retaining that information in the mind. Of most interest to Worcester’s literary culture, however, is the form of individual memory known as ‘episodic memory’, which relates to personal experiences that most people think of as constituting their own life stories. Such memories, observes Assmann, ‘are connected to a wider network of other memories and, what is even more important, the memories of others. In such networks of association and communication, memories are continuously socially readapted, be it that they are substantiated and corroborated, or challenged and corrected. It is thus that they not only acquire coherence and consistency, but also create social bonds.’29 The passage back and forth between individual memory – especially episodic memories – and the collective memory is a process that Worcester’s literary culture foregrounds again and again. A principal means for mediating between the individual and the collective memory and for integrating them into the social and psychological practice of monasticism was the so-called art of memory. In Mary Carruthers’s influential account, the art of memory was a scholarly practice for organising the massive quantity of material from authoritative texts into a system – a building or an image, for example – so that they could be later accessed for reflection and composition (a process called ‘inventio’ in this and related rhetorical systems). The art of memory built up the storehouse of ideas, texts and images shared by an educated public. During antiquity, the art of memory would have helped orators craft speeches; within the medieval monastery, the art of memory became a framework for meditation and textual composition based on conscious associations between different objects of memory (for example,

28 T.

O’Donnell, ‘Monastic History-Writing and Memory in Britain and Ireland: A Methodological Reassessment’, New Medieval Literatures 19 (2019), 43–88. 29 Assmann, ‘Memory’, pp. 212–13 (p. 213).

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Identities in Community Biblical verses sharing similar topics, words or images).30 Jean Leclercq even writes of monastic meditation and composition as a form of ‘reminiscence’ or of ‘concordance’ between widely distant phrases and ideas.31 In its verbalised expression, the art of memory did not just mediate between individual and collective memory but between text-types like chronicle, cartulary, poetry and romance, which all drew from the same storehouse of memory and, in their turn, supplied the community with new texts, images and ideas.32 The monastic art of memory did not simply aid textual composition; it was also a tool for reshaping social performance and interior affect.33 As Leclercq put it, to meditate is to read a text and learn it ‘by heart’ in the fullest sense of this expression, that is, with the memory which fixes it, with the intelligence which understands its meaning, and with the will which desires to put it into practice … For the [Benedictine] monks in general, the foremost aid to good works is a text which makes possible the meditated reading of the word of God … [M]onastic exegesis [was] entirely oriented toward life, and not toward abstract knowledge.34

Under such circumstances, literature was a means for shaping the will so that the affects and disposition of a memorised text would become the monk’s own.35 The art of memory thus raised the importance of literary texts for monastic identities and for the individual and communal practice of monasticism – and, by extension, of the items of collective and individual memory recorded in the text. In turning to the memoria of Worcester literary culture, we will need to ask just how the individual and collective memories of the 30 M.

Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2008), and M. Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 7–115. See also N. Paul and S. Yeager, eds., Remembering the Crusades: Myth, Image, and Identity (Baltimore, 2012), pp. 5–11. 31 J. Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. C. Misrahi (New York, 1982), pp. 72–7. 32 For Carruthers and Leclercq, the art of memory was to direct thinking and writing to ‘approved’ ends, such as fear of God or compunction (Craft, pp. 14–16, 60–81; Love, pp. 29–32, 53–70). Nevertheless, the associative monastic art of memory could also lead practitioners to contemplate unexpected or illicit objects, including conscious fictions like pagan epic or forms of romance. See J. Rudolph, ‘The Poetics of Exploratory Ductus’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, Fordham University, 2020). 33 Carruthers, Craft, pp. 81–115; D. Robertson, Lectio Divina: The Medieval Experience of Reading, Cistercian Studies 238 (Collegeville, MN, 2011), pp. 72–103; and B. Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, NJ, 1983), pp. 405–6. This practice had ancient foundations. See L. H. Martin, H. Gutman and P. H. Hutton, eds., Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault (Amherst, MA, 1988). 34 Leclercq, Love, p. 17. 35 Robertson, Lectio, pp. 85–7, commenting on Cassian, Collationes X.xi.4–6.

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Thomas O’Donnell Worcester community manifested in its literature; how these different forms of memory unite a superficially miscellaneous literary culture; how that literature was, in turn, also a means to reshape the practices and identities of the members of a community in search of unity; and whether the crosspollination of memories across texts and genres gave rise to new ideas and forms of expression.

Two attempts at memorial unity: Hemming’s Cartulary and the CC The entanglement of individual memory, collective memory and the rhetorical practices associated with the art of memory as means to reshape identities and practices can easily be seen in Hemming’s Cartulary. Francesca Tinti has identified memoria of different kinds as a major preoccupation of the cartulary, especially in the section called the Enucleatio libelli, or ‘explanation of the booklet’. Hemming presents his text first of all as an account of ‘quedam etiam ex nostra memoria ipsemet, quibus aut interfui aut quȩ nostra ȩtate facta sunt’ (‘certain things drawn even from our own memory, in which either I took part or they happened in our time’) – in other words, as a product of his individual memory.36 Further down, Hemming turns to the memories of possessions and privileges from before his time, which Wulfstan II had ordered copied into a Bible (probably the fragmentary Nero-Middleton Cartulary, according to Tinti).37 Despite this distinction between two forms of memory, individual and collective, Hemming demonstrates their practical interdependence. In a complicated passage, Hemming presents the coming narrative as a transmission of the collective memory, held by ‘men of old’ and the bishop, via his own memory and writing activity, into the collective memory of a future Worcester readership (thus moving from collective to episodic to collective memory again): multorum antiquorum hominum et maxime domni Wlstani episcopi, piissimi patris nostri, edoctus relatione, et corro[bo]ratus auctoritate … omnia tanto certius dico quanto eo nostra memoria recolit facta … ut posteris nostris claresceret quȩ et quantȩ possessiones terrarum ditioni huius monasterii adiacere (‘having been instructed by the report and strengthened by the authority of many men of old and, above all, Bishop Wulfstan, our most caring father

36 The

text and translation (slightly altered) are taken from F.Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię commendaretur: Memory and Cartularies in Eleventh-Century Worcester’, in Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald, ed. S. Baxter, C. Karkov, J. L. Nelson and D. Pelteret (Farnham, 2009), pp. 475–97. 37 Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię’, pp. 477–8.

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Identities in Community … I report everything with all the more certainty inasmuch as our memory keeps the events in mind … so that it will be clear to those who come after us which and how many possessions of land pertain to the lordship of this monastery’).38

The ambiguity of a phrase like ‘nostra memoria’ in this context is unavoidable (is this memory collective or individual?); insofar as such a phrase implies the partial merger of the collective and individual memory, however, this ambiguity is a desirable means for strengthening communal solidarity and guaranteeing the safety of the patrimony on which that solidarity depends. The vocabulary that Hemming adopts outside the Enucleatio makes plain the role played by the art of memory in the merger of individual and collective memory.39 In a passage of the Codicellus possessionum marking the transition from a discussion of lands west of the River Teme to those between the Teme and the Severn, Hemming writes: Illud tamen in nostrȩ prȩmittimus narrationis exordio, ut si quis ea quȩ dicturi sumus, meditatus fuerit, scireque plenissime studuerit, hunc libellum nostrum legere non renuat, sed omni mentis deuotione legat in quo procul dubio inueniat quo gressum suȩ, ut ita dixerim, meditationis figat. Et quȩ uera esse pro certo agnoscat, quibus etiam fidem adhibere debeat.40 (‘For the moment we put the following at the beginning of our account: that if anyone should have meditated upon those things that we are about to say and should have taken pains to know it inside and out, let him not refuse to read this little book of ours but let him read it with every heartfelt devotion, so that in it he might find without a doubt where he might plant the step, as I might say, of his meditation. And let him acknowledge definitively that the things to which he ought to attach his faith are true’).

Hemming clearly envisions here a process of ‘learning “by heart”’ grounded in the art of memory, which he underscores with words like ‘meditor’, ‘devotio’, ‘invenio’ and ‘meditatio’, and with the analogy between thought and a physical journey, which was common in monastic discussions of the art of memory (often called ductus).41 This journey of thought is simultaneously correlated to a movement through physical space, as Hemming considers different areas of the community’s property in the Codicellus from west to east. The passage epitomises the mutual reinforcement of bodily and mental disposition frequently observed in monastic discipline.

38 Ibid.,

pp. 492–3. a tabular representation of the contents of Hemming’s Cartulary see Tinti, Sustaining Belief, pp. 138–9. 40 London, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fol. 120v, lines 4–12. Cf. Hemingi Chartularium ecclesiæ Wigorniensis, ed. T. Hearne, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1723), p. 252. 41 Carruthers, Craft, pp. 77–81. 39 For

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Thomas O’Donnell The intrusion of meditative language in this passage does not simply hint at Hemming’s preferred reading practices or at the spiritual importance he places on the recovery of the community’s lost estates (which was considerable); it also creates useful connections between the cartulary and the spiritual reading of the community, which would be a key value for a literary culture of ‘reminiscence’. A similar strategy is at work in a later passage, where Hemming signals a change of topic to describe the complicated matter of Worcester’s claims to estates east of the Severn. There he compares himself to ‘timidus nauclerus erga litora remigium temptando’ (‘an anxious steersman testing out his rudder close to the shoreline’) about to launch ‘locutionis nostrȩ cimbam’ (‘the skiff of our discourse’) into ‘latum pelagus’ (‘the open sea’).42 Both the comparison of his composition to a sea journey and the use of marked words like ‘cymba’, ‘nauclerus’ and ‘pelagus’ reach for the conventionally elevated style of classical and Christian poetry, which was a staple of elite monastic education.43 Hemming’s poetic turn provides yet another access point for the assimilation of his work by his monastic colleagues. Hemming’s self-presentation in the Enucleatio and his rhetorical choices indicate that the cartulary was not meant simply to stabilise dying or erratic memories through writing; rather, Hemming used writing to create new memories and new dispositions held ‘with heartfelt devotion’ within the minds of a following generation of monks, which might be accessed ‘dum tempus aptum inuenerit’, perhaps without ever opening the cartulary itself.44 It is this culture of living memory shaped by writing but not chained to it – sustained above all by intimate discussions within the cloister, day-to-day administration of the priory’s estates, and the exchange of stories in general among the monks and between the monks and their neighbours – in which Hemming hoped to intervene when composing the Enucleatio and the Codicellus. The interrelation of collective and individual memory and the action of the art of memory can also be glimpsed in the CC attributed to John of Worcester, although here the emphases and effects differ. Paul Hayward has argued convincingly that the CC was primarily intended to teach computus and

42 London,

BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fol. 123r, lines 1–3. The word ‘erga’ is glossed ‘uel iuxta’ above the line. Cf. Hemingi Chartularium, ed. Hearne, p. 258. 43 P. Lendinara provides a helpful review of relevant instances of the ‘nautical metaphor’ in ‘The Poem “Nauta rudis …” in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: More than a Colophon’, in Limits to Learning: The Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages, ed. C. Giliberto and L. Teresi (Leuven, 2013), pp. 219–41 (pp. 219–22). Hemming’s word-choice is especially close to Paulinus of Périgueux’s Vita Sancti Martini, II.1–5, ed. M. Petscheng, in Poetae Christiani Minores, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 16, part I (Vienna, 1888), pp. 34–5. Passages by Prudentius, Sidonius and Venantius Fortunatus, cited by Lendinara, also offer apt analogues. 44 Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię’, p. 492.

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Identities in Community chronology drawn from Marianus Scotus’ provocative universal Chronicon.45 As a teaching and research tool, the CC would have been heavily implicated in the art of memory at Worcester, something helped along by the diagrammatic structure of its layout in its principal manuscript OCCC MS 157, with its generous rubrication, clear headings and several illustrations.46 In the chronologically later entries especially, the monks integrated classical and biblical quotations into their translations of the ASC in a manner reminiscent of Hemming’s genre-crossing language.47 These allusions established connections between the memories of English events and the ancient past, and they brought to mind a body of shared texts and encouraged critical reflection on the events they described. The CC’s major importance today, however, lies in the notices that the monks added to Marianus’s Chronicon. The quantity and variety of these additions can make it unclear just what sort of history the monks are trying to tell. If we accept the premise that the monks understood their historical data as constituting forms of shared memory, however, the CC begins to look like the confrontation on the page of several related but distinct strains of collective memory. First, the core universal chronicle originally compiled by Marianus covers the biblical and ancient past in its first book, and then turns to a set of annals focused on imperial and papal history in the third book, with scattered references to events in Mainz and among the Irish at home and abroad. Where the Marianan entries concern obscure figures and faraway events, it is likely that these memories constituted for the Worcester monks what Assmann called ‘cultural memory’, the cultivated collective memory of the archive whose social or political relevance is not always transparent. In other cases, such as the comparatively lengthy entries for 842 and 844, which describe the division of the Frankish Empire, and for 1044, which accuses Pope Benedict IX of simony, the information possesses more evident social or political meaning of use to a monastic student at Worcester. Into this universal fabric the Worcester monks added pieces of collective memory associated with their local context, albeit in stages and without disturbing the universalist framework of individual entries.48 This local memory is most often described as ‘English’, but the monks’ additions are 45 Winchcombe

and Coventry, ed. Hayward, I, 71–3. For more on the Worcester monks’ use of Marianus see Nothaft’s chapter in this volume. 46 For the pedagogical and meditative purposes of the manuscript’s decoration, see A. E. Lawrence-Mathers, ‘John of Worcester and the Science of History’, Journal of Medieval History 39 (2013), 255–74. 47 For example, JW, Chron. s.a. 1016 (ed. Darlington and McGurk, trans. Bray and McGurk, II, 480–97), which incorporates passages from Sallust’s Catilinarian War and Jugurthine War, and JW, Chron. s.a. 1088 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 48–9), which cites Lucan’s Civil War. 48 The details of the CC’s development are fascinating and complex but cannot be discussed here. See JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, lxvii–lxxiii); ibid.

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Thomas O’Donnell really more varied than that.49 They included, even in the earliest stages of the manuscript’s development, attention to Frankish, Norman and Welsh concerns. Only some of these had obvious bearings on what are usually considered ‘English’ affairs, and many were taken from Norman or Welsh local sources.50 The so-called English material itself was varied and needs not to be lumped together retrospectively. Some of it came from saints’ lives and emphasised the events of the Benedictine movement of the late tenth century;51 a great deal came from a version (or versions) of the ASC, which would have projected a West Saxon dynastic vision of an English regnum;52 and much came from the Bedan corpus in which both the Benedictines and the West Saxons saw their origins.53 These separate strains of memory – imperial and papal, Frankish, Norman, Welsh, English Benedictine, English regnal – were being pieced together on the page revision by revision; we would be wrong to project onto this material the status of ‘res Anglorum gestae’ or ‘historia illius gentis’ conceived of by William of Malmesbury,54 especially in the early stages of the manuscript’s transcription. If the CC came to be understood as such a narrative history towards its end, the monks did not revise their past entries to fit this new vision. These different strains of collective memory captured different aspects of Worcester’s complex social identity. For a community seeking to establish itself as a ‘reformed’ monastery on the model of Winchester Old Minster, visible for instance in the factitious entry for 969, the material drawn from

(ed. McGurk, III, xix–cl); and Winchcombe and Coventry, ed. Hayward, I, 64–76. Throughout I accept their conclusions that the CC was a collaborative effort. 49 For the best description of the CC as balancing ‘universal’ and ‘English’, see R. W. Southern, ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing: 4. The Sense of the Past’, TRHS 23 (1973), 243–63 (pp. 247–51). 50 According to the notes in Darlington and McGurk’s edition, the following entries have been taken at least partly from Norman Annals: 474 (Clovis’s conversion and career), 490 (the history of Rogations); 557, 580, 586, 590, 600, 634 (the careers of different Frankish kings); 588, 677 (details about St Ouen); 876, 898, 917 (the career of Rollo of Normandy); 942 (the death of William Longsword and the succession of Richard I); 1026 (the deaths of Richard II and Richard III, and succession of Robert I); and 1035 (the death of Robert I and the succession of William the Conqueror). Welsh sources may lie behind the events in Wales described in annals 1093, 1094, 1097, 1098, 1101, 1102, 1111, 1115, 1116 and 1137. See JW, Chron. (ed. McGurk, III, xxxi–xxxii) and Henley in this volume. 51 E.g., s.a. 924, 935, 946, 953, 958, 959, 960 (B’s Vita Dunstani); 942, 943, 951, 955, 956, 957 (Adelard of Ghent’s Vita Dunstani); 958, 960, 986, 1016 (Osbern’s Vita Dunstani); and 959, 960, 963, 969, 975, 978, 979, 988, 992 (Byrhtferth’s Vita Oswaldi). 52 P. Stafford, ‘The Making of Chronicles and the Making of England: The AngloSaxon Chronicles after Alfred’, TRHS 27 (2017), 65–86. 53 Gransden, Historical Writing, pp. 29–41, 43, and her ‘Traditionalism and Continuity during the Last Century of Anglo-Saxon Monasticism’, JEH 40 (1989), 159–207. 54 WM, GR i. ‘prologue’ (ed. and trans. Mynors, Thomson and Winterbottom, I, 14–17).

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Identities in Community Bede and tenth-century saints’ lives held an obvious appeal. As both a practical matter and a sign of the community’s intellectual prestige, the universal chronicle from the German Empire was also a necessity. In the later stages of the CC’s composition, this ‘Benedictine’ character was expanded through the incorporation of information about Benedict and his followers from Hugh of Fleury, the insertion of an unflattering story about secular interference drawn from the Visio Eucherii in annal 741, and gripes about secular disrespect for monks in annal 1128.55 At the same time, Worcester and its cathedral were important sites for royal power and administration, providing a reason for the regnal and dynastic history drawn from both the ASC and the Norman Annals in case any was needed. The CC’s use of Welsh annals may reflect the community’s position on the main road from Wales. As Georgia Henley has noted, however, the monks’ interests might also have been stimulated by institutional links between Worcester and Llandaff, hinted at by similarities in their documentary culture, or by personal bonds to Welsh patrons like Gruffudd ap Llywelyn, suggested by Gruffudd’s obit in Hatton 113 (a book probably used by Bishop Wulfstan II himself).56 It is difficult, however, to reconstruct Worcester’s Welsh connection from this historical distance. At a level of detail down from these community concerns, particular sequences of annals would have resonated with individual members of the community, which included (as we have seen) men with names of Frankish, Norman, English, Anglo-Scandinavian and Irish extraction. For these men, the presence of ‘their’ history within the CC, whether dislodged from a copy of the Norman Annals or carried over from Marianus, would have clearly signalled their belonging in the community. As a tool for monastic education, the CC looks like an attempt to construct a shared collective memory that could unite this ethnically diverse English minster. In addition, by mixing near and far so freely, the CC complicates the categories of universal and local histories in ways that reflect the needs and outlooks of the Worcester monks. For a monastery with cultural ties in northern West Francia, the Empire and Rome, how socially distant, really, were the pasts of such places?57 Apart from anything else, the CC should alert us to the constructedness of a category like the universal and its basis in

55 For

additions from Hugh of Fleury focused on Benedict, his relics and followers, see annals 516, 536, 577, 674. For these stages of the manuscript’s development, see Winchcombe and Coventry, ed. Hayward, I, 69–71. 56 See Henley’s contribution in this volume, pp. 253–4. For Hatton 113, see E. Treharne, ‘Bishops and their Texts in the Later Eleventh Century: Worcester and Exeter’, in Essays in Manuscript Geography, ed. Scase, pp. 13–28. 57 Cf. Orderic Vitalis’s similar use of distant events in his Ecclesiastical History: A. J. Hingst, The Written World: Past and Place in the Works of Orderic Vitalis (Notre Dame, IN, 2009); D. Roach, ‘The Material and the Visual: Objects and Memories in the Historia ecclesiastica of Orderic Vitalis’, The Haskins Society Journal 24 (2013), 63–78.

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Thomas O’Donnell specific cultural perspectives and social connections.58 The open-endedness of the CC and the keenness with which its compilers sought out distant and diverse voices makes a sharp contrast with the practices of Hemming, who concocts a unitary memory for Worcester in his own voice and decries the ‘Dani … inuadentes’ and ‘uiolenti Normanni’.59 (Indeed, it is doubtful whether such denunciations of ‘maligni’ Danes and Normans should be taken as categorical, given the apparent presence of ethnic Danes and Normans within the Worcester community itself.) A subtler divergence can be observed between the rhetoric of the CC, which seems to have been intended for wide consultation, and the more pointed celebration of English cultural figures in the poetry of John of Worcester’s Chronicula, whose readership was evidently more restricted.60 Despite their differences, all these works manipulate different forms of memory and defy generic categories, along with self-evident notions of English identity, as a productive response to the challenges created by Worcester’s monasticisation.

In several places at once: memories in the Cotton-Corpus Legendary Similarly complex attitudes towards identity and the relationship between local and universal are at the heart of the massive collection of Latin saints’ lives known as the Cotton-Corpus Legendary, which now survives as London, BL, Cotton MS Nero E. i, parts 1 and 2, and CCCC MS 9.61 Less extensively studied by historians than either Hemming’s Cartulary or the CC, the Cotton-Corpus Legendary requires some introduction. The core of the collection, numbering around 165 items in calendar order, was copied in the

58 H.-W.

Goetz, ‘On the Universality of Universal History’, in L’Historiographie médiévale en Europe: actes du colloque organisé par la Fondation Européenne de la Science au Centre de Recherches Historiques et Juridiques de l’Université Paris I du 29 mars au 1er avril 1989, ed. J.-P. Genet (Paris, 1991), pp. 247–61. 59 London, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fol. 176v, lines 7–10. Cf. Hemingi Chartularium, ed. Hearne, p. 391. 60 See Woodman’s contribution in this volume, pp. 201–3. 61 For the information in the following paragraph see P. Jackson and M. Lapidge, ‘The Contents of the Cotton-Corpus Legendary’, in Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints’ Lives and Their Contexts, ed. P. E. Szarmach (Albany, NY, 1996), pp. 131–46; Three Eleventh-Century Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives, ed. and trans. R. C. Love, OMT (Oxford, 1996), pp. xviii–xxiii; and Byrhtferth of Ramsey, The Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine, ed. and trans. M. Lapidge, OMT (Oxford, 2009), pp. xciii–ci. Basic information about each saint’s life in the legendary can be found in E. G. Whatley et al., ‘Acta Sanctorum’, in Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture, vol. 1: Abbo of Fleury, Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and Acta Sanctorum, ed. F. M. Biggs, T. D. Hill, P. E. Szarmach and E. G. Whatley (Kalamazoo, MI, 2001), pp. 22–486. Pace Jackson and Lapidge, the cult centres of Saints Gaugericus, Lambert, Hucbertus and Trudo are not Flemish or west Frankish but rather Lotharingian.

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Identities in Community third quarter of the eleventh century; it seems to have been divided into its constituent volumes early on (with Cotton Nero E. i eventually being divided once more into parts 1 and 2). The core collection includes Roman martyrs and other well-known saints, like Brigid or Cassian. Most of the remaining saints have connections in northern West Francia, Flanders and Lotharingia. These regions shared history and culture as the old Carolingian heartland, but they were politically divided from one another: Lotharingia had become integrated into the German Empire by the mid-tenth century after a period when its allegiances fluctuated between the west Frankish and east Frankish hegemons, while the Flemish counts, who held their comital title from the west Frankish king, maintained extensive interests and lands in the Empire. The Legendary’s engagement with these places reveals a more pointillist picture of Worcester’s collective memory than the notices of the CC. Whereas the latter emphasise larger communities like kingdoms and empires, the Roman Church or the monastic order as a whole, the Legendary’s saints’ lives focus on specific historical and liturgical centres in its regions of interest without projecting, say, a coherent Lotharingian or Flemish identity. On the basis of the collection’s northern Frankish emphases, Jackson and Lapidge have suggested that the exemplar for Cotton-Corpus was compiled in the Reims archdiocese (the name ‘Cotton-Corpus’ sometimes refers to this no longer extant model, rather than to the Worcester volumes).62 There is no consensus on the date of the exemplar’s arrival in England, with some evidence pointing to a tenth-century arrival and some to an acquisition directly by Worcester in the mid-eleventh century.63 The Legendary’s use is also somewhat obscure. Although a legendary would have normally supplied readings for the liturgy, few items in the manuscripts show evidence of being used in this way: for example, by division into lections.64 The length and difficulty of some of the Legendary’s materials would not have been suitable for the Night Office, moreover. The Worcester community probably drew their liturgical readings from other sources.65 The addition of some English 62 Jackson

and Lapidge, ‘Contents’, pp. 133–4. details see Whatley et al., ‘Acta Sanctorum’, p. 31. Arguing for an early arrival are Jackson and Lapidge, ‘Contents’, p. 134, and P. H. Zettel, ‘Saints’ Lives in Old English: Latin Manuscripts and Vernacular Accounts: Ælfric’, Peritia 1 (1982), 17–37. For a sceptical response, see E. G. Whatley, ‘Late Old English Hagiography, ca. 950–1150’, Hagiographies 2 (1994), 429–99 (pp. 480–2). Martin Brett proposes an eleventh-century arrival for the exemplar in ‘The Use of Universal Chronicle at Worcester’, in L’Historiographie médiévale en Europe, ed. Genet, pp. 277–85 (pp. 282–3 and 283, n. 28). 64 Three Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives, ed. Love, p. xxxi. 65 A fragment of one twelfth-century book likely to have been used as a lectionary at Worcester survives as the current flyleaves to CCCC MS 9. The front flyleaf contains lections in a twelfth-century hand derived from Vita Sancti Gudwali, which was written in Ghent between 1132 and 1138. The back flyleaf contains, in John of Worcester’s hand, an adaptation of Eadmer’s Vita Sancti Oswaldi and Miracula 63 For

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Thomas O’Donnell interlinear instructions to readers, such as ‘oferhef’ (‘skip [this passage]’) or ‘foh’ (‘start [here]’), as well as corrections to the Latin text of some lives themselves, could indicate that the monks read from the Legendary at table or as part of their evening readings in a ritual known as collation.66 Regardless, the Legendary would have been a useful resource for the celebration of relics in Worcester’s own keeping or in its wider network and as a source for the monks’ own compositions. Its narratives supplied details missing from the notices of death or relic translation found in the CC.67 Indeed, the CC entry for 969 quoted above seems to have been based on Byrhtferth’s Vita Sancti Oswaldi, which was eventually included in the collection.68 These specific, episodic uses of the Cotton-Corpus Legendary as a text for personal and communal reflection, commemoration, scholarship and composition (at least some of which might have been directed at readers outside the cloister), illustrate once more the multifariousness of memoria within Worcester’s literary culture. The progressive revision of the Cotton-Corpus Legendary partly mirrors the monks’ adaptation of Marianus Scotus’s work in the CC. Beginning with the core collection’s store of Roman, west Frankish and imperial material, the monks incorporated Vita Sancti Guthlaci and sermons on Marian feasts into the Legendary at the time of the collection’s original transcription in the Cotton and Corpus manuscripts. Guthlac’s life and miracles dramatised the saint’s struggle against despair, excessive fasting and disobedient colleagues; it was ideal material for monastic reflection. Exceptionally for the other core lives in Cotton-Corpus, this text received extensive interlinear lexical glossing in Latin, only some of it deriving from the text’s exemplar.69 Such glossing might suggest use of the Vita for communal reading or teaching. Taken together, Vita Sancti Guthlaci’s sustained treatment of disciplinary

Sancti Oswaldi divided into lections suitable for the Night Office. See Eadmer of Canterbury, Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan, and Oswald, ed. A. J. Turner and B. J. Muir, OMT (Oxford, 2006), pp. cxxii–cxxiv. 66 For a list of these annotations, see N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957), no. 29. For reading at meals and at collation, see T. Webber, ‘Reading in the Refectory: Monastic Practice in England c.1000–c.1300’ (2013) https://www.academia.edu/9489001/Reading_in_the_Refectory_Monastic_ Practice_in_England_c._1000-c.1300 (comments about the Cotton-Corpus Legendary specifically on pp. 43–5 of PDF); T. Webber, ‘Monastic Space and the Use of Books in the Anglo-Norman Period’, ANS 36 (2014), 221–40; and McIntyre, ‘Early-Eleventh-Century Worcester’, pp. 70–2 and 76 (note that McIntyre does not distinguish reading at meals and reading at collation). 67 Brett even suggested that Cotton-Corpus was a source for universal history like the CC, only based around saints rather than chronology in his ‘Use’, pp. 282–5. 68 JW, Chron. s.a. 969 (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, 419). 69 Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 50–1. A few English lexical glosses appear in the section of the Vita dealing with Guthlac’s miracles (ibid., p. 54).

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Identities in Community concerns and the Marian sermons suggest a focused adaptation for the interests of St Mary’s monastic church.70 The incorporation of local cults began with the addition of further lives to the beginning of Cotton Nero E. i, part 1. A scribal hand roughly contemporary with the core collection introduced Vita Sancti Oswaldi and Vita Sancti Ecgwini by Byrhtferth, Translatio et miracula Sancti Swithuni by Lantfred of Winchester and the hymn to St Swithun ‘Aurea lux patrie’.71 Like many of the additions to the CC, these texts speak to Worcester’s desire to be seen both as a ‘founding member’ of the Benedictine movement and as a site of monastic practice in the remote past. The presence of saints Oswald and Ecgwine indicates a further desire to serve local interests, as these two Worcester prelates’ relics lay at Worcester and Evesham, respectively.72 Mid-eleventh-century additions to the end of Cotton Nero E. i, part 2, brought more ‘distant’ saints into the collection and, anticipating the diverse memories of the CC, they throw into question categories of local and universal history. These additions include the sermon on the Feast of All Saints known as ‘Legimus in ecclesiasticis historiis’, Miracula Sancti Leonis and an Office, with Lections, for St Nicholas – this last being a composite text with distinctive west Frankish and Lotharingian layers that represents the oldest narrative about Nicholas to survive in an English manuscript.73 The Miracula was a collection made between 1054 and 1058 by a certain Libuin describing cures believed to have been worked by Pope Leo IX at Rome immediately after his death.74 Although Libuin was probably, like Leo IX himself, an immigrant 70 Three

Anglo-Latin Lives, ed. Love, pp. xx–xxi. Love, Jackson and Lapidge do not enumerate the Marian additions, but they seem to be items 27–29 (on the Purification) and 104 (on the Nativity of the Virgin) listed in Jackson and Lapidge, ‘Contents.’ These items are believed to be additions, because they do not feature in the book’s list of contents (evidently carried over from the exemplar) or in copies of the core collection not derived from the Worcester versions. 71 Byrhtferth, ed. Lapidge, pp. xcvi–xcviii. 72 A. Thacker, ‘Saint-Making and Relic Collecting by Oswald and his Communities’, in St Oswald of Worcester, ed. Brooks and Cubitt, pp. 244–68. Heavy glossing on the copies of Vita Sancti Oswaldi and Vita Sancti Ecgwini in Cotton-Corpus, while perhaps present in the lives’ exemplars, might be another indication of a practical overlap between these lives and Vita Sancti Guthlaci. For copies of the glosses see Byhrtferth, ed. Lapidge, pp. 305–17. 73 Whatley, et al., ‘Acta Sanctorum’, pp. 292–5, 361–3. The probably ninth-century Frankish ‘Legimus in ecclesiasticis historiis’ was popular in England and was a source for Ælfric. J. E. Cross, ‘“Legimus in Ecclesiasticis Historiis”: A Sermon for All Saints, and its Use in Old English Prose’, Traditio 33 (1977), 101–35. In light of the Roman orientation of the Miracula it might be significant that ‘Legimus’ opens with a depiction of the consecration of the Pantheon. Cross, ‘Legimus’, p. 105. For the mixed, but definitively not English, character of the Office of St Nicholas, see C. Hohler, ‘The Proper Office of St. Nicholas and Related Matters with Reference to a Recent Book’, Medium Ævum 36 (1967), 40–8 (esp. pp. 42–5). 74 A text can be found as an insertion into Pseudo-Wibert’s Vita of Leo IX in A. Vuolo,

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Thomas O’Donnell to Rome from the German Empire, Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri has argued that the Miracula represent a local Roman perspective on the saint that celebrates the Alsatian pope’s connections with specific Roman people and places.75 In fact, the Miracula are peppered with references to specific places in the city. For example, one devotee ‘notus est omnibus apud Sanctum Angelum morantibus’, while others are said to be living ‘in Merulana regione’ or ‘trans Tiberim’.76 E. Gordon Whatley has suggested that the text arrived in Worcester thanks to then-Bishop Ealdred’s diplomatic ties to Leo’s kinsman Archbishop Hermann of Cologne, whom he visited in 1054, or during the course of Ealdred’s visit to Rome in 1061 to receive the pallium.77 As local Frankish/Lotharingian or Roman perspectives on universal saints, the Miracula and the Office of St Nicholas belong to ‘universal’ hagiography only in a fairly localised way. They show once more how the local and the ‘universal’ were constructed categories at Worcester that interpenetrated with one another; the monks experienced universality as the consequence of carefully cultivated social connections, rather than as an inherent feature of their church. The same multilocationality of these texts appears in some of the other early additions to the Legendary, as well: for example, in the journeys undertaken by Oda and Oswald in the Vita Sancti Oswaldi to Rome and Fleury (i.4, ii.4–10, iv.6) and by Ecgwine in the Vita Sancti Ecgwini to Rome (i.13–14). While such journeys were features of other eleventh-century saints’ lives, their presence in Cotton-Corpus suggests that these saints might mediate the community’s competing but still passionately desired ties to Rome, West Francia and the local landscape. The eleventh-century additions to the beginning of the Corpus volume are more difficult to place in chronological order than the additions to the Cotton manuscripts. They nevertheless tell a similar story of exceptional engagement with the memorialisation of west Frankish and Lotharingian cults alongside purely local concerns. Vita Sancti Salvii (an eighth-century martyr whose cult lay in Valenciennes, in Lotharingia) was added by the same eleventh-century hand as that of Vita Sancti Ecgwini in the Cotton volume.78 Some time afterwards hands (possibly as late as the end of the eleventh century or the early twelfth century) added a full Vita Sancti Nicholai Agiografia d’autore in area beneventana. Le «Vitae» di Giovanni da Spoleto, Leone IX e Giovanni Crisostomo (sec. XI–XII) (Florence, 2010), pp. 44–55, cited by T. di Carpegna Falconieri, below. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, I was only able to consult the text that appears as chapters 12–22 of Historia Mortis et Miraculorum S. Leonis IX (PL 143.434B–538D). 75 T. di Carpegna Falconieri, ‘Roma e Leone IX’, in La Reliquia del Sangue di Cristo: Mantova, l’Italia e l’Europa al tempo di Leone IX, ed. G. M. Cantarella and A. Calzona (Mantua, 2012), pp. 325–39. 76 PL 534C (where PL prints ‘Merculana’), 534D and 535B. 77 Whatley, et al., ‘Acta Sanctorum’, pp. 294–5. 78 Byrhtferth, ed. Lapidge, pp. xcv–xcvi.

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Identities in Community by John the Deacon (perhaps superseding the Office transcribed earlier in the century), Vita Sancti Rumwoldi and Passio Sanctorum Cyrici et Julittae.79 Those seeking Englishness, in the sense of the regnal or ecclesiastical identity of the sort that can be discerned in the CC, are poorly served by the Cotton-Corpus Legendary. The saints whom William of Malmesbury would later associate with the English kingdom and who already possessed at least the rudiments of narrative lives – such as Æthelthryth, Edmund of East Anglia, Cuthbert and King Oswald – are conspicuously absent.80 At Worcester, those interested in the saints of the wider English regnum had to be sought in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, in the copies of saints’ lives that served as sources for the CC,81 or in the presumably more skeletal narratives used in the liturgy. A booklist from the mid-eleventh century mentions a now unidentifiable ‘englissce passionale’ at Worcester, which might have contained Ælfric’s Old English lives of some of these saints.82 Yet the Legendary succeeds as a comprehensive resource for the collective memory – or rather, collective memories – of the different, sometimes opposing, parties living together at Worcester in the Benedictine habit: some hagiographic narratives shed light on relationships of saintly patronage (Oswald’s, Ecgwine’s, or the Marian sermons);83 some serve the community’s monastic orientation and would have been useful as readings for meals or collation (Swithun’s, Guthlac’s, or, from the original core collection, Cassian’s); while still others reflect the experiences and expectations of the community’s diverse personnel during Wulfstan’s time, thanks to their associations with particular places or ethnicities (Patrick’s, Audoen’s or Lambert’s). Thanks to their narrative details or circumstances of transmission, many of the lives

79 Three

Anglo-Latin Lives, ed. Love, p. clxxiv. To these lives have been added two quires containing a calendar and computistical material from the mid-eleventh century, and a twelfth-century hand has made interpolations into the Nicholas text. 80 WM, GR ii.207–19 (ed. and trans. Mynors, Thomson and Winterbottom, I, 384–404) All four of these saints appear in the three eleventh-century calendars associated with Worcester: Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Hatton 113; CCCC MS 9 (an addition to the original manuscript, perhaps predating it); and CCCC MS 391. See English Kalendars Before A.D. 1100, ed. F. Wormald, Henry Bradshaw Society 72 (Woodbridge, 1988), pp. 197–237. Other English saints – like Kenelm of Winchcombe or Edith of Wilton – only received full treatment in the mid-eleventh century and so might not have been available to Worcester when it began to compile its collection. Vita Sancti Kenelmi, from the third quarter of the eleventh century, claims Wulfwine of Worcester as its source, however. See Three Anglo-Latin Lives, ed. Love, pp. xc–xci and 50–2. 81 See footnote 51, above. 82 M. Lapidge, ‘Surviving Booklists from Anglo-Saxon England’, in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: Basic Readings, ed. M. P. Richards (New York and London, 1994), pp. 87–167 (pp. 130–2). Æthelthryth, Edmund and Oswald appear in Lives of the Saints, while Cuthbert appears in Catholic Homilies II. 83 On the broader exploitation of these saints’ memories in Worcester at this time, see Rampolla, ‘Vision’, pp. 285–96.

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Thomas O’Donnell in the Cotton-Corpus Legendary reveal even more clearly than the CC or Hemming’s Cartulary the complexities of geography and identity lying behind labels like ‘English’, ‘Frankish’ or ‘Lotharingian’. Cotton-Corpus embraces multiple collective memories in ways that would have made the manuscript a textual gathering place for the whole Worcester community and encouraged a critical perspective on ethnic and political forms of belonging.84

Memories crossing genre and language: Gregory’s Dialogues and Old English homilies Cotton-Corpus, the CC and Hemming’s Cartulary were major commemorative initiatives carried out in the midst of more focused memorial writing, in both Latin and English. The epitome of this bilingual work must be the several copies of St Gregory’s Dialogues that survive from eleventh-century Worcester. Three extant Old English copies have clear Worcester connections. London, BL, Cotton MS Otho C. i, vol. 2, contains an early eleventh-century copy of the first two books to which the Worcester monks added the final two books in the mid-eleventh century, while CCCC MS 322 was probably made at Worcester in the second half of the eleventh century, albeit not copied from the Cotton manuscript. A partial third copy in Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Hatton 76 is from the early eleventh century, and while it was present at Worcester in the thirteenth century, its whereabouts before then are unknown.85 Two Latin copies have connections to Worcester from this time: Cambridge, Clare College MS 30 part i, from the middle or third quarter of the eleventh century and Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Tanner 3, which was copied in the first half of the eleventh century, but whose presence at Worcester is confirmed only from the twelfth.86 The Dialogues depict in four books a fictional exchange between Pope Gregory and a deacon named Peter principally on the subject

84 In

the twelfth century, the contents of the manuscript continued to evolve in ways that suggest a continued interest in broadening the geographic coverage of the collection as well as the muddling of generic categories. At the beginning of Cotton Nero E. i, part 1, John added a Passio Sancti Andreae, and at the end of Cotton Nero E. i, part 2, he transcribed Vita Sanctae Fritheswithae, Rhygyfarch’s Vita Sancti Davidis, and the Vita Sanctae Margaretae Antiochenae. Later still, fragments of the Nero-Middleton Cartulary, a copy of the law code IV Edgar, a copy of Vita Sancti Bedae in John of Worcester’s hand and a thirteenth-century passional were added to Cotton Nero E i, part 2. See Byrhtferth, ed. Lapidge, p. xcviii; Jackson and Lapidge, ‘Contents’, pp. 132–3; and Tinti, Sustaining Belief, pp. 125–36. 85 D. F. Johnson, ‘Who Read Gregory’s Dialogues in Old English?’, in The Power of Words: Anglo-Saxon Studies Presented to Donald G. Scragg on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. H. Magennis and J. Wilcox (Morgantown, WV, 2006), pp. 171–204 (pp. 181–3). 86 H. Gneuss and M. Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100

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Identities in Community of the miracles of the saints of Italy: the second book deals exclusively with Benedict and his followers, while the fourth book takes miracle stories as the basis for a wide discussion of the immortality of the soul and the necessity of divine punishment. Like the Cotton-Corpus Legendary these copies of the Dialogues in Latin and English could have been used for common reading or private study. David F. Johnson suggested that the Otho copy of the English Dialogues might have been used as a tool for lay preaching, partly because the manuscript also contains excerpts from the Vitas Patrum and ‘miscellaneous homilies’.87 Nevertheless, both the Vitas Patrum material and the hortatory texts Wynfrith’s Letter to Eadburga and the sermon ‘Evil Tongues’ in Otho imply a primarily monastic audience by featuring monastic protagonists and by dwelling on the vices and virtues of those living in community.88 The sermon ‘Evil Tongues’ interpellates monks directly as ‘us’: Hwæt, we syndon munucas gecwedene þeh we þonne munuchad rihte ne aldon. We us sceolon gebiddan to Drihtne, gif we þone munuchad rihte healden willað, ærnemorgen, 7 on underne, 7 on midne dæg, 7 on þa nontid, 7 on æfenne, 7 æt iht, 7 æt honansange; 7 we us sculon þingian on þas tide swiðe georne to þaican cyninge for eallum þam wommum þe we wið his willan geoworht habban 7 þ (‘See, we are called monks, although we do not preserve monastic status correctly. We ought to pray to the Lord for ourselves, if we wish to preserve our monastic status correctly, in the early morning, and at terce, and at sext, and at nones, and at vespers, and at compline, and at matins; and at these times we ought to reconcile ourselves very eagerly to the king on high for all the sins that we have done and thought against his will’) (71–6).89

(Toronto and Buffalo, 2014), nos. 34 and 667 and Gameson, ‘Book Production’, pp. 215–17. 87 Johnson, ‘Who Read Gregory’s Dialogues’, pp. 187–8. 88 K. Sisam, ‘An Old English Translation of a Letter from Wynfrith to Eadburga (A.D. 716–7) in Cotton MS. Otho C. 1,’ The Modern Language Review 18 (1923), 253–72 (pp. 266–70, where the visionary’s sins and virtues are catalogued and he witnesses an abbot saved by the pleading of the monks he led to paradise); D. McDougall and I. McDougall, ‘“Evil Tongues”: A Previously Unedited Old English Sermon’, ASE 26 (1997), 209–29. Although vernacular translations of the Vitas Patrum certainly commanded lay audiences in the later Middle Ages (such as in Harley 2253, where a partial French translation appears), in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the text’s exempla were understood to pertain primarily to monks and nuns. See W. Rudolf, ‘The Selection and Compilation of the Verba Seniorum in Worcester, Cathedral Library, F. 48,’ in Hagiography in Anglo-Saxon England: Adopting and Adapting Saints’ Lives into Old English Prose (c.950–1150), ed. L. Lazzari, P. Lendinara and C. Di Sciacca (Madrid, 2014), pp. 183–227 (pp. 188–90). 89 Translation adapted from McDougall and McDougall, ‘“Evil Tongues”, pp. 223–4.

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Thomas O’Donnell Meanwhile, the prefatory poem to the Old English Dialogues in the Otho manuscript charges its audience to trust in ‘þissa haligra helpe’ (‘the help of these saints’ [commemorated in the Dialogues]) and to follow ‘hiora bysene’ (‘their example’) (lines 10–11).90 Since the vast majority of saints in the Dialogues were monks and other clergy, this exordium would best suit an audience of monks or their friends and patrons.91 Of course, the Otho manuscript, like the other copies of the Dialogues, would have been attractive to the community precisely because its contents could have been adapted for numerous uses and for multiple audiences, including clerks and laypeople, but its contents constitute poor evidence for an originally lay reception. As a document of cultural memory, the Dialogues possess clear affinities with material in the CC and Cotton-Corpus, namely the wealth of information about Rome and several obscure Italian saints. Also like those two collections, it could serve the social and political memories of the community with its wealth of material on the life of Benedict and his early followers, whose chronological details had been added into the CC using material from Hugh of Fleury’s Ecclesiastical History. In this way, the Dialogues – in English and in Latin – complement the chronological data of the Latin CC – just as CottonCorpus and Hemming’s Cartulary do. If history-writing in the central Middle Ages was often about providing moral examples,92 then the Italian stories transmitted by the Dialogues fulfil a ‘historical’ purpose that the CC itself had eschewed in favour of maximising the social and chronological breadth of its short notices without commentary. The Dialogues also suggest the practical dimensions of memoria at Worcester. In the first place, Gregory and Peter’s exchange is a fictionalised portrayal of the use of memories to shape the moral character of individuals. The Dialogues offer an idealised modus operandi for cultivating edifying memories communally, and it is not unfair to see Hemming following ‘hiora bysene’ (at least rhetorically and ideologically) when he represents Wulfstan II and his monks deep in conversation in the Enucleatio. Moreover, in the Dialogues Gregory frequently interprets the particular events that he commemorates theologically,

90 D.

Yerkes, ‘The Full Text of the Metrical Preface to Wærferth’s Translation of Gregory’, Speculum 55 (1980), 505–13. For a suggestion that the preface was composed by the Otho scribe especially for this manuscript, see E. V. Thornbury, Becoming a Poet in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 2014), p. 73. 91 Earl Odda was one such lay friend, who eventually became a monk himself. See E. M. Tyler, ‘Writing Universal History in Eleventh-Century England: Cotton Tiberius B. i, German Imperial History-writing and Vernacular Lay Literacy’ in Universal Chronicles in the High Middle Ages, ed. M. Campopiano and H. Bainton (York, 2017), pp. 65–93 (pp. 88–92). 92 M. Staunton, ‘Did the Purpose of History Change in England in the Twelfth Century?’, in Writing History in the Anglo-Norman World: Manuscripts, Makers and Readers, c.1066–c.1250, ed. L. Cleaver and A. Worm, Writing History in the Middle Ages 6 (York, 2018), pp. 7–27 (pp. 7–12).

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Identities in Community as pieces of evidence for the relationship between miracles and good deeds or the reality of heaven and hell. These interpretations support controversial theological propositions and differ from simple moral lessons or comforting reminders of God’s power; they broaden the collection’s interest beyond ‘Italian history’; and they provide potential vernacular models for theological discussion in English besides homiletic exhortation. Gregory’s interpretive scheme suggests potential theological uses for the many anecdotes preserved in the CC, Hemming’s Cartulary and the Cotton-Corpus Legendary as lieux de mémoire beyond the social and political associations discussed above. In one specific case the Dialogues might offer the possibility of new interpretations for the well-known turn taken by the CC in its later stages towards the marvellous, probably at the instigation of John of Worcester himself. The wondrous and supernatural events added to the CC at this stage include: sunspots;93 a miraculous intervention into an ordeal, lights in the sky over Hereford and Henry I’s prophetic dream of the three estates;94 the miracles of St Odilia;95 an eclipse;96 the Marian apparitions associated with the death of Benedict of Tewkesbury, an ominous star at Windsor and the invention of relics at Southwell;97 and the devil’s infiltration of Prüm in the form a small, black-skinned boy.98 Previous scholars have argued that these super 93 JW,

Chron. s.a. 1128 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 182–3). s.a. 1130 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 188–95). 95 Ibid., s.a. 1131 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 202–7). 96 Ibid., s.a. 1133 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 208–11). 97 Ibid., s.a. 1137 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 222–35). 98 Ibid., s.a. 1138 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 236–41). The boy is described as ‘puerulum nigrum mirande paruitatis’ (p. 238). The notion that the devil had dark skin was widespread in Late Antiquity, reflecting and reinforcing stereotypes of that period, and it was transmitted to the Middle Ages in patristic writing: G. Penco, ‘Sopravvivenze della demonologia antica nel monachesimo medievale’, Studia Monastica 13 (1971), 31–6 (pp. 34–6); J. Devisse, ‘Christians and Black’, in The Image of the Black in Western Art, Volume II: From the Early Christian Era to the ‘Age of Discovery’, Part 1: From the Demonic Threat to the Incarnation of Sainthood, ed. D. Bindman and H. L. Gates, Jr., new edn (Cambridge, MA, 2010; first published, 1979), pp. 31–72 (esp. pp. 55–64); J. M. Courtès, ‘The Theme of “Ethiopia” and “Ethiopians” in Patristic Literature’, ibid., pp. 199–214 (esp. pp. 205–207); D. Brakke, ‘Ethiopian Demons: Male Sexuality, the Black-Skinned Other, and the Monastic Self’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 10 (2001), 501–35. Brakke (pp. 508–11) draws attention to examples of dark-skinned demons in Athanasius’ Vita Sancti Antonii, Cassian’s Conferences and Gregory’s Dialogues, versions of which were all available at Worcester when John wrote this annal (Gameson, ‘St Wulfstan’, pp. 92–100). Further references to dark-skinned demons in Eadmer’s Vita Sancti Dunstani and Vita Sancti Oswaldi indicate that the offensive trope was still productive in Worcester’s twelfth-century network and that John was likely familiar with it in this contemporary form (Eadmer, ed. Turner and Muir, pp. 106–9, 256–61, and footnote 65, above). For a theoretical model of racism that accommodates medieval examples, see G. Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 27, 42–5. 94 Ibid.,

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Thomas O’Donnell natural stories, for which John seldom provides any explicit interpretive context, were expressions of John’s scientific and educational interests or were meant as implicit counterpoints (comforting, disturbing or otherwise) to the ‘traumas’ of 1066 or the Anarchy.99 But the intertextual connections between the Dialogues and the CC suggest other reasons why John might have sought out stories of miracles, signs and apparitions. The Dialogues authorise the collection of supernatural stories to serve as possible objects of theological interpretation. If we recall that OCCC MS 157 was a working copy of the CC that passed through the hands of many different scribes and readers, then the absence of definitive interpretations need not be surprising. The short notices in the CC could instigate a more expansive discussion of the miracle’s meaning in conversations around the book, following Gregory’s example in the Dialogues. Gregory portrays the theological messages of his stories as emerging in conversation and as responses to questions posed by Peter, rather than as explicit features of the stories themselves. Here again we encounter the possibility, as with Hemming’s Cartulary, that the primary purpose of collecting memories was not simply to fix them in writing but to promote their exchange and further transmission through conversation and discussion. John’s turn to the supernatural would thus indicate a deliberate imitation of Gregory’s doctrinal methods in a textual format better suited to the monastic formation of his own day.100 In fact the new emphasis on miracle stories in the later stages of the CC’s composition was accompanied by a change in the CC’s methods of collection: whereas earlier entries were, for obvious reasons, based largely on written material, John will attribute later stories to known informants or to ‘fama’.101 Apart from reaffirming the CC’s openness to the varied memories

99 Science

and Education: Rampolla, ‘Vision’, pp. 159–66, and Lawrence-Mathers, ‘John of Worcester’, pp. 273–4; Trauma: Rampolla, ‘Vision’, p. 218, and C. A. M. Clarke, ‘Signs and Wonders: Writing Trauma in Twelfth-Century England’, Reading Medieval Studies 35 (2009), 55–77 (p. 65). Clarke does not offer detailed readings of all the miracles John brings to the collection, not all of which John associates with ‘traumatic’ events in the CC. 100 For the diversity of twelfth-century opinion about the supernatural see C. S. Watkins, History and the Supernatural in Medieval England (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 50–5. Based on this chapter’s arguments, John’s attitude towards the supernatural appears to be much more flexible than Watkins implies in his brief treatment of him. 101 JW, Chron. s.a. 1130 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 190): ‘Ferunt qui oculis perspexerant’ (‘Eyewitnesses are said to have seen’); ibid. s.a. 1130 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 198): ‘visa sunt … a clericis Sancti Guthlaci … etiam a uigilibus Brecenæunensis castelli; insuper in pago Herefordensi a pastoribus’ (‘was seen by the clerks of St Guthlac … also by the watchmen in Brecon castle; as well as in Herefordshire by the shepherds’); ibid. s.a. 1130 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 200): ‘medicus Grimbald uigilando per omnia spectat’ (‘Grimbald the doctor fully observed whilst he was awake’); ibid. s.a. 1137 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 224): involving Prior Warin; ibid. s.a. 1137 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 230): involving Henry of Winchester and

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Identities in Community of Worcester’s wider community, these references to witness accounts recall the situation of the Dialogues, where Gregory attributes many of his stories to men known to both Peter and himself. The lesson to be drawn from these examples is not simply that Gregory was a powerful influence on John and his colleagues (how could he not be?), but rather that, because Worcester’s memorial activity leap-frogged generic boundaries, the representation of memory in the Dialogues could transform the way that the monks conceived of and approached even long-term memorial projects like the CC. Further connections between the different memorial texts at Worcester, and the ways they illuminate the modalities of memory there, might be adduced – especially between twelfth-century additions to the priory’s hagiographic collection, the Dialogues, the Vitas Patrum and the Vita Wulfstani composed by Coleman and adapted by William of Malmesbury. The links between these texts reveal them to be less narrowly concerned with tensions between English and Normans than the Vita Wulfstani, at least, is usually represented to be.102 Dorothy Kim has argued that certain passages in the Vitas Patrum would not have just alerted medieval readers to the geographic and cultural diversity of early monasticism but also to its racialised construction through the words and example of Abba Moyses; in some cases, the Vitas Patrum would have brought these readers to a critical understanding of racial exclusions in the monastic ideology of the medieval Latin Church.103 The implications of Kim’s argument about the general medieval reception of the Vitas Patrum for Worcester’s specific literary culture are unclear, but they deserve study, especially in light of this chapter’s other claims.104 In the space that remains I would like to demonstrate how two features of Worcester’s literary culture that have been taken as evidence for a preoccupation with

Thurstan of York; and ibid. s.a. 1138 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 236): ‘fama uolarat per circuitum’ (‘report was in general circulation’). 102 For commentary on Coleman’s work, see Rampolla, ‘Vision’, passim, and A. Orchard, ‘Parallel Lives: Wulfstan, William, Coleman and Christ’, in St Wulfstan, ed. Barrow and Brooks, pp. 39–57. 103 D. Kim, ‘Introduction to Literature Compass Special Cluster: Critical Race and the Middle Ages’, Literature Compass 16:9–10 (2019), 1–16 (pp. 9–13); https://doi. org/10.1111/lic3.12549. 104 The passages analysed by Kim do not appear in the extant copy of the Vitas Patrum from Worcester. See Rudolf, ‘The Selection and Compilation’, pp. 191–2. Nevertheless, the idea of race vindicated by the Vitas Patrum might have inspired a critical view of the racist implications of, say, the anecdote about the small black boy at Prüm included in the CC or of the dark-skinned demons found in Cassian’s Conferences, Gregory’s Dialogues, Athanasius’ Vita Sancti Antonii, and Eadmer’s Vita Sancti Oswaldi (see note 98, above). John’s treatment of the incident at Prüm suggests, however, that he had no trouble making the offensive association between the ‘Ethiopian’ and threats to monastic discipline. Kim’s reparative reading of anecdotes about Abba Moyses does not seem to have been realised at Worcester, at least, during the twelfth century.

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Thomas O’Donnell English history and identity, namely the community’s extensive use of English and its homiletic corpus, fit within the context of the social, ethnic and intellectual diversity visible within Worcester’s other memorial writing. I will then briefly conclude by emphasising the new meanings possible when we resist a little the usual reputation of twelfth-century English at Worcester as antiquarian or especially concerned with ethnic rivalries. Some scholars have argued that Worcester’s use of English was an expression of cultural nationalism consciously undertaken in opposition to Norman preferences for Latin.105 But the entanglement of the two languages reveals a more complicated situation. The old idea that English ceased to be used as an authoritative language of teaching, history and law after the Conquest is belied by the continued production of Old English manuscripts (and the continued use of existing Old English manuscripts) at monasteries across England into the thirteenth century.106 The perpetuation at Worcester of earlier eleventh-century patterns of producing homilies and memorial writing in English led Mary Lynn Rampolla to argue persuasively both against a changed attitude towards the language in general and against the notion that Wulfstan II’s use of the written language after 1066 was extraordinary.107 The use of Latin for writing of all kinds at Worcester, including for the translation of Old English texts, does apparently increase, but these changes need to be seen in the light of pre-Conquest patterns also. Already in the mid-eleventh century, English patrons were exploiting Latin as a means to address an increasingly multilingual public and to explore new stylistic possibilities.108 The exploitation of English-language sources by the contributors to the CC, by Hemming and by William of Malmesbury in the Vita Wulfstani testifies to the continued interpenetration of Latin and English language communities at Worcester, not to a widening gap between them.109 The same inference can be drawn from Worcester’s cultivation of English as a language of specifically monastic instruction in a book like the Otho manuscript. Just as the Latin of the CC or Hemming’s Cartulary could be an effective means

105 See

Treharne, Living, pp. 110–21, and the judgements gathered and criticised by Rampolla, ‘Vision’, pp. 417–18. 106 O. Da Rold, et al., eds., The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220 (University of Leicester, 2010) http://www.le.ac.uk/ee/em1060to1220. For a comprehensive review of language relationships in England during the central Middle Ages, see B. R. O’Brien, Reversing Babel: Translation Among the English During an Age of Conquests, c.800 to c.1200 (Newark, DE, 2011). 107 Rampolla, ‘Vision’, p. 428. 108 E. M. Tyler, England in Europe: English Royal Women and Literary Patronage, c.1100– c.1150 (Toronto and Buffalo, 2017). 109 Cf. Rampolla, ‘Vision’, p. 425. For palaeographic evidence for the continued use of English by writers of French as well as of Latin, see M. Careri, ‘Essais (paléo) graphiques: copier les textes français dans l’Angleterre du XIIe siècle’, Romania 134 (2016), 402–12.

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Identities in Community for transmitting local or English regnal memories, so too English could be the vehicle for memories of Worcester’s farther-flung social and political horizons in the Dialogues, Wynfrith’s Letter, the Vitas Patrum, or copies of Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies and Lives of the Saints. Copies of Ælfric’s Old English writings available at Worcester at different points in the eleventh and twelfth centuries probably include the lost ‘englissce passionale’ mentioned above as well as many of the homilies and theological treatises contained within CCCC MS 178; CCCC MS 198; Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Hatton 113/114; Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Hatton 115; and Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Hatton 116.110 Aligning homiletic collections with the CC and Hemming’s Cartulary as bearers of historical memory may seem counterintuitive, but it opens up several new possibilities for the homilies’ interpretation. The most natural use for these books would have been for pastoral care, and Elaine Treharne makes a strong case that Hatton 113/114 was part of a robust collection of pastoralia prepared for the bishops and their deputies.111 Although Mary Lynn Rampolla doubted whether the monks personally preached to the laity in the more distant churches that they controlled, there is no reason to doubt that such books would have been useful in providing pastoral care to their lay neighbours, especially within the cathedral itself.112 But just like other monastic books in this period, homiletic collections would have possessed multiple uses, as a source for personal study, for performance during mealtimes or collation and for the provision of readings for Matins and other liturgical events.113 The continued respect shown to Old English homiletic writing as an authoritative source for historical memories, at least as they relate to saints, is implied both by Coleman’s choice to write his biography of Wulfstan in English and by the monks’ unconcern to acquire Latin biographies of saints like Æthelthryth, Cuthbert, Edmund of East Anglia and King Oswald, when they possessed Ælfric’s English versions.114 But like other Old English materials at Worcester, these collections frequently commemorate events occurring far from England and seem to address the whole of Worcester’s ethnically diverse personnel. It is therefore hard to maintain that

110 Gameson,

‘Book Production’, pp. 237–42, and Gameson, ‘Library’, pp. 92–100. ‘Bishops’. 112 Rampolla, ‘Vision’, pp. 262–72. For the likely pastoral duties of the Worcester diocesan clergy, including the roles played by monks, see Tinti, Sustaining Belief, pp. 225–314, and F. Tinti, ‘Benedictine Reform and Pastoral Care in Late AngloSaxon England’, EME 23 (2015), 229–51. 113 T. Webber discusses the use of Paul the Deacon’s Latin homiliary in these terms in ‘Books and their Use across the Conquest,’ in Bury St Edmunds and the Norman Conquest, ed. T. Licence (Woodbridge, 2014), pp. 160–89 (pp. 174–6). For the extensive use of Old English as an authoritative vernacular even by those who could read and write Latin, see H. Gittos, ‘The Audience for Old English Texts: Ælfric, Rhetoric and “the Edification of the Simple”’, ASE 43 (2014), 231–66. 114 Rampolla, ‘Vision’, pp. 423–4. 111 Treharne,

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Thomas O’Donnell English was reserved for expressing ethnic particularism.115 To make a more nuanced point, even if the selection and reproduction of Old English homilies in late eleventh- and early twelfth-century Worcester implies a desire to continue pre-Conquest literary practices there, it simultaneously reveals how outward-looking that literary culture had already been before the Norman Conquest. Works by Ælfric and Byrhtferth appealed to ‘native’ English and newcomers alike, and they appear to have become models for French poetry in early Anglo-Norman England.116 By grounding Worcester’s historical writings in a more inclusive consideration of memoria at the monastery, this chapter has tried to re-establish the intertextual and practical connections between texts like the CC and Hemming’s Cartulary and other genres of writing at Worcester, like poetry, hagiography, miracle collection, theology and homiletics in both Latin and English. These connections – often through forms of reminiscence and artificial memory – throw into relief fundamental aspects of the cartulary and CC’s composition, development and social and political meaning. As highly crafted statements of individual and collective memory, moreover, all the Worcester texts bespeak a desire to serve a wide range of different ethnic and political positions at Worcester in ways that would have encouraged mutual assimilation and unity and avoided a sharp division between ‘Norman’ and ‘English’ subject positions. The evidence suggests regular occasions of individual exchange, communal reading and liturgical solemnisation in which statements of national or local identity might give way to moral development, theological argument and serious, critical thinking about ‘universality’ as a social and political, as well as a theological, condition. More work has to be done, certainly. Nevertheless, the notion that Worcester’s literary culture was in some sense conservative or nationalist, just because the monks used the English language and twelfth-century writers like William of Malmesbury cast Wulfstan II in the role of the simple Englishman, must be discarded.

115 Ibid.,

pp. 424–8. For the suggestion that London, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius B. i (which contains the C text of the ASC) was a near-contemporary attempt to create a universal history in the vernacular, somewhat analogous to the CC, see Tyler, ‘Writing Universal History’. 116 T. O’Donnell, ‘The Gloss to Philippe de Thaon’s Comput and the French of England’s Beginnings’, in The French of Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Jocelyn WoganBrowne, ed. T. Fenster and C. Collette (Cambridge, 2017), pp. 13–37.

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3 Preserving Records and Writing History in Worcester’s Conquest-Era Archives Jonathan Herold

The archive of pre-Conquest and Conquest-era records pertaining to Worcester cathedral and its monastic community that is available for us to study is remarkable for several reasons.1 First among these notable characteristics must be the sheer number and variety of records that have been preserved: texts of hundreds of charters, leases and other assorted memoranda may be included in our conception of Worcester’s Conquest-era archive. Second is that the texts of many individual records apparently issued prior to or during the Conquest era have survived in multiple early manuscript witnesses; some of these records were preserved in the format of single-sheet documents, but the majority were entered among the cathedral’s series of eleventh-century cartularies. Judging from the surviving memoranda collected and preserved during the eleventh century, it is beyond doubt not only that Worcester cathedral possessed an extensive archive of written records prior to the Norman Conquest, but also that at several times from the late tenth through to the early twelfth century, members of the cathedral’s community engaged in what appears to have been particularly energetic efforts to preserve,

1 Record-keeping

practices at Worcester cathedral during the Conquest era were the topic of my doctoral thesis: J. R. Herold, ‘Memoranda and Memoria: Assessing the Preservation of acta at Eleventh-Century Worcester Cathedral’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, 2008). This chapter incorporates some ideas that I have expressed in conference papers presented in the decade since completing my doctoral studies, particularly the paper ‘Textual Representation and Re-Presentation in the Conquest-Era Worcester Archive’, delivered at the Centre for Medieval Studies in the University of Toronto’s 33rd Medieval Colloquium in 2012. Auditors at my presentations have been generous with their comments, as have several other scholars with whom I have corresponded, most notably Prof. Francesca Tinti, and their various responses to my work influenced aspects of the ideas and observations that I present here. I appreciate the comments provided by Prof. Tinti and Dr David Woodman regarding preliminary drafts of this chapter: any errors of observation or interpretation expressed here are, of course, my own.

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Jonathan Herold reproduce and ‘renew’ the documentary records at their disposal which described the history of the cathedral and the landholdings that supported it. Worcester’s surviving eleventh-century records preserve observable textual, organisational and physical evidence of how the contents of its archive were transformed during the Conquest era. They also suggest how the community’s attitudes regarding the significance of those records may have changed from viewing them simply as instruments of institutional administration to expressions of communal history and identity.2 Recognising the various ways in which these transformations occurred reinforces the current view that Worcester’s Conquest-era archive was less a static repository of documentary records and more an atelier where the history of the cathedral and its community was not only being preserved, but also dynamically developed. Before proceeding with my discussion of how Worcester’s record-keepers developed and preserved their records over the course of the Conquest era, it is probably necessary to delineate the conceptual scope of my study as explicitly as possible. My interest in Worcester’s archive and the general focus of my research is on observing pragmatic aspects of written memorialisation and record-keeping during the early medieval period. My perspective on the surviving physical and textual artefacts of Worcester’s record-keeping practices differs from that of ‘classic’ diplomatic analysis, in that I am less concerned with the ‘authenticity’ of preserved records than I am with observing which elements of those records – both physical and textual – were apparently necessary to maintain their authority as the contexts of their preservation changed over time. The focus of my discussion in this chapter is on observing and trying to understand the circumstances and methods of archival curatorship employed by Worcester’s Conquest-era record-keepers, rather than whether or not the information preserved in those records is, from the perspective of modern historical analysis, ‘authentic’ in its diplomatic composition or even factually ‘accurate’. The following analysis proceeds from the premise that the various cartularies compiled by Worcester’s recordkeepers both at the beginning and the end of the eleventh century represent attempts to preserve (and possibly interpret) historical information contained within the cathedral’s archive, rather than deliberately to falsify it. Many of the textual transformations that I will discuss in the following pages might be interpreted as consistent with the view that Worcester’s record-keepers engaged in widespread forgery during the Conquest era. I question the applicability of the term ‘forgery’ to describe the various textual modifications observable among the records entered within Worcester’s Conquest-era cartularies because it is uncertain that any of those collections were ever intended 2 Another

interesting case study of how – and possibly why – such transformations were accomplished among one particular group of early Worcester records is F. Tinti, ‘The Reuse of Charters at Worcester between the Eighth and Eleventh Century: A Case-Study’, Midland History 37 (2012), 127–41.

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Preserving Records and Writing History to be presented as evidence in a dispute during that period; I therefore choose not to characterise the variations that I observe among the records entered in the cartularies by using that term.3 Some readers may prefer to see forgery as the motive of the textual transformations that I will discuss in the following pages, but I choose to discuss those characteristics in terms of deliberate editorial choices which were intended to maintain the authority of historical information that was available to Worcester’s Conquest-era record-keepers. The following is a brief description of the documentary materials that we presently regard as constituents of Worcester’s Conquest-era archive. Between the seventh century and the turn of the eleventh, Worcester cathedral had been the recipient of extensive endowments of land, at least some of which appear to have been either originally conveyed ‘by book’, or whose conveyance had by the turn of the eleventh century come to be recorded in the form of written diplomas. In addition, written records of temporary allocations of the cathedral’s lands made by Worcester’s bishops to various clients were also preserved at the cathedral by that time. The small number of surviving single-sheet records that, according to palaeographical analysis, appear to date from the Conquest era or earlier provide an evidentiary basis for concluding that a collection of single-sheet written records concerning the basis of the cathedral’s endowment and the administration of its lands had been maintained at Worcester prior to the Conquest era. In addition, lists of early Worcester records compiled by later medieval and early-modern record-keepers, researchers and officials suggest that the number of singlesheet pre-Conquest and Conquest-era records preserved at the cathedral was once more extensive than the surviving examples of these single-sheet records indicate.4 The maintenance of an archive of single-sheet records by

3 Regarding



the applicability of the term ‘forgery’ to the production of medieval cartularies, see M. Mostert, ‘Forgery and Trust’, in Strategies of Writing: Studies on Text and Trust in the Middle Ages, ed. P. Schulte, M. Mostert and I. van Renswoude (Turnhout, 2008), pp. 37–59; for an analysis of forgery within the records of Worcester’s early archive, see J. Barrow, ‘The Chronology of Forgery Production at Worcester from c.1000 to the Early Twelfth Century’, in St Wulfstan and his World, ed. J. S. Barrow and N. P. Brooks (Aldershot, 2005), pp. 105–22. For recent useful discussion of modern scholarship on medieval forgeries see L. Roach, Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton, 2021), pp. 1–20. 4 Twenty-four single-sheet documents from Worcester’s Conquest-era archive that were written during the eleventh century or earlier are known to have survived: see n. 24, below. Three of the most extensive antiquarian collections containing transcriptions or descriptions of single-sheet charters which subsequently disappeared from Worcester’s archive are Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Dugdale 12 (a list of Worcester charters compiled by William Dugdale in 1643), London, BL, MS Harley 4660 (apographs probably transcribed by or for Humfrey Wanley in the late seventeenth century) and London, BL, Cotton MS Vitellius C. ix (notes taken by Patrick Young in the early seventeenth century). Several pages of notes regarding Worcester cathedral’s records taken by ‘Mr. Hopkins, canon of Worcester’ for Henry Wharton

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Jonathan Herold the cathedral community is also attested to by a member of the Conquest-era community at Worcester cathedral, Hemming, who provides a unique account of record-keeping activities there that will be examined in more detail in the coming pages. The other components contributing to our knowledge of Worcester’s Conquest-era archive are the various records entered among three cartularies that were compiled during the eleventh century. The earliest and most extensive of these is the so-called Liber Wigorniensis (hereafter LW), preserved in London, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fols. 1r–109v, 111r–118v. In brief, LW appears to have been compiled no earlier than the late tenth century and no later than Wulfstan the Homilist’s concurrent reign as both bishop of Worcester and archbishop of York (1002–16). LW appears to have been intended for use as an administrative aid, possibly for consultation by Archbishop Wulfstan on occasions when his presence at York deprived him of access to Worcester’s archive of single-sheet documents.5 Two additional collections of records based upon the contents of Worcester’s archive were also compiled later in the eleventh century; according to Hemming, at least one of these collections was compiled during the episcopate of Bishop Wulfstan II (cons. 1062, died 1095), while parts of the other were evidently created shortly after Wulfstan’s death.



(now bound in London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 585, pp. 536–40) contain transcripts of two of the single-sheet charters which had earlier been transcribed in London, BL, MS Harley 4660, indicating that these two charters were still in Worcester cathedral’s archive in the early eighteenth century. These lost or incomplete texts are briefly described in entries for S 1822–1858 in ‘The Electronic Sawyer’, http://www.esawer.lib.cam.ac.uk/about/index.html, an updated version of Peter Sawyer’s Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Charters first published by the British Academy in 1968. Dugdale’s list of Worcester’s charters was printed in H. Wanley, ‘Catalogus,’ in Linguarum vett. septentrionalium thesaurus grammatico-criticus et archaeologicus, G. Hickes, A. Fountaine and H. Wanley, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1705), II, 299–300, and Hemingi Chartularium ecclesiæ Wigorniensis, ed. T. Hearne, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1723), II, 579–85, along with Young’s notes, pp. 515–68. A fragment recording what appears to have been a witness list from a single-sheet Worcester document dating from the early eleventh century is preserved within London, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fol. 110; another fragment recording the boundaries of Hallow, Worcs. in Old English, dating from the early twelfth century, is currently bound as fol. 153, and a fragment recording a twelfth-century witness-list dating from the episcopate of John Pageham (c.1151–8) was inserted at fol. 143. On the benefactions listed in OCCC MS 157, see Susan Kelly’s contribution to this volume. 5 Stephen Baxter’s analysis of the composition and contents of LW emphasises its suitability as an administrative aid: S. Baxter, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the Administration of God’s Property’, in Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: The Proceedings of the Second Alcuin Conference, ed. M. Townend (Turnhout, 2004), pp. 161–205 (pp. 165–76; 191–205). For discussion of Archbishop Wulfstan’s impact on the see of Worcester, see J. Barrow, ‘Wulfstan and Worcester: Bishop and Clergy in the Early Eleventh Century,’ ibid., pp. 141–59. I briefly discuss the possibility that LW might have originally been intended for use in York’s archiepiscopal curia below, pp. 71–3.

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Preserving Records and Writing History Although roughly contemporaneous, these two later record collections were demonstrably compiled independently and for different purposes. The earlier of these two collections is the fragmentary cartulary variously referred to by modern scholars as the ‘Oswald Cartulary’, the ‘Nero-Middleton Cartulary’ or the ‘St Wulfstan Cartulary’ (hereafter SWC).6 The five manuscript leaves and fragments of a sixth which are all that remains of SWC are preserved in London, BL, Cotton MS Nero E. i, part 2, fols. 181r–184v, and London, BL, Additional MS 46204. They record versions (or parts of versions) of forty records which – assuming that Hemming’s account of SWC’s creation is trustworthy – were copied at Bishop Wulfstan’s direction from ‘testaments and privileges’ preserved in the cathedral’s ‘strongbox’ (scrinium); versions of thirty-nine of these records had also been recorded in LW earlier in the eleventh century.7 The third collection of Worcester records compiled during the Conquest era is preserved in BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fols. 119r–200; this section of the manuscript has conventionally been called ‘Hemming’s Cartulary’ since 1961 in order to distinguish it from the earlier collection, LW, with which it has been bound since at least the fifteenth century.8

6 The





designation ‘Oswald Cartulary’, which appears in early twentieth-century scholarship, was coined by C. H. Turner in 1916, referring to W. H. Stevenson’s mistaken judgement that remnants of the cartulary to which the surviving leaves belonged dated from Oswald’s episcopate and had provided the exemplar for BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii: cf. C. H. Turner, Early Worcester Manuscripts (Oxford, 1916), pp. xxviii–xxix; W. H. Stevenson, Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Middleton, Preserved at Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire (London, 1911), pp. 197–212. N. R. Ker referred to these leaves as the ‘Nero-Middleton Cartulary’: N. R. Ker, ‘The “Offa Bible” and the Nero-Middleton Cartulary’, in Catalogus librorum manuscriptorum bibliothecae Wigorniensis made in 1622–1623 by Patrick Young Librarian to King James I, ed. I. Atkins and N. R. Ker (Cambridge, 1944), pp. 77–9. In 2004 I proposed that it would be appropriate to refer to the collection from which the Nero-Middleton leaves and fragments originated as the ‘St Wulfstan Cartulary’ to reflect the likelihood recognised by Ker and others that they were remnants of the same cartulary whose creation Hemming attributed to Bishop Wulfstan (J. Herold, ‘Memoranda and Memoria’, pp. 43–4). Francesca Tinti has since referred to ‘St Wulfstan’s cartulary’ in her discussion of the creation of this collection, while retaining the ‘Nero-Middleton’ designation when discussing the texts recorded among the Nero and Additional leaves: F. Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię commendaretur: Memory and Cartularies in Eleventh-Century Worcester’, in Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald, ed. S. Baxter, C. Karkov, J. L. Nelson and D. Pelteret (Farnham, 2009), pp. 475–97 (at pp. 478–81, 483–8). Susan Kelly refers to the ‘Wulfstan Cartulary’ in her contribution to this volume. 7 J. Herold, ‘The St. Wulfstan Cartulary’, https://individual.utoronto.ca/emrecordkeeping/Pages/StWulfstanCartMain.html (published online 2004); cf. Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię’, pp. 483–8. 8 Until the publication of Ker’s 1948 study of BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, the name ‘Hemming’s Cartulary’ had been generally used to refer to the entire manuscript. H. P. R. Finberg distinguished between the two cartularies that Ker identified in his study as ‘Tib. I’ and ‘Tib. II’ by applying the name Liber Wigorniensis to the first 118

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Jonathan Herold Although the majority of Worcester’s early records are known only from the texts preserved among its eleventh-century cartularies, the number of early records that were evidently not entered in either the LW or the cartularies compiled at the end of the century strongly suggests that the individual cartularies should properly be regarded as selective images of Worcester’s early archive as recorded at opposite ends of the eleventh century, rather than as comprehensive representations of the then-current contents of the cathedral’s archive. The compilers of LW made provision for the addition of records within its topographically organised sections, but eight records dating from the period between Archbishop Wulfstan’s episcopate and that of Bishop Wulfstan II that are known to have survived to the modern era in single-sheet format were never entered within its pages.9 Remnants of Worcester’s cartularies compiled during the late eleventh century include the above-mentioned SWC fragments and the collection of records concerning lands dedicated to the maintenance of the cathedral’s monastic community bound within Hemming’s Cartulary. Judging from Hemming’s Enucleatio libelli – a narrative preserved among the records in this collection – this cartulary was originally intended to include selected documentary records from Worcester’s archive pertaining to the monastic community’s support;10 while it is possible that folios of the manuscript (Tib. I), reserving the designation ‘Hemming’ for the later section of the manuscript (Tib. II). H. P. R. Finberg, The Early Charters of the West Midlands (Leicester, 1961), pp. 15–16. 9 ‘The Electronic Sawyer’, http://www.esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk/about/index.html: S 1388, 1392–1397, 1399: three of these single-sheet records (S 1393, 1394 and 1399) are currently preserved in the British Library; the other five were among a lost collection of charters that was in the possession of John, Lord Somers, in the early eighteenth century; cf. S. Keynes, ‘Anglo-Saxon Charters: Lost and Found’, in Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Brooks, ed. J. Barrow and A. Wareham (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 45–66 (pp. 58–9). At least an additional thirty-one known Worcester records which predate the mid eleventh century were left unrecorded in LW (S 53, 57, 59, 62, 75, 77, 89, 113, 173, 201, 212, 219, 520, 772, 773, 788, 1177, 1273, 1281, 1283, 1289, 1315, 1347, 1384–6, 1416, 1437, 1459, 1460, 1534), along with a number of other early Worcester records that were described by Dugdale and Young in the seventeenth century but subsequently lost (S 1822–58). Regarding the probable purposes of LW, see Baxter, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the Administration of God’s Property’, pp. 176, 190; cf. Herold, ‘Memoranda and Memoria’, pp. 223–6, 231–4. 10 The most comprehensive discussions of the contents and arrangement of Hemming’s Cartulary are Tinti, ‘Hemming’s Cartulary in Context’, pp. 233–61, and Tinti, Sustaining Belief, pp. 136–50; cf. N. Ker, ‘Hemming’s Cartulary: A Description of the Two Worcester Cartularies in Cotton Tiberius A. xiii’, in Studies in Medieval History Presented to F. M. Powicke, ed. R. W. Hunt, W. A. Pantin and R. W. Southern (Oxford, 1948), pp. 49–75 (in which the late eleventhcentury cartulary is described on pp. 55–62). Regarding the integration of Hemming’s Cartulary with LW, I proposed an alternative arrangement for the combined contents of BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, suggesting that the various components of Tiberius A. xiii may have been arranged to ‘frame’ and

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Preserving Records and Writing History SWC might have originally presented a more or less complete image of the archive in Bishop Wulfstan’s day, its current fragmentary state makes this impossible to demonstrate conclusively.11 The state in which the contents of the cathedral’s archive were kept and its general condition during the latter half of the eleventh century are best suggested by Hemming’s Enucleatio. In it, Hemming describes a particular archival project undertaken during the episcopate of Bishop Wulfstan II, and provides general information about how Worcester’s record-keepers went about compiling two separate cartularies at his instigation, each with a distinct purpose, based upon records preserved in their archive. The following excerpt from the Enucleatio addresses the circumstances under which these particular archival projects were undertaken, and provides information regarding their scope: Unde et scrinium monasterii coram se referari fecit . diligenterque omnia antiquorum priuilegia et testamenta de possessionibus huius æcclesiæ perscrutatus . est . ne forte custodum negligentia putrefacta . aut iniquorum auaritia forent distracta . Cumque ex parte ut putauerat reperisset . curauit studiose et putrescentia reparare . et quæ inique distracta fuerant strenuus adquirere . adquisita uero insimul congregare . congregataque in duobus uoluminibus studuit ordinare . In uno quidem ordinauit omnia primitiua testamenta et priuilegia in quibus manifestabatur quomodo uel per quos

unify both the earlier episcopal cartulary LW and sections from the dossier of monastic records whose creation is described by Hemming’s Enucleatio: Herold, ‘Memoranda and Memoria’, pp. 167–78; cf. Herold, ‘Framing Deeds with Words: Reconstructing Hemming’s Cartulary’, https://www.academia.edu/1255243/ Framing_Deeds_with_Words_Reconstructing_Hemmings_Cartulary. 11 The implications of observed organisational similarities between SWC and LW will be addressed below, pp. 69–71. The nucleus of the monastic cartulary described as having been compiled under Bishop Wulfstan’s direction – a group of thirteen interpolated or spurious charter texts and another group of detached boundary clauses which may correspond to the ‘privileges and chirographs of the lands which belonged specifically to the maintenance of the monks’ that Hemming referred to in the Enucleatio – are probably those records currently bound within BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fols. 176, 144–52, 154–64v; two other groups of Conquest-era land records, some of which were also entered in LW, are bound as fols. 168–75 and 194–200, while another discrete selection of records related to lands described as having been recovered for the monks by bishops Ealdred and Wulfstan are bound as fols. 178–85 and 186–93 (regarding the records of Ealdred’s and Wulfstan’s recovery of monastic lands, see Francesca Tinti’s contribution to this volume). The precise arrangement of the various thematic sections of Hemming’s Cartulary and how each may have eventually been joined to LW remain uncertain. For discussion of the relationship between Hemming’s description of the compilation of a monastic cartulary and that collection’s possible relationship to the contents of Hemming’s Cartulary, see F. Tinti, ‘From Episcopal Conception to Monastic Compilation: Hemming’s Cartulary in Context’, EME 11 (2002), 233–61, and F. Tinti, Sustaining Belief: The Church of Worcester from c.870 to c.1100 (Farnham, 2010), pp. 145–7.

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Jonathan Herold primo terrarum possessiones huic monasterio date sint . in altero uero cyrographa quibus beatus OSVVALDVS archiepiscopus cum adiutorio regis Ædgari terras iniuste a uiris potentibus aliquanto tempore . possessas ditioni æcclesiæ attitulauit . easque regali auctoritate et senatorum consensu . et principum patrie testimonio data unicuique cirographi cautione . post duorum uel trium heredum tempora iuri æcclesiæ absque contradictione reddendas . cirographorum etiam exemplaribus in scrinio sanctæ æcclesiæ ob testimonium collocatis . suis scriptis successoribus manifestauit . Quibus ordinatis præcepit cuncta eodem ordine in bibliotheca sanctæ æcclesiæ scribi quatinus etiam si ut assolet contingeret . quod aliqua negligentia testamentales scedulæ perderentur . earum exemplaria saltem inibi conscripta nullatenus obliuioni traderentur . Hoc quoque iuxta uelle et imperium suum patrato . præcepit adhuc omnia priuilegia et cirographa terrarum quæ proprie ad uictum monachorum pertinent separatim ex his congregari . eaque . similiter in duobus uoluminibus eodem ordine adunari . quod in hoc codicello eius ut predixi imperio pro modulo meæ paruitatis studiosus lector fecisse me animaduertere potest.12 12 BL,

Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fols. 132v–133r, my translation: ‘Whence [Bishop Wulfstan] caused the strongbox [scrinium] of the monastery to be opened in his presence and he diligently inspected all the privileges and testaments of the ancients concerning the possessions of this church, lest perchance they had decayed due to the negligence of the keepers or become alienated due to the avarice of unjust people. And when he had discovered that the condition of the records was partly as he expected, he zealously undertook both to repair the decayed items and vigorously to acquire those which had been unjustly removed: at the same time he undertook to gather those things obtained and, having gathered them, he desired to organise them into two volumes. In one he organised all the primitive testaments and privileges in which it was shown in what way or by whom the first possessions of land were given to the monastery; in the other, chirographs by which the blessed Archbishop Oswald, with the support of King Edgar, assigned authority over church lands for a certain period of time, that had been unjustly taken into possession by powerful men. And he [i.e. Wulfstan] made plain to his successors by means of the assembled documents that these same lands – advisedly given by royal authority, both with the consent of the witan [senatorum] and by the testimony of the most eminent people of the country in each chirograph – ought to be returned without objection to the rule of the church after the lifetimes of two or three heirs, on account of the witness of the chirographs and by means of the copies in the strongbox of the holy church. With these records having been set in order, he directed that they all be written in the same order in the Bible of the holy church, since if (as it sometimes happens) it should befall that testaments or documents should be lost because of any negligence, at least the copies of those inscribed therein by no means would be consigned to oblivion. Likewise, when this had been accomplished according to his will and command, he additionally ordered all privileges and chirographs of the lands which belonged specifically to the maintenance of the monks to be collected from those [i.e. from among all the records in the scrinium], and similarly be combined in the same order into two volumes. An attentive reader is able to judge in this little book that I was able to accomplish this by his command (as I have said), according to my meagre ability.’ Cf. Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię’, pp. 494–7, and Hemingi Chartularium, ed. Hearne, I, 283–6.

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Preserving Records and Writing History Hemming’s account of the conduct of this audit and conservation project is interesting as much for what it does not explicitly tell us about the composition and condition of Worcester’s archive during the eleventh century as for what it does. The explicit information he presents may be summarised as follows. First, Bishop Wulfstan supervised the opening of the cathedral’s scrinium and personally inspected the many records that were kept there; second, the contents of the scrinium were in many cases found to be in a state of disorder and physical decay. Hemming then records that Wulfstan ordered the repair of the damaged documents as well as the acquisition or replacement (adquirere) of those found to have been ‘unjustly removed’. Once the contents of the archive had been restored, Wulfstan directed that the documents be organised, distinguishing between ‘ancient testaments’ that provided foundational information concerning the cathedral’s landholdings and ‘chirographs’ issued at the time of Archbishop Oswald recording temporary land grants to various clients, many of whom had ‘unjustly’ retained possession of church lands. After restoring and organising the contents of the scrinium, Bishop Wulfstan further directed Worcester’s record-keepers to compile two additional collections of information contained in Worcester’s archive – presumably SWC and Hemming’s Cartulary – to safeguard against possible loss and/or decay of its ancient documents in the future. The fundamental fact presented in Hemming’s account, however, is that the conservation of the contents of the cathedral’s scrinium was the primary focus of this activity, and that those documents provided the basis for the information subsequently recorded in the cathedral’s ancient Bible and collected for the benefit of the cathedral’s monastic community. A likely inference that may be drawn from Hemming’s account is that the cathedral’s scrinium was to be the intended repository for future documentary records as well. First among the points that Hemming does not explicitly describe is the manner whereby the contents of Worcester’s scrinium might have been organised and maintained prior to Bishop Wulfstan’s audit, apart from observing that those formerly charged with its maintenance had been ‘negligent’. Those organisational aspects which Hemming does address – the divisions between ‘testaments’ and ‘chirographs’, as well as the collection of records specifically pertaining to the benefit of the cathedral monks – are presented as if they were innovations introduced by Wulfstan himself. The topographical arrangement of the documentary records entered in Worcester’s earlier cartulary LW, however, suggests that an organisational scheme for Worcester’s archived land records – including the distinction between testamenta and chirographa – had already been established by the early eleventh century, if not before. Hemming does not specifically mention the existence of LW in his account of the conservation project directed by Bishop Wulfstan, and the significance of this omission has generally been discounted by modern scholars. The observed organisational similarity between LW and the cartulary apparently compiled under Bishop Wulfstan’s 69

Jonathan Herold direction – SWC – has long been established, and its significance interpreted as evidence for a source-copy relationship between LW and SWC, although conclusions regarding which cartulary stood as ‘source’ for the other have changed since their organisational similarities were first observed.13 The currently accepted position was articulated in 1948 by Neil Ker. Ker attached no significance to the fact that Hemming described Worcester’s archive as composed of multiple records that were individually vulnerable to decay or capable of becoming disordered, lost or otherwise removed, choosing rather to suppose that LW was present in Worcester’s archive as ‘simply an important archivist’s tool’ that, since it was neither Hemming’s work nor Wulfstan’s, did not bear mentioning.14 Ker’s conclusion on this point has influenced scholarly conceptions of the format and composition of Worcester’s archive during the central eleventh century. A possibility that has not been seriously considered, however, is that the topographical organisation observed in both LW and SWC might have reflected organisational characteristics of the cathedral’s archive itself, a system that had already been established prior to Bishop Wulfstan’s audit. A body of admittedly circumstantial evidence, when coupled with a close reading of Hemming’s account in the Enucleatio, calls into question the notion that Worcester’s record-keepers in Wulfstan’s day were referring to LW as a source or pattern for their own conservation project. First, there are numerous pre-Conquest and Conquest-era records known from extant single-sheet documents, later cartulary records and lists compiled by later antiquaries and scholars to have been present in Worcester’s Conquest-era archive that were evidently never recorded in LW, despite the fact that the original compilers of LW had made provision to enter additional records in the manuscript.15 The absence of entries for these records among LW’s folios begs explanation, particularly if LW had been used as an ‘archivist’s tool’ at Worcester over the course of the eleventh century. Second, the generally coherent topographical organisation of the LW manuscript itself is at odds with Hemming’s description of the observed level of disturbance or decay within Worcester’s archive in Bishop Wulfstan’s day.16 As I noted above,

13 William

Stevenson noted the organisational similarities between LW and the records preserved among the SWC fragments in his Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Middleton, pp. 198–9; implications of these similarities were subsequently discussed by Ker, ‘Hemming’s Cartulary’, pp. 65–7, and more recently by Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię’, pp. 483–8. Cf. J. Herold, ‘The St. Wulfstan Cartulary’, at https://individual.utoronto.ca/emrecordkeeping/Pages/StWulfstanCartMain. html (published online 2004). 14 Ker, ‘Hemming’s Cartulary’, p. 67. 15 Baxter, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the Administration of God’s Property’, p. 171, n. 28; cf. n. 24, below. 16 The contents and collation of LW are represented in tabular reconstruction by Baxter, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the Administration of God’s Property’, pp. 191–205; cf.

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Preserving Records and Writing History Hemming emphasised that maintenance of the archive had lapsed by the time of Bishop Wulfstan’s episcopate due to a combination of natural decay among the documents, negligence on the part of earlier record-keepers and alienation by certain ill-intentioned individuals with access to the records during the course of the eleventh century. Accounts of Worcester’s eleventhcentury ‘despoilers’ have been discussed both in Hemming’s Cartulary and in modern scholarship;17 I will address the possible implications of natural decay upon Worcester’s ‘working archive’ below. Third, the primary focus of St Wulfstan and his associates’ work on this occasion was to ‘repair’ (reparare) and/or ‘acquire’/‘augment’/‘restore’ (adquirere) lost or decayed documents within the cathedral’s scrinium. In other words, the restoration of the contents and organisation of Worcester’s ‘working archive’ preceded the creation of either of the two late eleventh-century cartularies described by Hemming. Finally, Hemming states that the compilation of both the cartulary that Bishop Wulfstan directed to be appended to the cathedral’s Bible (bibliotheca) and that which he ordered to be compiled as a record of lands dedicated for the support of the cathedral’s monastic community were intended to represent and augment – not to replace – the cathedral’s working archive, as a contingency against future vicissitudes and mischance. Hemming’s account of the measures undertaken by Bishop Wulfstan and Worcester’s archivists distinguishes between the need to preserve the contents of the scrinium and their subsequent measures to safeguard the records of both the cathedral and the monastic community’s landholdings by creating two separate cartularies. The supposition that Bishop Wulfstan’s record-keepers had not been working from LW as an exemplar, however, raises the question of why they might not have done so or, at the very least, why earlier Worcester recordkeepers apparently had not entered new memoranda within LW during the middle decades of the eleventh century. One inference that might be drawn from Hemming’s failure to mention the existence of the earlier cartulary is that LW may not have been present in Worcester’s archive until after the initiation of Bishop Wulfstan’s conservation project. Again, while much of the evidence to support this idea is circumstantial, the number of circumstances

variations in the collation of ‘Tib. I’/LW in Ker, ‘Hemming’s Cartulary’, pp. 51–5, and Tinti, Sustaining Belief, pp. 85–125. The lack of disturbance in collation of the LW component of BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii was noted by those who transcribed its contents for Robert Graves in the seventeenth century (Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Rawlinson B 445): all the places where they observed disturbances in the collation of the Tiberius manuscript – fols. 276v, 283v, 287v, 290v, 326v of the Rawlinson transcript – were located among the Hemming Cartulary sections; none were noted in the LW section of the manuscript. 17 The depredations carried out upon Worcester’s landholdings over the course of the eleventh century are described in the section of Hemming’s Cartulary entitled Codicellus possessionum, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fols. 119–31r; cf. A. Williams, ‘The Spoliation of Worcester’, ANS 19 (1996), 383–408.

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Jonathan Herold that suggest this possibility bear serious consideration. The primary circumstance that should be considered is the administrative relationship between the offices of the archbishop of York and the bishop of Worcester in the pre-Conquest period. During sixty-four of the 101 years between the consecration of Worcester’s bishops Oswald (cons. 961) and Wulfstan II (cons. 1062), five bishops of Worcester had served concurrently as archbishops of York.18 During these periods of plurality, it may have been necessary occasionally to direct affairs pertaining to Worcester’s landholdings from within York’s archiepiscopal curia, where a compact copy of Worcester’s archive would have been a useful administrative tool.19 Given the overlapping administrative relationship between York and Worcester during this time, it is reasonable to infer that the necessity of administering Worcester from York might have furnished the reason for compiling LW in the first place. LW’s possible retention within York’s archiepiscopal curia following the death of Archbishop Wulfstan in 1023 may also have had the unintended consequence of obscuring issues of landholding between the diocese of Worcester and the archdiocese of York for much of the eleventh century, leading several of Archbishop Wulfstan’s successors to regard Worcester and its lands as part of York’s archiepiscopal patrimony. The issue of the archiepiscopal supervision of Worcester was reportedly not resolved until after a council or meeting at Pedreda (that is, on the River Parrett) in 1070 or 1071. If LW had been in the possession of the archbishops of York, it seems probable that it would have been returned to Bishop Wulfstan as a token of the archbishop of York’s renunciation of his claim to Worcester’s lands.20 According to John of Worcester’s account of this 18 Bishops

of Worcester who were elevated to the archbishopric of York during this period were Oswald (bishop of Worcester 961, concurrently archbishop of York 971–92), Ealdwulf (bishop of Worcester 992; transferred to York, retaining Worcester 995–1002), Wulfstan I (concurrently archbishop of York and bishop of Worcester 1002–16, when he resigned Worcester), Ælfric Puttoc (briefly held Worcester with York, 1041–2) and Ealdred (bishop of Worcester 1046–62; concurrently bishop of Hereford 1056–60; promoted to York 1061, resigned Worcester 1062). 19 Regarding indications that LW had been used as an administrative aid by Archbishop Wulfstan, see Baxter, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the Administration of God’s Property’, pp. 167–76, 190. Baxter’s tabular reconstruction of the contents and arrangement of LW also indicates where a variety of records were subsequently entered in LW during the later eleventh and early twelfth century: pp. 191–205. 20 Accounts of the eventual resolution of the dispute over the archiepiscopal supervision of Worcester following the Norman Conquest are related by John of Worcester and William of Malmesbury: JW, Chron. s.a. 1070 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 16–17); WM, VW (ed. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. xv–xvii) and ibid. i.12–13, ii.1 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 46–51, 60–5); cf. A. Orchard, ‘Parallel Lives: Wulfstan, William, Coleman and Christ’, in St Wulfstan and his World, ed. Barrow and Brooks, pp. 39–57 (p. 39). Regarding the identification of Pedreda, see JW, Chron. (ed. McGurk, III, 17, n. 10); cf. WM, VW, ii.1 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, p. 64, n. 3). The compilers of the thirteenth-century cartulary of Worcester cathedral’s priory went so far as to identify Archbishop Wulfstan as a

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Preserving Records and Writing History council, Bishop Wulfstan produced a number of documents (‘scriptis euidentissimis’) from Worcester’s archive as evidence to defend Worcester’s landed endowments against the claims of Archbishop Thomas; it is perhaps significant that Hemming apparently used the word scripta to distinguish between original documents and copies (exemplaria) in the Enucleatio.21 Considered within the context of both Hemming’s reticence concerning the existence of an earlier cartulary at Worcester and later accounts of Bishop Wulfstan’s apparent use of single-sheet records to reacquire landholdings that had been alienated during the period of Worcester’s rule by successive archbishops of York, it seems plausible that LW may not have been kept at Worcester cathedral until sometime after 1070.22 Since Hemming’s account of Wulfstan’s inspection of Worcester’s archive specifically emphasised the need to ‘repair’ (reparare) those single-sheet records that had physically decayed and to ‘augment’ (adquirere; alternatively, ‘seek out’,23 ‘acquire’ or – perhaps – ‘replace’) those items that had been misplaced or removed from the scrinium, consideration of characteristics that Hemming may have associated with these two verbs – reparare and adquirere – is fundamental to understanding Worcester’s early record-keepers’ approach towards maintaining and asserting the integrity of their institutional archives and, ultimately, representing the history of the cathedral and its monastic community. The fact that the contents of the scrinium consisted primarily (if not exclusively) of single-sheet records is supported by the number of such records pertaining to Worcester that survive in library and archival collections to the present day, as well as those that were known to have existed in various private collections into the modern era. Twenty-four known examples of medieval single-sheet Worcester land records exist in modern library and archival collections which, based on palaeographical analysis, appear to have been written in the eleventh century or earlier.24 Another collection despoiler of Worcester’s lands and describe him as ‘base’ (reprobus), before adding ‘Nam nimis errauit dum nos rebus spoliauit’, thus suggesting that a tradition of resentment over this situation persisted long after its resolution: Worcester Cathedral Library, Register 1, fol. 2 rv; cf. The Cartulary of Worcester Cathedral Priory (Register I), ed. R. R. Darlington (London, 1968), p. 1. 21 JW, Chron. s.a. 1070 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 16–17); for Hemming’s use of scripta and exemplaria, cf. the excerpted text from the Enucleatio, above. 22 I discuss the evidence to support this conclusion at greater length and detail in my doctoral thesis: Herold, ‘Memoranda and Memoria’, pp. 117–24. 23 Cf. Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię’, pp. 494–5. 24 The following pre-Conquest single-sheet charters pertaining to Worcester’s cathedral and monastic community are preserved in the BL and Worcester cathedral’s archive (shelf marks are followed by the reference number of each text assigned in ‘The Electronic Sawyer’, http://www.esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk/about/ index.html): Worcester Cathedral Muniments, B. 1598 (‘Additional MS, in vault’, S 59); BL, Additional Charters 19788 (S 67), 19789 (S 56), 19790 (S 139), 19791 (S 1281), 19792 (S 1326), 19793 (S 772), 19794 (S 1347), 19795 (S 1385), 19796 (S 1423), 19797

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Jonathan Herold comprised of twenty-four early Worcester records was in the possession of Lord John Somers, chancellor of England, during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. The charters in the Somers collection have been missing since the middle of the eighteenth century, and have long been presumed destroyed; fortunately, the collection was catalogued by Wanley in the late seventeenth century and the texts of sixteen of the Somers collection charters were transcribed in full and printed as an appendix to John Smith’s edition of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History in 1722.25 Other antiquarian transcripts or catalogue descriptions compiled in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century describe another thirty-seven pre-Conquest single-sheet records which were preserved at Worcester but have subsequently disappeared. In addition, fragments of what appear to be two otherwise unidentifiable eleventh or early twelfth century single-sheet memoranda were inserted in BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii at some time after the original compilation of its cartularies. Susan Kelly’s study of the list of benefactions prefacing the text of John of Worcester’s CC in OCCC MS 157, fols. 1–3, further indicates the presence of twenty-four otherwise unattested Conquest-era single-sheet charters or other records that were in Worcester’s archive during the late eleventh century.26 Of the single-sheet charters that appear to have been written in the eleventh century or earlier, the texts of five were also included among the records entered into LW, the oldest and most extensive of Worcester’s eleventh-century cartularies.27 Of these five, a version of only one text – S 117 – can also be found among the fragments of the cathedral cartulary (S 1399), 19798 (S 1393), 19799 (S 1394), 19800 (S 1407), 19801 (S 1405), 19802 (S 1156); BL, Cotton MS Augustus ii. 3 (S 89), 6 (S 786), 9 (S 190), 30 (S 117); BL, Cotton Charter VIII. 37 (S 1460); BL, Harley Charters 83 A. 1 (S 173), 2 (S 1534), 3 (S 1421). 25 Historiae ecclesiasticae gentis Anglorum, libri quinque, auctore sancto & Venerabili Baeda, ed. J. Smith (Cambridge, 1722), pp. 764–82; H. Wanley, ‘Chartae Anglo-Saxonicis temporibus confectae’, in Linguarum vett. septentrionalium thesaurus, Hickes, Fountaine and Wanley, II, 301–3. Ivor Atkins and Neil Ker concluded that the Somers collection of charters was destroyed with the rest of Lord Somers’ papers in a fire in Lincoln’s Inn in 1752: Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Wigorniensis, ed. Atkins and Ker, p. 20. Simon Keynes, on the other hand, believes that the Somers charters may have been otherwise ‘disposed of’ before Lord Somers’ death in 1716, and has stated that ‘there is no reason to imagine that they were among the Somers papers destroyed by fire in 1752’: Keynes, ‘Anglo-Saxon Charters’, pp. 58–9. 26 See n. 24, above, and Kelly’s chapter in this volume. 27 A total of six texts for which early single-sheet documents survive are entered in Worcester’s eleventh-century cartularies, five of which are recorded in LW and one in the later Hemming’s Cartulary: S 56 (BL, Additional Charter 19789; BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fol. 24v), S 117 (BL, Cotton MS Augustus ii. 30; BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fol. 6rv; BL, Cotton MS Nero E. i, part 2, fol. 182r), S 139 (BL, Additional Charter 19790; BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fol. 52rv), S 190 (BL, Cotton MS Augustus ii. 9; BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fol. 21rv), S 1326 (BL,

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Preserving Records and Writing History that Hemming apparently described being compiled in the Enucleatio libelli. The sole surviving early medieval single-sheet copy of S 117 (London, BL, Cotton MS Augustus ii. 30; dated AD 730, recte 780; see my transcription of this document in Appendix, no. 1a, below) appears to be written in an early eleventh-century hand; the period between the supposed date of issue and the time when this charter was drafted must also admit the possibility that either deliberate or unintentional textual modifications may have been introduced in the course of its conservation in single-sheet form. At least one other medieval single-sheet version of S 117 was in existence as late as the early eighteenth century. A partial transcription of its text was made in the seventeenth century (recorded in London, BL, Cotton MS Vitellius C. ix, fol. 130v), and a complete text of this document, based either on John Smith’s direct inspection of Lord Somers’ charters or a transcription of the same, was published in an appendix to his 1722 edition of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History as item 5 from Lord Somers’ collection of charters (see the copy of Smith’s published text, Appendix, no. 1b, below). Whether this particular version of S 117 was drafted before or after BL, Cotton MS Augustus ii. 30 is not clear, although it is interesting to note that unlike the Augustus charter, this version does record the presumably correct date for the act, as well as an abbreviated expression of the identity and extent of the lands conveyed by the grant.28 In addition to the two surviving single-sheet versions of S 117 are records entered in LW (BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fol. 6rv) and among the SWC fragments (BL, Cotton MS Nero E. i, part 2, fol. 182r); I have provided my transcriptions of these records in Appendix, no. 1c and 1d, below. Comparison of all four versions of S 117 provides indications of how Worcester’s eleventhcentury record-keepers went about their work. Each witness displays orthographical variations that one might expect, but they also indicate that some deliberate textual adjustments or modifications were made to this record as the form or context of its preservation changed. Exactly when – or why – the various changes were introduced among the various preserved versions of this record is not entirely clear, and admittedly in some cases these variations may simply reflect scribal error.29 We may observe an example of what

Additional Charter 19792; BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fols. 83v–84r), and S 1385 (BL, Additional Charter 19795; BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fol. 162rv). 28 Wanley, who inspected the Somers collection of charters in 1705, observed that this charter was ‘written by a hand far more recent’ (longe recentiori manu scripta) than the date indicated, which suggests the possibility that it might have been drafted from LW or another single-sheet exemplar that recorded a similar version of the text: Wanley, ‘Chartae Anglo-Saxonicis temporibus confectae’, p. 301. 29 Tinti discussed a possible sequence of textual production among the two singlesheet versions of S 117 and the version recorded in LW, but her sequence does not address the relationship between the LW, Augustus and Somers 5 versions and that later entered among the SWC fragments: Tinti, Sustaining Belief, p. 95, n. 44, and p. 96, n. 45.

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Jonathan Herold appears to be a scribal error in the date recorded on the Augustus charter, where the year 730 – impossible for the reign of Offa of Mercia – appears to have been mistakenly recorded, whereas a date of 780, which would coincide with the reign of King Offa, was apparently recorded on the Somers 5 charter as well as both cartulary versions of S 117. Apart from this apparent error, the texts of the Augustus charter, Somers 5, LW and SWC follow each other fairly closely, though not exactly. Intentional textual modifications appear in the various descriptions of the lands conveyed by S 117. Both the Somers 5 singlesheet charter text and the version recorded in LW describe the land granted in the same terms (‘largior terram XX. manentium ubi dicitur æt Wersðylle and æt coftune cum silva, quae eidem telluri adjacet’ in Somers 5; cf. ‘largior Terram . xx . manentium ubi dicitur æt wersthylle et æt coftune Cum silua que eidem Telluri adiacet’ in LW).30 Against this, however, is the text recorded in the Augustus charter which identifies the holding as Wærset felda, and describes a different distribution of the twenty hides conveyed by the grant (‘largior terram . x . manentium ubi dicitur Æt wærset felda . and Æt coftune . v . cassatorum . tantundem Æt wreodan hale id est . v . mansarum cum silua quae eisdem terris adiacet .’).31 The clause describing this grant as recorded in the SWC version of the text – ‘largior terram .xx . manentis . ubi dicitur æt wærsethylle et æt coftune . cum silua quae eidem terrae adiacet’ – presents the general distribution of the land conveyed as in both the Somers 5 and LW versions of the text insofar as it does not specify ten hides at Wærsetfelda or five hides at Coftune, or refer to a holding of five hides at Wreodanhale to make up the distribution of the grant’s twenty hides as presented in the Augustus charter. Unlike LW and the single-sheet charter versions, however, it describes the extent of the grant employing the singular manentis rather than the plural manentium, and the spelling of the place-name Wærsethylle in the SWC record may be characterised as a ‘blending’ of the orthography of the Augustus charter, LW and Somers 5. Although the change in grammatical number might simply reflect a scribal error, it also might suggest that at the time that SWC was compiled the community at Worcester had come to regard the various places identified in the record as a single integrated holding, rather than a number of discrete farms. The compilers of SWC also appear to have made 30 ‘I

give land of twenty holdings where it is called “at Wersðylle” and “at Coftune”, with the forest which is next to those lands.’ See Appendix, no. 1, below for my full translations of these records. 31 ‘I give land of ten holdings where it is called “at Waersetfelda”; and “at Coftune” five hides; just as much “at Wreodanhale” (that is, five holdings), with the forest which is next to those lands.’ Tinti, Sustaining Belief, p. 96, n. 45, suggests that the addition of the place-name ‘wreodan hale’ in the Augustus version of the description might have been made to promote Worcester’s claim to both Wærsetfelda and Rednal. I find it significant that the total hidage conveyed in all versions of this act remains the same, despite the different distribution specified in the Augustus charter.

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Preserving Records and Writing History another deliberate editorial change to their version of S 117, modifying the phrase ‘Sicut ueridica apostolici dogmatis comprobat assertio’ shared by the Augustus, Somers 5 and LW versions to the less verbose ‘sicut affirmat apostolica locutio’ in SWC.32 Viewed together, the textual variations among both the single-sheet texts and those recorded in Worcester’s eleventh-century cartularies suggest that although Worcester’s record-keepers were generally conservative and ‘accurate’ in preserving the texts of their archival records, they also exercised some latitude in expressing the facts conveyed by their records as they maintained their archive. Such editorial interventions that from the perspective of modern diplomatic analysis might be interpreted as examples of either scribal incompetence, eccentricity or mendacity may well have been regarded by Worcester’s Conquest-era record-keepers as permissible reparatio.33 At any rate, it appears that introducing such textual modifications as those observed among the various versions of S 117 was not regarded as detrimental to the perceived authority or historicity of the acts of benefaction that these repeatedly reproduced records represented. Another mode of reparatio or adquisitio that may have been employed by Worcester’s record-keepers involved combining two or more records into a single text that retained significant formulaic elements common to both of the source texts. A relatively straightforward example of this can be observed among the two versions of S 64 recorded in LW and the version later recorded among the SWC fragments. Two separate but formulaically similar records of grants purportedly made by King Offa of the Mercians, referred to by Sawyer as S 64a and S 64b, were recorded sequentially in LW (see Appendix, no. 2a, below). Unfortunately, no single-sheet copy of S 64 survives, but judging from how the texts were recorded separately in LW it is plausible that singlesheet records for both S 64a and S 64b were present in Worcester’s scrinium when LW was compiled in the early eleventh century. In this case, either a combined single-sheet version of this record that might have been composed and preserved in Worcester’s archive after LW had been compiled could have

32 Translation

of Augustus, Somers 5 and LW versions: ‘just as the truthful assertion of apostolic doctrine attests’; SWC version: ‘just as the apostolic pronouncement affirms’. The fact that many of the records entered in SWC appear to be abbreviated versions of records known from Worcester’s pre-Conquest and Conquest-era archive – or to have summarised records known to have been included in either LW and/or the cathedral’s scrinium – has long been recognised. A range of published opinions regarding the significance attached to these editorial interventions can be reviewed in Stevenson, Report, pp. 198–9; Ker, ‘Hemming’s Cartulary’, pp. 66–7; Barrow, ‘Forgery Production at Worcester’, p. 107; K. Wiles, ‘The Treatment of Charter Bounds by the Worcester Cartulary Scribes’, New Medieval Literatures 13 (2011), 113–36 (pp. 115–19, 135–6); and Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię’, pp. 484–8. 33 For a detailed comparative linguistic case study of compositional variations in two versions of an Old English boundary clause recorded in LW and SWC (S 1556), see Wiles, ‘The Treatment of Charter Bounds’, pp. 119–35.

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Jonathan Herold provided an exemplar for the SWC record-keepers, or else the compilers of SWC decided to combine the texts of the two earlier single-sheet documents preserved in the scrinium into a single record themselves (see Appendix, no. 2b, below). Regardless of when the editorial interventions observable in the SWC version of S 64 were introduced, the combination of the two versions of the text as recorded in LW was neatly done. Although the edited text excludes the witness of ‘Oswudu’ recorded in S 64a, in general it employs practically the same Latin vocabulary and phraseology used in both of the texts earlier recorded in LW. The treatment of the boundaries recorded in the ‘adjusted’ version of this document is also notably conservative: the boundary clause in S 64a was recorded in Latin, the clause in S 64b in English, and the combined version entered among the SWC fragments incorporates both clauses in their original languages. A more complex example of reparatio and/or adquisitio is observable in the versions of the texts of S 148 that were recorded in LW and the SWC fragments. In this instance, it appears that Bishop Wulfstan’s record-keepers used elements from three different earlier Worcester charters to ‘repair’ or ‘re-acquire’ a record text that had presumably been present in Worcester’s scrinium when LW was compiled in the early eleventh century, but whose single-sheet record might have been lost or damaged by the late eleventh century. As is the case with S 64, no single-sheet version of S 148 survives; the texts of the records were entered first in LW and subsequently preserved among the SWC fragments (see Appendix, no. 3a–b, below). These two versions of S 148 share only fifty-six words between them, and the longest contiguous shared phrase is only six words in length. Nevertheless, both texts record the fundamental facts of the grant in similar (if not identical) terms. When compared with the version recorded in LW, Worcester’s late eleventhcentury record-keepers appear to have substantially edited the earlier single-sheet version of the text that may have provided their exemplar(s). It is also evident that the record-keepers who devised the SWC version of S 148 were not simply concerned with shortening the text of this particular record, as they also introduced an apparently novel proem to their text, along with an introductory phrase before the witness list that does not appear in the earlier cartulary’s version of this record. Why might Worcester’s record-keepers have composed the SWC version of S 148 in this manner? Scribal eccentricity might provide one explanation, albeit a rather unsatisfactory one. I maintain that the key to understanding what might have occurred within Worcester’s archive is to accept the premise that the record-keepers who compiled the SWC version of S 148 were working from the single-sheet contents of the church’s scrinium – which, furthermore, were originally organised according to the topographical scheme that can be observed in both LW and the SWC fragments – and not from direct inspection of the earlier cartulary, LW. As it happens, the version

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Preserving Records and Writing History of S 148 that was recorded in LW is preceded by two records that were not entered among the sequence of texts recorded in the SWC fragments, S 218 and S 63; interestingly, the textual elements introduced to the SWC version of S 148 appear in the texts of these two documents. Both the proem (‘Seculi namque labentis tempora . sicut umbrae fugientes sic uelociter tranant . uariaeque euentuum status in cogitatationes hominum conscendunt’) and the introduction to the witness list used in the SWC version of S 148 (‘his testibus consentientibus’) were employed in S 218, a charter which is unrelated to the donation recorded in S 148 and which, furthermore, was predominantly written in Old English, rather than Latin.34 The text of S 148 confirms an eighth-century grant recorded in the other document missing from the SWC sequence of texts, S 63, which in LW is placed immediately after S 218 and before S 148. The names of the principal parties to the act recorded in S 63 (Aldred, Uhtred and Beornheard) also appear in the SWC version of S 148.35 The deployment of these elements within the text of S 148 suggests a number of possibilities. One explanation is that for some reason Worcester’s record-keepers borrowed a couple of aesthetically-pleasing phrases from adjacent records stored in the same topographic section of Worcester’s scrinium – documents whose particulars they otherwise decided to excise from the cartulary that they were compiling – to embellish a record that they chose to preserve in an otherwise abbreviated form. This supposition, in turn, must raise the question of why Worcester’s record-keepers chose to abbreviate the SWC text of S 148 at all. Another possibility is that the singlesheet documents recording S 148, S 218 and S 63 in the cathedral’s scrinium were among those that Bishop Wulfstan and his record-keepers found to be putrefacta. The translation of this term, ‘decayed’ or ‘rotted’, on its own may not convey the condition in which such records might have been discovered by Worcester’s record-keepers, so I have provided the following illustration of a thirteenth-century document from Worcester’s present-day archive as it underwent conservation in the spring of 2019 (Fig. 1). From this illustration it is easy to appreciate how environmental factors such as damp and its attendant mould could physically damage or even destroy single-sheet records. At the very least, such environmental factors might lead to the loss or obscuration of significant portions of individual record texts. Mould from one such record might plausibly spread to damage

34 Translation

of the proem: ‘Forasmuch as the times of the perishing world are as the fleeing shades, and flow by so quickly, and the state of the different events rise up in the thoughts of men’; introduction to the witness-list: ‘with these witnesses consenting’; see Appendix, no. 3b, below for my translation of the entire record. The text of S 218 is published as no. 551 in BCS. 35 The text of S 63 is published as no. 218 in BCS.

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Jonathan Herold

Fig. 1: Worcester Cathedral Muniments B. 812 © Worcester Cathedral. Photograph by Mr Christopher Guy, Worcester Cathedral Archaeologist. Reproduced by permission of the Chapter of Worcester Cathedral (UK).

portions of adjacent records as well. In the absence of modern conservation techniques and climate control, and confronted with a number of documents in similar condition, it is conceivable that Worcester’s eleventh-century record-keepers would have chosen to preserve what information they could salvage from such putrefacta single-sheet records by incorporating it into their restored records in the most coherent manner possible. Considering the composition of the SWC version of S 148, we should bear in mind that the existence of S 63 is only known from the text recorded in LW. Evidently, the single-sheet record of that act had existed earlier in the century among the contents of Worcester’s scrinium, but that single-sheet copy may have been lost or substantially decayed by the time that Bishop Wulfstan inspected the archive and ordered its restoration. As for the text of S 218, a transcript of a partially-legible single-sheet record of that charter was made in the seventeenth century by the antiquary Patrick Young, along with other Worcester 80

Preserving Records and Writing History cathedral records.36 It is therefore possible that Worcester’s eleventh-century record-keepers might have decided to salvage what information they could from three damaged and/or decayed single-sheet documents that they discovered in the Gloucestershire section of their scrinium; they may even have assumed that all the available scraps were associated with the same act of benefaction. Localised decay of the single-sheet records in that section of their scrinium might also explain why no version of S 63 was copied into the SWC cartulary: since the damaged single-sheet of S 218 may have been partially illegible, it is even possible that Worcester’s record-keepers mistook the remnants of S 218 for portions of S 63, a document that is related to the act recorded in S 148, and decided to combine them in a manner similar to that observed in the ‘renewal’ of S 64.37 Regardless of the specific circumstances surrounding its composition, the result is the same: the ‘renewed’ or ‘augmented’ text of S 148 entered in the SWC ‘acquired’ elements from two other lost or decayed documents from the same section of the cathedral’s archive. The scenario that I have described above is admittedly speculative, but what should be apparent from my analysis of the preservation of textual and factual elements from S 218, S 63 and S 148 is that the bizarre composition of the SWC version of S 148 is obviously not the result of scribal error, and, given the generally conservative approach observable in the ‘repair’ of other records, it is unlikely to have been the result of scribal caprice, either. Furthermore, it is practically impossible that the resulting text could have been inadvertently or ‘conveniently’ produced by copying directly from LW. Had LW been used as the exemplar for the SWC version of S 148, it would have been necessary for a ‘copyist’ to skip from the bottom of fol. 50r to the second line of fol. 52r, then back to the middle of fol. 51r. It seems much more probable that the compilers of SWC were salvaging what they could from those single-sheet records stored in Worcester’s scrinium whose condition was as described in the Enucleatio. In the SWC version of S 148, the last text recorded in a sequence of Worcester’s archival records was in effect embedded between formulaic elements from the first. It must be the case that the textual modification to S 148 that we can observe in the SWC version was the result of a deliberate editorial choice, possibly reflecting the loss of records that had been rendered putrefacta within Worcester’s scrinium. The

36 This

transcript is preserved in BL, Cotton MS Vitellius C. ix., fol. 129r. text of S 139, which follows S 148 in the sequence of texts recorded in LW, is also absent from the sequence of texts recorded in the SWC fragments, despite the fact that it survives in a pre-eleventh-century single-sheet copy (BL, Additional Charter 19790). Tinti ascribes the absence of the texts of S 218, S 63 and S 139 in the Gloucestershire section of LW and SWC to Worcester’s record-keepers employing ‘the model provided by [LW]’ more ‘freely’ than elsewhere among the surviving SWC fragments (‘Si litterali memorię’, p. 484).

37 The

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Jonathan Herold example furnished by the composition of S 148 also permits us to observe Worcester’s eleventh-century record-keepers conducting themselves as historians still do – employing fragments of available recorded information in an effort to present a faithful interpretation of what they thought had happened in the past. In this chapter, I have discussed the preservation of textual records within Worcester’s early archive, focusing on examples of records that had evidently undergone ‘repair’ (reparatus) and/or ‘augmentation’/‘replacement’ (adquisitus) carried out by Worcester’s eleventh-century record-keepers. The modes of record conservation represented by the two Latin terms used by Hemming appear to admit surprising compositional scope, constrained by the generally faithful assertion of the fundamental facts of a recorded grant rather than the exact replication of the single-sheet charter supposed to have been originally issued. Preservation of individual records within Worcester’s archives evidently admitted interpretation of its records, and when decay or mischance compromised the records in their keeping, the measures that Worcester’s record-keepers took to restore those records could be either generally conservative, as indicated by the preservation of S 117 and S 64, or more ‘creative’, as suggested by the transformation of the text of S 148. It appears that the ‘creative’ aspects of Worcester’s recordkeeping practices occasionally crossed the conceptual line between the roles of ‘archivist’ as a preserver of historical information and ‘historian’ as an interpreter of records. What remains undeniable is that the documents that Worcester’s record-keepers preserved throughout the eleventh century continued to be trusted, even by those outside of Worcester’s cathedral and its monastic community, such as Eadmer of Canterbury and William of Malmesbury, who evidently conducted historical research among Worcester’s archives during the early twelfth century.38 If Worcester’s eleventh-century record-keepers were not themselves writing histories, they undoubtedly employed creativity and historical imagination in preserving the materials on which subsequent historical interpretations continue to be based.

38 J.

Barrow, ‘How the Twelfth-Century Monks of Worcester Perceived their Past’, in The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. P. Magdalino (London, 1992), pp. 53–74 (pp. 53–5).

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Appendix 1. Single-sheet and cartulary versions of record S 117 preserved within Worcester’s Conquest-era archives a. BL, Cotton MS Augustus ii. 30 Cuncta labilis uitae huius subsistentia momentanea et caduca prae oculis decessu praesentium proximorum cernentes . festinandum nobis est summopere . ut operemur bonum ad omnes sicut ueridica apostolici dogmatis comprobat assertio maxime autem ad domesticos fidei; Quapropter ego offa caelica fulciente clementia rex merciorum simulque aliarum circumquaque nationum ad aecclesiam quam eanulfus auus meus in honore beati petri principis apostolorum construxit ubi dicitur Æt breodune pro salute animae meae priorumque meorum largior terram . x . manentium ubi dicitur Æt wærset felda . and Æt coftune . v . cassatorum . tantundem Æt wreodan hale id est . v . mansarum cum silua quae eisdem terris adiacet . Æt cum pratis . pascuis . aquarum riuulis sine ullo obstaculo contradictionis posterum meorum principum uel ducum in usum episcopi weogernensis aecclesiae maneat . Sit autem terra illa libera ab omni exactione regum Et principum ac subditorum ipsorum . preter pontis et arcis restaurationem Et hostilem expeditionem . Anno autem dominicae incarnationis . dcco . xxxo . conscripta est haec donatio telluris a me Et ab episcopis ac principibus meis quorum infra nomina adnotabo. Ego offa dei dono rex hanc meam donationem signo sancte crucis munio . Ego cyneðryð dei gratia regina merciorum huic donationi regis consensi . et subscripsi . Ego ioanberhtus archiepiscopus. Ego eadberhtus episcopus. Ego ceolwulfus . episcopus. Ego tilherus . episcopus. Signum manus brordan principis. Signum manus berhtuudi ducis. Signum manus eadbaldi principis. Signum manus eadbaldi ducis.39

39 BL,

Cotton MS Augustus ii. 30 version of S 117: ‘With everything of this uncertain life remaining a short time, and seeing, by the departure of our nearest relatives, transitory things before our eyes, it is most important for us to hurry in order that we may perform a good deed for all men; indeed, just as the truthful assertion of apostolic doctrine greatly attests to the members of the faith. For which reason I, Offa, by the support of merciful heaven, king of the Mercians and likewise of other adjacent peoples, give for the benefit of my soul and of my ancestors to the church which my grandfather Eanulf had built in honour of blessed Peter, prince of Apostles, at the place called “at Breodune”, land of ten holdings where it is called “at Waersetfelda”; and “at Coftune” five hides; just as much “at Wreodanhale” (that is, five holdings),

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Jonathan Herold b. Smith’s published transcription of Somers charter 5 Cuncta labilis vitæ huius subsistentia momentanea et caduca præ oculis decessu presentium proximorum cernentes. Festinandum nobis est summopere. ut operemur ad omnes. sicut veridica apostolici dogmatis comprobat assertio maxime autem ad domesticos fidei. Quapropter ego Offa celica fulciente clementia rex Merciorum simulque aliarum circumquaque nationum. ad ecclesiam quam Eanulfus avus meus in honore beati Petri principis apostolorum construxit ubi dicitur æt breodune pro salute animæ meæ priorumque meorum largior terram XX. manentium ubi dicitur æt Wersðylle and æt coftune cum silva, quae eidem telluri adjacet. ut cum pratis. pacsuis. aquarum rivulis. sine ullo obstaculo contradictionis posterum meorum principum vel ducum in usum Episcopi Weogernensis ecclesiæ maneat. Sit autem terra illa libera ab omni exactione regum et principum ac subditorum ipsorum præter pontis et arcis restaurationem et hostilem expeditionem. Anno autem dominicæ incarnationis:. DCCo. LXXXo. conscripta est hæc donatio telluris a me et ab episcopis ac principibus meis quorum infra nomina adnotabo:. Ego Offa dei dono rex hanc meam donationem signo sanctæ cruces munio:. Ego Cyneðryþ dei gratia regina Merciorum huic donationi regis consensi et subscripsi:. Ego Joanberhtus Archiepiscopis . Ego Eadberhtus Episcopus. Ego Ciolwulfus Episcopus. Ego Tilherus Episcopus. Signum manus Brordan principis:. Signum manus Berhtuudi ducis:. Signum manus Eadbaldi principis:. Signum manus Eadbaldi ducis:40 with the forest which is next to those lands and with fields, pastures and streams. Let it remain in use of the bishop of the church of Worcester without any hindrance of opposition from the ealdormen [i.e. principum] or lords [i.e. ducum] of my posterity: moreover, let that land be free from all dues of kings and of ealdormen and of their servants, except for the restoration of bridges and fortifications and [defence against] a hostile expedition. This donation of land is inscribed in the 730th [recte 780th] year of the lord’s incarnation by me and by my bishops and ealdormen, the names of whom I will record below. I, King Offa, by the gift of God, strengthen this my donation with the sign of the holy cross. I, Queen Cynethryth, by the grace of God, have consented and subscribed to this royal donation. etc.’; my translation. 40 Historiae ecclesiasticae, ed. Smith, Appendix XXI, pp. 767–8. ‘With everything of this uncertain life remaining a short time, and seeing, by the departure of our nearest relatives, transitory things before our eyes, it is most important for us to hasten in order that we may labour for all, just as the truthful assertion of apostolic doctrine greatly attests to the members of the faith. For which reason I, Offa, by the support of merciful heaven, king of the Mercians and likewise of other neighbouring peoples, give for the benefit of my soul and of my ancestors to the church that my grandfather Eanulf had built in honour of blessed Peter, prince of Apostles, at the place called

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Preserving Records and Writing History c. LW version (BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fol. 6rv) Cuncta labilis uitae substistentia . momentanea et pre oculis caduca decessu praesentium proximorum cernentes festinandum nobis Est summopere . ut operemur ad omnes . Sicut ueridica apostolici dogmatis comprobat assertio maxime autem ad domesticos fidei . Quapropter ego offa celica fulciente clementia rex merciorum simulque aliarum circumquaque nationum . ad æcclesiam quam Eanulfus auus meus In honore beati petri principis apostolorum construxit . ubi dicitur æt breodune pro salute animae meae priorumque meorum largior Terram . xx . manentium ubi dicitur æt wersthylle et æt coftune Cum silua que eidem Telluri adiacet et cum pratis . pascuis . aquarum . riuulis . sine ullo obstaculo contradictionis posterorum meorum principum uel ducum In usum episcopi weogernensis æcclesie maneat . Sit autem terra illa libera ab omni exactione regum et principum ac subditorum ipsorum . preter pontis et arcis restaurationem et hostilem expeditionem . Anno autem dominicae Incarnationis . dcclxxx . Conscripta est hæc donatio Telluris a me et ab episcopis meis ac principibus meis quorum Infra nomina adnotabo . Ego offa dei dono rex hanc meam donationem Signo sancte crucis munio. Ego cyneðryð dei gratia regina merciorum huic donationi regis consensi et subscripsi. Ego Ioanberhtus archiepiscopus. Ego eadberhtus episcopus. Ego ciolwulfus episcopus. Ego tilherus episcopus. Signum manus brordan principis. Signum manus berhtuudi ducis. Signum manus eadbaldi principis. Signum manus eadbaldi ducis.41 “at Breodune”, land of twenty holdings where it is called “at Wersðylle” and “at Coftune”, with the forest which is next to those lands and with the fields, pastures and streams of water. Let it remain in use of the bishop of the church of Worcester without any hindrance of opposition from the ealdormen [i.e. principum] or lords [i.e. ducum] of my posterity: moreover, let that land be free from all dues of kings and ealdormen and of their servants, except for the restoration of bridges and fortifications and [defence against] a hostile expedition. This donation of land is inscribed in the 780th year by me and by my bishops and my lords, the names of whom I will record below. I, King Offa, by the gift of God, strengthen this my donation with the holy sign of the cross. I, Cynethryth, by the grace of God queen of the Mercians, have consented and subscribed to this royal donation., etc.’; my translation. 41 S 117, LW version: ‘With everything of this uncertain life remaining a short time, and seeing, by the departure of our nearest relatives, transitory things before our eyes, it is most important for us to hasten in order that we may labour for all men; indeed, just as the truthful assertion of apostolic doctrine greatly attests to the members of the faith. For which reason I, Offa, by the support of merciful heaven, king of the Mercians and likewise of other neighbouring peoples, give for the benefit of my soul and of my ancestors to the church that my grandfather Eanulf had built

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Jonathan Herold d. SWC version (BL, Cotton MS Nero E. i, part 2, fol. 182r) BREODVN CVNCTA LABILIS VITE SVBSISTENTIA MOMENTANEA et prae oculis caduca decessu presentium proximorum cernentes . festinandum nobis est summopere . ut bonum operemur ad omnes . sicut affirmat apostolica locutio . maxime autem ad domesticos fidei . Quapropter ego offa celica fulciente clementia rex merciorum . simulque aliarum circumquaque nationum . ad aecclesiam quam eanulfus auus meus in honore beati petri principis apostolorum construxit . ubi dicitur æt breodune pro salute animae meae priorumque meorum largior terram .xx . manentis . ubi dicitur æt wærsethylle et æt coftune . cum silua quae eidem terrae adiacet . et cum pratis . pascuis . aquarum riuulis . sine ullo obstaculo contradictionis posterum meorum principum uel ducum in usum episcopi weogernensis aecclesiae maneat. Sit autem terra libera ab omni exactione regum uel principum ac subditorum ipsorum . preter pontis et arcis restaurationem et hostilem expeditionem . Anno autem dominicae incarnationis . dcoc . lxxox . conscripta est haec donatio telluris a me et ab episcopis meis ac principibus quorum infra nomina adnotabo . Ego offa rex hanc meam donationem signo crucis munio . Ego kyneþryð regina merciorum huic dono consensi . Ego ioanberhtus archiepiscopus . Ego eadberhtus episcopus. Ego ceolwulfus . episcopus . Ego tilhere episcopus . Signum manus brordan principis . Signum herwudi ducis . Signum manus eadboldi principis . Signum eadboldi ducis ;42 in honour of blessed Peter, prince of Apostles, at the place called “at Breodune”, land of twenty holdings where it is called “at Wersthylle” and “at Coftune”, with the forest which is next to those lands and with the fields, pastures and streams of water. Let it remain in use of the bishop of the church of Worcester without any hindrance of opposition from the ealdormen [i.e. principum] or lords [i.e. ducum] of my posterity: moreover, let that land be free from all dues of kings and ealdormen and of their servants, except for the restoration of bridges and fortifications and [defence against] a hostile expedition. This donation of land is inscribed in the 780th year by me and by my bishops and my lords, the names of whom I will record below. I, King Offa, by the gift of God, strengthen this my donation with the holy sign of the cross. I, Cynethryth, by the grace of God queen of the Mercians, have consented and subscribed to this royal donation., etc.’; my translation. 42 S 117, SWC version: ‘With everything of this uncertain life remaining a short time, and seeing, by the departure of our nearest relatives, transitory things before our eyes, it is most important for us to hasten in order that we may perform good [works] for all men; just as the apostolic pronouncement especially affirms to the members of the faith. For which reason I, Offa, by the support of merciful heaven,

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2. Versions of record S 64 preserved within LW and SWC a. LW: BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fol. 107rv

S 64a Regnante inperpetuum domino uniuersitatis creatore . Ego offa rex merciorum aliquam partem terrae id est . xxxiii . Cassatorum in ius ecclesiasticae . libertatis . wiogernensis concedens libentissime largior eiusdem agelli nomen est scottarit quem tamen agrum fluuio quem dicunt afen . constat interlui isdem uero sub regulus tres postea cassatos ruris siluatici largiendo rogatus addidit usitato nomine . hnuthyrst dici solet istis terminibus cingiitur praefata ruus inprimis balganduun . billesleah . westgraf . hofentill baddanduun . Hoc est In occidentale parte fluminis In orientale plaga wudan bergas hrucggan broc brom hlinces deonu inde onstvre postea tragitur. In longitudine sture usque in afene ; Ego offa rex merciorum consensi et subscripsi. Ego ecguuine epsicopus consensi et subscripsi. Ego aeþelweard propriam donationem et subscripsi. Ego æþelmund consensi et subscripsi. Ego æþelberht consensi et subscripsi. Ego æþelric consensi et subscripsi. Ego oswudu consensi et subscripsi.43

king of the Mercians and likewise of other neighbouring peoples, give for the benefit of my soul and of my ancestors to the church that my grandfather Eanulf had built in honour of blessed Peter, prince of Apostles, at the place called “at Breodune”, land: twenty [hides] of a holding where it is called “at Wærsethylle” and “at Coftune”, with the forest which is next to that land and with the fields, pastures and streams of water. Let it remain in use of the bishop of the church of Worcester without any hindrance of opposition from the ealdormen [i.e. principum] or lords [i.e. ducum] of my posterity: moreover, let that land be free from all dues of kings or ealdormen and of their servants, except for the restoration of bridges and fortifications and [defence against] a hostile expedition. This donation of land is inscribed in the 780th year by me and by my bishops and my lords, the names of whom I will record below. I, King Offa, by the gift of God, strengthen this my donation with the holy sign of the cross. I, Cynethryth, by the grace of God queen of the Mercians, have consented and subscribed to this royal donation., etc.’; my translation. 43 S 64a: ‘With the Lord creator of the Universe ruling perpetually, I King Offa of the Mercians most freely give some part of land – that is, thirty-three hides – conceding it into the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical liberty of Worcester. The name of this same small farm is Scottarit, which land stands with the river called Avon flowing between. Indeed, the same prince, having been asked to give bountifully, afterwards added three hides of wooded land accustomed to be called by the common name Hnuthyrst. The aforementioned land is enclosed with these boundaries: first

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Jonathan Herold S 64b Regnante in perpetuum domino universalis creatore . Ego offa rex merciorum aliquam partem terrae id est . xxxiii . cassatorum in ius æcclesiasticae libertatis possessionis concedens libentissimae . Largior eiusdem uero agelli nomen est scottarit quem tamen agrum fluuio quem dicunt afen constat interlui isdem uero sub regulus tres postea cassatos ruris In alio loco siluatici largiendo rogatus addidit usitato nomine hellerelege hoc largitus sum pro animae meae in ciuitate weogernensis æcclesiae dici solet. Istis terminibus cingitur . ærest of liontan þæt cume in blacanmære . of blacanmære þæt cume in þa geapanlinde . of þære geapanlinde þæt cume in lindwyrðe . of lin wyrðe þæt cume In ciondan . of ciondan þæt cume in hriodmore . of hriodmore þæt cume in þa greatan ac . of þære greatan ac . þæt cume in þa readan sole . of þære readan sole . þæt cume in cærspyt . of cærspytte . þæt cume in usan mere of . usan mere . þæt cume eft in liontan ; Ego offa rex merciorum consensi et subscripsi. Ego ecgwine epsicopus consensi et subscripsi. Ego æþelward propriam donationem et subscripsi. Ego æþelmud consensi et subscripsi. Ego æþelberht consensi et subscripsi. Ego æþelric consensi et subscripsi.44

of all, Balganduun, Billesleah, Westgraf, Hofentill, Baddanduun (this is on the west side of the river). On the eastern bank Wudanbergas, Hrucgganbroc, Bromhlinces, Deonu; thence to Sture; afterwards, it is drawn along the Sture until the Avon ; etc.’; my translation. 44 S 64b: ‘With the Lord creator of the Universe ruling perpetually, I King Offa of the Mercians give some part of land – that is, thirty-three hides – conceding it most freely into the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical liberty of possession. The name of this same small farm, truly, is Scottarit, which land stands with the river called Avon flowing between. Indeed, the same prince, having been asked to give bountifully, afterwards added three hides of wooded land in another place accustomed to be called by the common name Hellerelege: this, for my soul, I have given to the church in the city of Worcester. It is enclosed with these bounds: first, from Liontan, then it comes to Blacanmære; from Blacanmære, then it comes to the crooked linden tree; from the crooked linden tree, then it comes to Lindwyrðe; from Linwyrðe, then it comes to Ciondan; from Ciondan, then it comes to Hriodmore; from Hriodmore, then it comes to the great oak; from the great oak, then it comes to the Readan swamp; from the Readan swamp, then it comes to the Cærs pit; from the Cærs pit, then it comes to Usanmere; from Usanmere, then it comes again to Liontan ; etc.’; my translation.

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Preserving Records and Writing History b. SWC: BL, Cotton MS Nero E. i, part 2, fol. 184r SCOTTA RIÐ . — Regnante in perpetuum domino . uniuersitatis creatore . Ego offa rex merciorum aliquam partem terrarum id est . xxxiii . cassatos in ius aecclesiasticae libertatis Wigorniensis largior . æt scotta rið . quem tamen Agrum fluuio quem dicunt afen constat interlui ; isdem uero subregulus . iii . postea cassatos ruris siluatici largiendo addidit . æt hnuthyrste . Istis terminis prefatum rus cingitur . in primis balgandun . billes læh . westgraf . heofentill . baddan dun . hoc est in occidentali parte fluminis . in orientali plaga . wudan bergas . ruggan broc . bromhlinces dene . inde on sture . ondlonges sture usque in afene . Addidit etiam predictus offa . iii . cassatorum in alio loco siluatici ruris usitato nomine hellerelege pro remedio suae animae in ciuitate weogornensi . his terminis cingitur . ærest on leontan þæt cume on blacan mere . þonne þæt cume in ða geapan linde . þonon þæt cume on lindwyrðe . swa þæt cume on ciondan . of ceondan þæt cume on reodmore . þonon þæt cume on þa greatan ac . þonon þæt cume in ða readan sole . þonne þæt cume on cærspytt . swa þæt cume in usan mere . of usan mere . þæt cume eft on leonstan :– Ego offa rex . Ego ecgwine episcopus . Ego æþelward . Ego æþelmund . Ego æþelberht . Ego æþelric . :—45

45 ‘With

the Lord creator of the Universe ruling perpetually, I, King Offa of the Mercians give some part of land, i.e. thirty-three hides at Scottarit, into the right of the ecclesiastical liberty of Worcester, which land stands with the river called Avon flowing between. Indeed, the same prince afterwards bountifully added three hides of wooded land at Hnuthyrste. The aforementioned land is encircled by these boundaries: first of all, Balganduun, Billesleah, Westgraf, Hofentill, Baddanduun (this is on the west side of the river). On the eastern bank Wudanbergas, Hrucgganbroc, Bromhlinces, Deonu; thence on Sture; along the Sture until the Avon . Also, the aforementioned Offa added three hides of wooded land in another place with the usual name of Hellerelege, for the remedy of his soul, into the city of Worcester. It is enclosed with these boundaries: first, to Leontan, then it comes to Blacanmere; then it comes to the crooked linden tree; then it comes to Lindwyrth; next it comes to Ciondan; from Ciondan, it comes to Redmoor; then it comes to the great oak; then it comes to the Readan Swamp; then it comes to Cærs pit; next it comes to Usanmere; from Usanmere, then it comes again to Leontan. etc.’; my translation.

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Jonathan Herold

3. Versions of record S 148 preserved in LW and SWC a. LW: BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fol. 52r Huntena tun. In nomine domini nostri. Ego ecgfridus deo donante rex merciorum æðelmundo meo fideli principe hanc prenominatam terram tres cassatos id est huntena tun et iam liberaliter illi omni rei et firmiter ad habendum concedo . pro ereptione peccaminum meorum et salute anime meae. Ac sicut antea aldred et uhtred subreguli huicciorum beorhearde concesserunt. Sic iterum plene conscribimus illi cum omnibus utilitatibus que ad illius agri cultura rite pertinet. Et hoc gestum est in celebre monasterio quod saxonice nominatur æt baðun. Et hii testes adfuissent. quorum hic nomina et signa tenentur. Ego ecgfridus rex merciorum hanc meam elemosinam signo crucis christi confirmabo. Ego berhtric rex Occidentalium Saxonum signo crucis Christi munio. Ego æðelheard archiepiscopus consigno et subscribo. Ego heaðored episcopus consensi et subscripsi. Ego eaduulf electus consensi et subscripsi. Ego forðred abbas consensi. brorda. æðelmund. Eadgar46

b. SWC: BL, Cotton MS Nero E. i, part 2, fol. 181v HVNTENA TVN . — Seculi namque labentis tempora . sicut umbrae fugientes sic uelociter tranant . uariaeque euentuum status in cogitatationes hominum conscendunt . Quapropter ego ecgfridus rex merciorum concedo meo fideli principi . iii . cassatas . æt huntenatun æþelmundo liberaliter ad possidendum . pro ereptione peccaminum meorum . sicut antea uhtred et aldred beornardo concesserunt . Et hoc gestum est in celebri uico qui saxonicae uocatur æt baðum . his testibus consentientibus 46 S

148, LW version: ‘In the name of our Lord, I, Ecgfrith, king of the Mercians, by God’s grant, give to my faithful officer Aethelmund this aforementioned land – i.e. three hides – [at] Huntenatun, both for the taking away of my sins and the health of my soul, and for holding [the land] now freely and firmly from everything. And just as Aldred and Uhtred, sub-kings of the Hwicce, had given [it] earlier to Beorheard, so fully we record [this] again for him with all useful things which justly belong to the cultivation of that field. And this was done in the famous monastery that is named in the Saxon language “at Bath”. And these witnesses were present, the names and signs of whom are represented here. I, King Ecgfrith of the Mercians, will confirm this my offering with the sign of Christ’s cross. I, King Berhtric of the West Saxons, strengthen [this] with the sign of Christ’s cross. etc.’; my translation.

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Preserving Records and Writing History Ego ecgfridus rex hanc meam donationem confirmaui . Ego brihtricus rex . Ego aðelhardus archiepiscopus. Ego heaðored episcopus. Ego eadulf electus. Ego forðred abbas. Ego brorda princeps. Ego æþelmund . Ego EADGAR.47

47 S

148, SWC version: ‘Forasmuch as the times of the perishing world are as the fleeing shades, and flow by so quickly, and the state of the different events rise up in the thoughts of men; therefore, I, King Ecgfrith of the Mercians, freely give to my faithful officer, Aethelmund, to be possessed of three hides at Huntenatun, for the remedy of my sins, just as Uhtred and Aldred had previously given [it] to Beornard. And this was done in the famous town which is called “at Bath” in the Saxon language, with these witnesses consenting: I, King Ecgfrith have confirmed this my donation. etc.’; my translation.

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4 Constructing Narrative in the Closing Folios of Hemming’s Cartulary Francesca Tinti

The late eleventh-century compilation known as Hemming’s Cartulary and preserved in London, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fols. 119–200 is a remarkably informative source on the nature, composition, preoccupations and aspirations of the Worcester cathedral monastic community in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest.1 As I have shown elsewhere, a reconstruction of the cartulary’s likely original foliation allows us to detect a shift in focus from the lands that the church of Worcester had lost throughout the eleventh century, starting with the Danish attacks of Æthelred Unræd’s reign, to the estates that had been gained or recovered by the cathedral community thanks to its last two Anglo-Saxon bishops, Ealdred (1046–62) and Wulfstan II (1062–95).2 This shift is achieved in the last section of the cartulary, which covers fols. 178–93, through skilful weaving of narrative passages with charter texts, that is, through the production of a short chronique-cartulaire. In Neil Ker’s magisterial study of the manuscript, this last section is called ‘Section L’ and its only scribe, whose hand Ker describes as ‘handsome’, is named ‘Hand 3’.3 This chapter will deal with the contents of Section L in order to present a 1 For





help with and discussion on various aspects of this chapter I am grateful to Professor Richard Dance and Dr David Woodman. Any remaining errors are my own responsibility. This chapter is part of the activities conducted within the research project PID2020-115365GB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, funded by the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación and based at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU. 2 F. Tinti, ‘From Episcopal Conception to Monastic Compilation: Hemming’s Cartulary in Context’, EME 11 (2002), 233–61; F. Tinti, Sustaining Belief: The Church of Worcester from c.870 to c.1100 (Farnham, 2010), pp. 137–47. My findings are based on Neil Ker’s reconstruction of the manuscript’s quiring in his ‘Hemming’s Cartulary: A Description of the two Worcester Cartularies in Cotton Tiberius A. xiii’, in Studies in Medieval History Presented to F. M. Powicke, ed. R. W. Hunt, W. A. Pantin and R. W. Southern (Oxford, 1948), pp. 49–75, reprinted in N. Ker, Books, Collectors and Libraries: Studies in the Medieval Heritage (London, 1985). 3 Ker, ‘Hemming’s Cartulary’, pp. 57–8, 61. As well as the charters and narrative texts in this closing section, Hand 3 copied charters in Sections J and K of the cartulary.

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Constructing Narrative particularly significant, though possibly not very well-known, example of the ways in which the Worcester cathedral community ‘constructed history’ at the end of the eleventh century. Although the production of the cartulary, and of Section L more specifically, cannot be dated with precision, the preoccupations emerging from the closing folios point towards the period following immediately after the death of Bishop Wulfstan in January 1095, a time of profound uncertainty, especially in light of the fact that the see remained vacant until June 1096 (i.e. for about 18 months), when the Norman Samson became bishop of Worcester.4 As will emerge further below, the monks’ worries were not ill-founded, and the new bishop provided a striking contrast to Wulfstan’s saintly fame. This is attested in several sources, including William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, which, in the section dealing with Wulfstan’s death, refers to the Worcester monks’ sorrow and ‘fear of the tyranny of the next bishop’.5 William had strong ties with the Worcester monastic community and, at some point between c.1126 and c.1142,6 he was commissioned by its prior, Warin, to compose a Latin translation of the vernacular Life of Wulfstan which had been written by the Worcester monk Coleman (d. 1113) within ten years or so of the bishop’s death. Coleman’s work was one among several literary initiatives which were either inspired or explicitly commissioned by Wulfstan.7 These include the Chronica Chronicarum (CC), a continuation of the world chronicle of Marianus Scotus, at which the monk John was working, on the orders of Bishop Wulfstan, in the early twelfth century,







Hemming’s Cartulary has so far only been edited in Hemingi Chartularium ecclesiæ Wigorniensis, ed. T. Hearne, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1723). This covers the entire manuscript, which contains two eleventh-century Worcester cartularies (Liber Wigorniensis and Hemming). The texts in Section L are printed at pp. 395–425. 4 Tinti, ‘From Episcopal Conception’, p. 256. The uncertainty would have been exacerbated by the fact that during episcopal vacancies the lands of the see were expected to revert into the king’s hands. William Rufus, in whose reign the vacancy following Wulfstan’s death fell, was especially keen on exploiting such royal ‘feudal’ rights. See F. Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię commendaretur: Memory and Cartularies in Eleventh-Century Worcester’, in Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald, ed. S. Baxter, C. Karkov, J. L. Nelson and D. Pelteret (Farnham, 2009), pp. 475–97 (pp. 475–6 and bibliography there cited). See also A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England c.550 to c.1307 (London, 1974), p. 90. 5 WM, GP i.iv.148 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom with Thomson, I, 436–7). See also A. Orchard, ‘Parallel Lives: Wulfstan, William, Coleman and Christ’, in St Wulfstan and his World, ed. J. S. Barrow and N. P. Brooks (Aldershot, 2005), pp. 39–57 (p. 40). 6 WM, VW (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. xiv–xv). 7 M. Brett, ‘John of Worcester and his Contemporaries’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern, ed. R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford, 1981), pp. 101–26; E. Mason, St Wulfstan of Worcester, c.1008–1095 (Oxford and Cambridge, MA, 1990), pp. 217–18; Tinti, Sustaining Belief, pp. 136–7.

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Francesca Tinti when Orderic Vitalis visited Worcester.8 Hemming’s Cartulary was also inspired by the bishop, as attested by one of its opening texts, the Enucleatio libelli, which refers to Wulfstan’s repeated exhortations to his monks to preserve Worcester’s archival memory. Hemming places special emphasis on Wulfstan’s invitation to ‘write down past events … concerning the possessions of our church’ and those that the monks had witnessed themselves. The bishop had warned them that ‘in future times no small benefit … could be gained for this monastery if these things were committed to written record, just as, on the contrary, from neglect loss would be inflicted, as nobody would survive who could recall from memory or find out how to narrate the truth or order of the things done in that time’.9 These words must be understood primarily as justification or explanation (hence the ‘enucleatio’ of the rubricated heading) for the narrative text which precedes the Enucleatio libelli, that is, the Codicellus possessionum, an account of the circumstances in which the church of Worcester had lost several estates in the course of the eleventh century.10 However, recordkeeping and memory preservation can safely be described as the leitmotif of the entire cartulary, even though, as mentioned above, the claims of the final folios are different from those in the opening texts. Through an analysis of the contents of the cartulary’s closing section, this chapter will explore the strategies employed by its compilers to build a coherent narrative demonstrating the Worcester monks’ title to several landed estates. The discussion will focus on the reasons for the emphasis placed on the last two English bishops of Worcester, here described as magnanimous grantors and protectors of the monks’ lands, with special attention for the texts dealing with Bishop Wulfstan and their notable hagiographic (or semihagiographic) features. This is the only section of the cartulary in which Old English is employed for narrative purposes, thus prompting questions about the reasons why the vernacular was used in this context, also bearing in mind that the compilation of Section L most likely preceded Coleman’s 8 Wulfstan

had probably been introduced to Marianus’s chronicle by his friend, Bishop Robert of Hereford, but most of the work on the CC was conducted after Wulfstan’s death: The Vita Wulfstani of William of Malmesbury, ed. R. R. Darlington, Camden Society, 3rd series 40 (London, 1928), pp. xvii–xviii. On the authorship of the CC see above, Tinti and Woodman, ‘Framing the Past’. 9 ‘res precedenti siue nostro tempore gestas de possessionibus dumtaxat ęcclesię nostrę … litteris commendare … Aiebat etiam non minimum posteritatis nostrę temporibus si litterali memorię commendaretur huic monasterio euenire posse …, sicut e contrario si negligeretur accideret damnum, dum nullus superesset qui memoria recolere posset aut ei ętati rerum gestarum ueritatem uel ordinem narrare nosset.’: Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię’, pp. 494–5. 10 The Codicellus and the Enucleatio occupy the first two quires of the manuscript, covering fols. 119r–133r: Ker, ‘Hemming’s Cartulary’, p. 58. The text of the Codicellus is edited in Hemingi Chartularium, ed. Hearne, I, 248–81; for a detailed discussion see A. Williams, ‘The Spoliation of Worcester’, ANS 19 (1996), 383–408.

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Constructing Narrative vernacular Life of Wulfstan. As will be shown, it is possible that Coleman consulted the texts on Wulfstan included in the cartulary, thus opening the way to a number of interesting interconnections among several of the historical works which were produced by the Worcester monks between the late eleventh and the early twelfth century.

Praise of Archbishop Ealdred Section L opens at fol. 178r with a text dealing with the lands which Archbishop Ealdred had bestowed on the monks of the Worcester church (see below Appendix, no. 1).11 This short narrative text praises Ealdred’s generosity, lists the relevant estates (Teddington, Hampnett, Mitton, Sedgeberrow and Loxley) and provides some information about their tenurial history. In the case of Hampnett (Gloucestershire), for instance, we are told that Ealdred purchased ten hides there for 10 marks of gold, while the estates at Mitton (Worcestershire), Sedgeberrow (Worcestershire) and Loxley (Warwickshire) are said to have been unjustly alienated from the monastery by ‘Dei aduersarii et sanctę matris ęcclesię inimici’ (‘adversaries of God and enemies of the church of the holy mother’), before being recovered by Ealdred and assigned to the monks. The text closes with a sanction prescribing excommunication for those who would dare deprive the monks of those possessions and granting perpetual blessing to those who would preserve and help protect what Ealdred had established. This text is then followed by four charters dealing with most of the lands listed above (see Table 1). The first one is a grant by Ealdred himself to the monks of three hides at Teddington and Alstone (Gloucestershire), and a messuage in the town of Worcester.12 The following record is a declaration (indiculum) concerning Archbishop Ealdred’s purchase of ten hides at Hampnett and their assignment ‘ad usum fratrum’ (‘for the use of the brethren’).13 Next is an allegedly much older charter dated 841 and issued by King Berhtwulf of Mercia for Bishop Heahberht; it records the grant of one hide at Mitton in Bredon (Worcestershire) for the use of the ‘monks of the church of St Mary at Worcester’, thus clearly revealing its spurious nature, since such a church was only founded by Bishop Oswald in the second half

11 Ealdred

is here referred to through the highest ecclesiastical grade he achieved when he became archbishop of York in 1061. Although he initially intended to rule Worcester and York in plurality, as several of his predecessors had done, he was obliged by Pope Nicholas II to renounce Worcester. See F. Tinti, ‘The Pallium Privilege of Pope Nicholas II for Archbishop Ealdred of York’, JEH 70 (2019), 708–30. 12 S 1408 (KCD 805), probably dating from 1052 × 1056. 13 S 1480 (KCD 823). As Ealdred is described as archbishop here, this record can be dated to the period 1062–6, i.e. following his appointment at York.

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Francesca Tinti of the tenth century.14 The last charter in this first group is a diploma of King Offa dated 778 for Ealdred, dux of the Hwicce, granting him four hides of land at Sedgeberrow. This is one of the few early diplomas preserved in Hemming’s Cartulary which may contain genuine elements,15 even though the text attached to it, in which Ealdred, dux of the Hwicce, grants the same estate to the church of St Mary of Worcester, is, again, obviously spurious.16 Table 1: Contents of BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fols. 178–93 Folios

Rubricated headings

Hearne, II (pp.)

178r

DE TERRIS QVAS ALDREDVS ARCHIEPISCOPVS FRATRIBVS WIGORNENSIS ĘCCLESIĘ CONTVLIT [‘Concerning the lands which Archbishop Ealdred assigned to the monks of the church of Worcester’]

395–6

178r–178v

DE TEOTHINTVNE [‘Concerning Teddington’; S 1408] 396–8

178v–179r

DE HEANTVNE [‘Concerning Hampnett’; S 1480]

398–400

179v

DE MYTTVNE [‘Concerning Mitton’; S 195]

400–1

180r–180v

DE SECGESBEARVVE [‘Concerning Sedgeberrow’; S 113]

401–3

180v–181v

Her ge swutelað hu Wlstan b(isceop) be com to biscoprice [‘Here is shown how Bishop Wulfstan attained to the bishopric’; English version]

403–5

181v–182v

QVOMODO WLSTANVS EPISCOPVS PER SINGVLOS GRADVS EPISCOPATVS APICEM CONSCENDERIT [‘How Bishop Wulfstan ascended step by step to the highest rank of the episcopacy’; Latin version]

405–8

182v–183r

DE DVABVS VILLIS SCILICET WLFORDILEA ET BLACAVVÆLLA QVOS LEOFRIC COMES ET GODGIVA COMETISSA MONASTERIO WIGORNENSI CONTVLERVNT [‘Concerning the two vills, that is, Wolverley and Blackwell, which Earl Leofric and Countess Godiva assigned to the Worcester monastery’; S 1232, English version]

408–9

14 S

195 (BCS 433). the forgeries in Hemming’s Cartulary see J. Barrow, ‘The Chronology of Forgery Production at Worcester from c.1000 to the Early Twelfth Century’, in St Wulfstan, ed. Barrow and Brooks, pp. 105–22 (pp. 114–16), and Tinti, ‘From Episcopal Conception’, 250–7. 16 S 113 (BCS 223). 15 On

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Constructing Narrative Table1 : Contents of BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fols. 178–931 (concluded) Folios

Rubricated headings

Hearne, II (pp.)

183r–183v

ITEM DE EISDEM DVABVS VILLIS [‘Again concerning the same two vills’; S 1232, Latin version]

409–10

183v–184v

DE VVLFVVARDILEA [‘Concerning Wolverley’; S 211]

410–11

184v–185r

DE ICCECVMBE [‘Concerning Iccomb’; S 121]

412–13

185r–185v

DE CVLLECLIVE [‘Concerning Cookley’; Bates 345]

413–15

185v–186r

DE DVNHAMSTYDE [‘Concerning Dunhampstead’; S 174]

415–16

186r–187r

DE GRIMELEGE [‘Concerning Grimley’; S 201]

416–18

187r–188r

DE EALVESTVNE [‘Concerning Alveston’; EEA 33, no. 8]

418–21

188r–189v

INDICIVM DONATIONIS ĘCCLESIĘ VVESTBYRIE QVAM WLSTANVS EPISCOPVS VSIBVS MONACHORVM HVIVS ĘCCLESIĘ DEDIT [‘Evidence of the donation of the Westbury church which Bishop Wulfstan gave for the uses of the monks of this church’; EEA 33, no. 11; Westbury]

421–4

189v

DE MOLENDINO QVOD WLSTANVS EPISCOPVS DEDIT AD VICTVM MONACHORVM [‘Concerning the mill which Bishop Wulfstan gave for the sustenance of the monks’; EEA 33, no. 9]

424–5

190–193

(Later additions)

425–33

The cartulary’s praise of Bishop Ealdred’s generosity (‘beniuolentia sollicitę bonitatis, ac studiosę caritatis’, that is, ‘kindness of the concerned goodness and eager love’) is remarkable in light of the fact that his reputation at Worcester had suffered considerably after Wulfstan’s election as his successor.17 The Life of St Wulfstan (at least in the Latin version by William of Malmesbury) is explicit in its description of the extent to which Ealdred ‘diverted the revenues of the [Worcester] church to his own purposes’, eventually giving Wulfstan seven vills, but ‘keeping hold of the rest for himself’.18 The same text later says that, through his prayers, Wulfstan managed to ‘wear down the arrogant greed’ of Ealdred and recovered more land, except for twelve

17 On

Ealdred’s overall negative reputation at Worcester see V. King, ‘Ealdred, Archbishop of York: The Worcester Years’, ANS 18 (1996), 123–37. 18 ‘Eius interim aecclesiae redditus usibus suis applicabat archiepiscopus. Postmodum reuerso uix septem uillas contulit, ceteras omnes pertinaciter usurpans’; WM, VW i.13 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 48–51).

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Francesca Tinti vills, which he could only reclaim after the archbishop’s death in 1069.19 Similarly the CC refers to the ‘many lands of [Wulfstan’s] see which had been retained by Archbishop Ealdred’,20 while William of Malmesbury in his Gesta Pontificum Anglorum says that Ealdred chose Wulfstan as his successor ‘with an eye to his own future interest …, doubtless imagining him to be a nobody, and intending to conceal his own plundering behind Wulfstan’s own naivety, and embezzle what he liked from the property of the see’.21 The main reasons for the contrast between the portrait of Ealdred in these narrative sources and that provided in the cartulary are to be found in the process which has traditionally been described as the division of the mensa between bishop and cathedral community and in the deliberately exclusive focus of the final section of the cartulary on the estates which had been set aside for the sustenance of the Worcester monks.22 Episcopal grants of land in favour of the Worcester cathedral community survive from the early tenth century, but the process becomes most visible in the eleventh century, primarily thanks to the evidence provided by Hemming’s Cartulary. The division of the mensa is recorded as an accomplished fact in Domesday Book, where the section on the bishop’s manors precedes that dealing with the church’s lands.23 As Ann Williams has suggested, it is likely that the twelve vills which Ealdred retained until his death were episcopal, rather than monastic manors.24 For this reason, it would seem that the cartulary’s compilers did not mind glossing over Ealdred’s reputation with respect to his predatory behaviour towards the Worcester episcopal estates in order to focus on the lands which, by contrast, he had assigned to the monks. The urgency to protect the monastic estates resulted in the cartulary’s compilers constructing a distinct narrative praising Ealdred’s generosity and his will to sustain the Worcester monks.

19 ‘arrogantis

animi cupiditatem contudit’; WM, VW i.13, ii.1.7 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 50–1, 64–5). 20 ‘possessiones quamplures sui episcopatus ab Aldredo arciepiscopo … sua potentia retentos’; JW, Chron. s.a. 1070 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 12–13). 21 ‘cauensque rebus suis in posterum, … inefficacem scilicet ratus, cuius simplicitate et sanctimonia rapinas umbraret suas, rapturus de rebus episcopatus quod liberet’; WM, GP i.iv.139 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom with Thomson, I, 424–5). 22 On the division of the mensa in England see E. U. Crosby, Bishop and Chapter in Twelfth-Century England: A Study of the mensa episcopalis (Cambridge, 1994). 23 The version of the Domesday Inquest dealing with the Worcester lands that was copied in Hemming’s Cartulary makes the distinction between the lands of the bishops and those of the monks more explicit through the insertion of a rubricated heading on fol. 139v, that is, at the start of the section dealing with the monastic estate, reading ‘De terra monachorum’: Tinti, ‘From Episcopal Conception’, p. 247; and Tinti, Sustaining Belief, pp. 143–4. 24 A. Williams, ‘The Cunning of the Dove: Wulfstan and the Politics of Accommodation’, in St Wulfstan, ed. Barrow and Brooks, pp. 23–38 (pp. 25–6).

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The earliest Lives of Wulfstan? The section on the lands obtained by Ealdred ends at fol. 180v and is followed by a narrative text in Old English, which covers fols. 180v–181v and is headed by the rubric ‘Her ge swutelað hu Wlstan b(isceop) be com to biscoprice’ (‘Here it is shown how Bishop Wulfstan attained to the bishopric’) (see below Appendix, no. 2). In its turn this is followed on fols. 181v–182v by a slightly longer Latin text which reads like a more elaborate version of the preceding Old English one (see below Appendix, no. 3).25 The inclusion in the final section of the cartulary of these two texts on Wulfstan deserves special attention. If in certain respects they mirror the contents of the shorter passage on Ealdred, especially when dealing with the lands that Wulfstan gave to the Worcester monks, in others they are notably different. Leaving aside for the time being the fact that both a vernacular and a Latin text are provided for Wulfstan – an aspect which will be duly addressed further below – a number of other remarkable features can be observed. First of all, while in Ealdred’s case the attention of the reader is immediately directed towards the archbishop’s generosity, which was made manifest through a set of actions in favour of the Worcester monks, Wulfstan is provided with a brief curriculum vitae which starts with his being chosen by Ealdred as sacristan (ciricweard/edituus) of the church of Worcester. The two texts then follow his career progression through his appointment as prior of the cathedral community and, finally, bishop of Worcester. In both texts special efforts are made to locate Wulfstan’s recoveries of monastic lands in their correct chronological position, as is the case, for instance, for Blackwell and Wolverley, two Worcestershire estates which were obtained from Earl Leofric while Wulfstan was prior of the monastic community. Another notable feature of the texts on Wulfstan is their hagiographical character. It was noted above that Hemming’s Cartulary is unusual for its praise of Ealdred, but the compliments paid to the archbishop’s generosity are limited to his actions in favour of the monastic community, whereas the treatment of Wulfstan’s virtues, chastity, modesty, unworldliness and overall saintly conduct is of an altogether different nature. In fact, these two texts can probably be taken to represent the earliest attempts at producing (semi-)hagiographical accounts of Wulfstan’s life, albeit limited to his career within the Worcester community. They attest to the saintly reputation he enjoyed in his life and point towards the swiftness with which, after his death, a cult developed at Worcester, as also indicated by Coleman’s writing of a vernacular Life within ten years or so of the bishop’s death. Most interestingly, the two texts in Hemming’s Cartulary deal with several themes

25 For

a brief discussion of the differences between the Old English and the Latin account, see below the section on ‘The role of the vernacular’.

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Francesca Tinti which can also be found in the Vita Wulfstani and in the CC’s annal for 1062, which covers Wulfstan’s life up to his episcopal election. Nearly a century ago Reginald Darlington demonstrated that the CC relies on Coleman’s lost Life, pointing out similarities in the ordering of the events, shared remarks on Wulfstan’s habits and linguistic resemblances which are most easily explained if one allows for the possibility that both the author of the CC’s annal and William of Malmesbury were drawing upon the same vernacular text, that is, Coleman’s work.26 This web of connections among the various narrative sources which attest to the early development of a cult of St Wulfstan at Worcester should be enlarged to include the evidence provided by Hemming’s Cartulary, which is most likely the earliest among all such sources. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that Coleman probably saw the pseudo-hagiographical texts contained in the closing section of the cartulary and drew on them to write his Life of Wulfstan.27 There are various reasons for this suggestion; first of all the emphasis on Wulfstan’s virtues, chastity and unworldliness, though seemingly part of a typical hagiographer’s repertoire, provides examples of similarities between the texts in the cartulary and the Vita Wulfstani which appear to go beyond mere hagiographical topoi. For instance, the reference to ‘clænnysse ⁊ fægrum þeawum’ (‘purity and sweet virtues’) in the cartulary’s Old English text (rendered as ‘in illo castitatem uigere, aliasque diuersas uirtutes in eo mansionem habere’ in the Latin version, that is, ‘chastity was strong in him and various other virtues dwelled in him’) is matched by the prominence given to Wulfstan’s chastity throughout the Vita, but especially at the start of Book I, which reports a story from his youth about how he resisted the temptations of a girl who lived in his district. The words castimonia and castitas are used repeatedly here and, most interestingly, William says that in the original Old English version of the Life, Coleman had written that he had heard this story from Hemming (then sub-prior of the Worcester monastic community).28 Both in the texts contained in Hemming’s Cartulary and in the Vita Wulfstani chastity is mentioned from the start as one of Wulfstan’s defining characteristics and the fact that Hemming is named as a source by Coleman reinforces 26 The

Vita Wulfstani, ed. Darlington, pp. x–xvi. See also WM, VW (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, p. xvii). 27 Darlington commented on ‘a brief account of his [i.e. Wulfstan’s] career’ contained in Hemming’s Cartulary and called it ‘our earliest narrative source’. He also tentatively suggested Hemming as possible author but did not engage with the possibility that this account may have influenced Coleman’s work: The Vita Wulfstani, ed. Darlington, p. xix. Neil Ker was also convinced that the ‘life of Wulfstan’ included in Section L of the cartulary was Hemming’s work, just like the Enucleatio libelli where Hemming names himself as the author, even though Ker did not explain what his deduction was based upon: Ker, ‘Hemming’s Cartulary’, p. 72. 28 WM, VW i.1 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 16–21).

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Constructing Narrative the possibility that the latter may have had access to the earlier attempts at providing a Life of the bishop which were included in the cartulary.29 Similarities become stronger when we compare the treatment in these narrative sources of Wulfstan’s appointment as prior of the Worcester monastic community. The Latin text in the cartulary is more detailed than the Old English version concerning this phase of Wulfstan’s life (cf. Appendix, nos. 2 and 3). The following passage is especially worth pointing out: Vnde non solum ab ipso Aldredo archiepiscopo, uerum etiam ab omnibus, regibus uidelicet, ducibus, et principibus, honorabatur et summo affectu diligebatur. … De die uero in diem ad meliora proficiens, Deique adiutorio uirtutes uirtutibus addens prioratum Uuigornensis ęcclesię dispensatione diuina coactus est suscipere. Quod tamen potius causa obedientię quam adispiscendę suscepit glorię. (‘So that he was honoured and loved with the highest devotion not just by Archbishop Ealdred himself, but also by everybody, that is, kings, earls and ealdormen … While accomplishing better things from day to day, and, with the help of God, adding virtues to virtues, he was forced through divine dispensation to accept the priorship of the church of Worcester. Which nevertheless he accepted more due to obedience than because aspiring to fame’).

The Vita Wulfstani describes the build-up to Wulfstan’s appointment as prior in a similar vein: Adolescebat temporis processu in Wlstano germen omne uirtutum, precipueque obedientia et ad prelatos subiectio. Quamlibet enim durum, quamlibet iuberetur asperum, statim producebat uelle, quanuis non suppeteret posse. Vnde et ex diuinae gratiae fonte scaturiuit in eum amor hominum, ut omni deliniendum putarent obsequio quem acceptum habebat caelestis dignatio, antistes maxime, qui sic in Wlstanum affitiebatur animo ut quouis honore dignum putaret. … Hac occasione prepositus ut tunc, prior ut nunc dicitur, monachorum constitutus. (‘As time went by, a shoot of all virtues flowered in Wulfstan, particularly obedience and submission to those over him. Whatever he was ordered to do, however hard or unpleasant, he immediately provided the will even if the ability was not available. As a result, from the fountain of God’s grace, there showered over him the love of men, so that they thought one whom Heaven deigned to find acceptable should be flattered by every kind of obedient attention: particularly the bishop, who felt so warmly towards Wulfstan that

29 The

possibility that Coleman may have drawn upon the work of Hemming is mentioned by Ann Williams in her ‘The Cunning of the Dove’, p. 23.

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Francesca Tinti he thought he deserved any and every honour. … As a result, he was made what was then called provost but is now called prior of the monks’).30

In both texts we encounter emphasis on Wulfstan’s obedience and mention of the love and admiration that he attracted, especially from Bishop Ealdred. However, the most explicit evidence of Coleman’s probable consultation of the cartulary texts is provided, indirectly, by the CC, which, as mentioned above, is known to rely on Coleman’s Life as a source for its 1062 annal. Wulfstan’s promotion to the office of prior is described in the CC through the following words: Post aliquod autem tempus … ipse uir reuerendus prior et pater congregationis ab Aldredo episcopo ponitur (emphasis mine). (‘After some time … the reverend man was made prior and father of the convent by Bishop Ealdred (emphasis mine)’).31

In the Old English text contained in Hemming’s Cartulary (Appendix, no. 2), we find a perfectly matching doublet to refer to Wulfstan’s promotion: ‘prior 7 fæder þæs bufan cweðenan mynstres’ (‘prior and father of the above-said monastery’). While William of Malmesbury found it necessary to digress in order to explain the relationship between the word prepositus and the word prior,32 the CC appears to have followed Coleman more closely by translating one of the many doublets which were most likely employed in Coleman’s text.33 Pairing devices were common features of late Old English prose,

30 WM,

VW i.5 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 28–31). Chron. s.a. 1062 (ed. Darlington and McGurk, trans. Bray and McGurk, II, 590–1). 32 It is not entirely clear why William refers to prepositus as the title used in Wulfstan’s time, before prior was introduced. An analysis of the Worcester evidence on the name for this office has shown that praepositus was used in the second half of the ninth century, whereas in the later Anglo-Saxon period different terms, such as decanus and prior, were employed fairly interchangeably to refer to the head of the monastic cathedral community. Prior is used by Hemming in his Codicellus possessionum to refer to Wulfstan, while prepositus appears in the same passage to designate another mid-eleventh-century Worcester monk named Wilstan. Rather than to refer to the head of the monastic community, the term prepositus appears to be employed in this and other cases for a different position, probably linked with the administration of the monks’ properties. See further, Tinti, Sustaining Belief, p. 72. 33 The CC employs similar doublets for the other offices to which Wulfstan was appointed in the course of his career, e.g., magister et custos infantum (master and guardian of the novices), and cantor et thesaurius ecclesie (precentor and sacristan of the church): JW, Chron. s.a. 1062 (ed. Darlington and McGurk, trans. Bray and McGurk, II, 588–9). It is most likely that all such doublets are Latin translations of Old English pairing devices used by Coleman in his vernacular Life of Wulfstan. On Coleman’s frequent employment of doublets in the notes which have been safely 31 JW,

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Constructing Narrative but the fact that Hemming and the CC employ matching words to describe Wulfstan’s appointment as prior makes it likely that Coleman was the link between the two. Since, as mentioned above, Hemming was the source for at least one story about Wulfstan’s youth which Coleman reported in his Life, it is not difficult to imagine that, knowing Coleman’s intention to write a full-scale biography of the bishop, Hemming could have shared with him the materials on Wulfstan’s career contained in his cartulary. Several other similarities between the texts in Hemming, the Vita Wulfstani and the CC can be noted. For instance, the treatment of Wulfstan’s appointment to the bishopric refers in all these sources to his reluctance to take up the new office.34 This is, of course, a topos humilitatis which occurs rather frequently in hagiographical sources. It is notable, however, that the few lines which are assigned to this event in the cartulary texts should refer to Ealdred’s choice of Wulfstan as his successor and to the role played in this decision by Wulfstan’s unworldliness and exclusive interest in celestial things (‘nichil de terrenis curare, solummodo celestibus inhiare’: see below Appendix, no. 3). This can be compared with the longer discussion in the Vita Wulfstani of Ealdred’s hesitation in the choice for a successor at Worcester between Wulfstan and Æthelwig, abbot of Evesham, who is described as ‘maximae quantum ad seculum prudentiae, quantum ad religionem non minimae’ (‘a man of great good sense in worldly affairs and not a little in religious’). Behind this cautious choice of words, most likely lies an understatement about Æthelwig’s markedly more pronounced interests in worldly affairs than religious matters.35 The contrast between the ‘terrenis’ and the ‘celestis’ found in the Latin text on Wulfstan contained in the cartulary is also matched in a subsequent passage of the same chapter of the Vita Wulfstani by Ealdred’s doubting between Æthelwig’s ‘perspicacem industriam in seculo’ and Wulfstan’s ‘simplicem religionem in Deo’.36

attributed to his hand in several manuscripts of Worcester provenance, see Orchard, ‘Parallel Lives’, pp. 42–3. The corpus of Coleman’s marginal notes has recently been enlarged in D. Johnson and W. Rudolf, ‘More Notes by Coleman’, Medium Ævum 79 (2010), 1–13. 34 Cf. below Appendix, no. 3, WM, VW i.11 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 44–7), and JW, Chron. s.a. 1062 (ed. Darlington and McGurk, trans. Bray and McGurk, II, 590–1). 35 In his Codicellus possessionum Hemming refers to Æthelwig’s intelligence, shrewdness and knowledge of secular laws, which – he adds – were the only ones the abbot studied. On Æthelwig’s role in the spoliation of Worcester see Williams, ‘The Cunning of the Dove’, pp. 25, 32–4, 36–8. 36 Translated by Winterbottom and Thomson as: ‘Æthelwig, the clear-sighted and hard-working man of business, or Wulfstan, the straightforward man of God’; WM, VW i.11 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 46–7).

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From semi-hagiography to tenurial preoccupations While the cartulary texts on Wulfstan display semi-hagiographical features which distinguish them from the preceding shorter passage on Ealdred, in other respects similarities are clearly visible. Notwithstanding all the attention paid to Wulfstan’s virtues and the progression of his career, the main aim of these texts coincides with the overall rationale of the entire cartulary, that is, the promotion and defence of the Worcester monks’ claim on the estates which had been set apart for their sustenance. In both the Old English and Latin texts on Wulfstan, what starts in the form of praise for the bishop’s saintly fame is swiftly turned into an account of the lands he recovered and assigned to the monks. The first such case mentioned in the two texts is particularly remarkable, dealing as it does with the restoration to Wulfstan, while prior of the monastic community, of land at Blackwell and Wolverley by Earl Leofric of Mercia, thanks to the intercession of his wife Godgifu (or Godiva).37 The estates are here said to have been previously taken from the monastery by the Danes and other adversaries of God. The same lands, however, are also dealt with in the above-mentioned Codicellus possessionum, where a slightly different version of the events is reported. Earl Leofric is there said to have held Wolverley and Blackwell for a long time wrongfully (‘diu iniuste’) before restoring them to Worcester.38 No mention is made of the role of the Danes in this context. In the Codicellus Earl Leofric and other members of his family are depicted in a particularly negative light and are accused of being responsible for several of the alienations suffered by the church of Worcester in the eleventh century. As Stephen Baxter has shown, however, the relationships between Worcester and different members of this most prominent Mercian family were more varied and complex than emerges from the Codicellus, even though it is likely that the Worcester church did have a legitimate claim to several of the estates Leofric and others had held or continued to hold.39 What is striking and most interesting for current purposes is that in the final section of Hemming’s Cartulary, Leofric is depicted differently and without any mention of his earlier predatory behaviour; the narrative has clearly changed as the preoccupations for past spoliations have had to make room for more pressing issues, most likely related to the division of the mensa between bishop and monastic community and the uncertainties following Wulfstan’s death. The focus, in

37 On

Godgifu see A. Williams, ‘Godgifu [Godiva] (d. 1067?)’, ODNB, https://doiorg. ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/10.1093/ref:odnb/10873. 38 Hemingi Chartularium, ed. Hearne, I, 251. On the damning representation of Leofric and other members of his family in Hemming’s Codicellus possessionum, see Williams, ‘The Spoliation of Worcester’, pp. 386–7. 39 S. Baxter, The Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 2007), pp. 168–77.

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Constructing Narrative other words, is no longer on how or why Wolverley and Blackwell had been lost, but rather on the fact that they were restored to Wulfstan in his capacity as prior of the Worcester monks. From the lands that Leofric and Godgifu gave back to Worcester, the attention turns to their son, Earl Ælfgar and the land at Iccomb (now Church Iccomb, Gloucestershire) which he also gave to Wulfstan, while the latter was prior of the monastic community. After pausing to record Wulfstan’s episcopal election and the duration of his pontificate, both the vernacular and the Latin text move on to deal with the lands that the monks obtained during his pontificate. Mention is here made of Ælfstan, the brother of Wulfstan, who succeeded him as prior following his episcopal election in 1062, and of the lands he acquired for the community. The narratives then go back to Bishop Wulfstan and all the estates that he obtained from King William and entrusted to Prior Thomas, who succeeded Ælfstan at some point between 1077 and 1080.40 Furthermore, Wulfstan is said to have given the monks a mill at Northwick (Worcestershire) as well as a fourth part of the land there. Both narrative texts then proceed to report that the Worcester monastic community was also assigned the monastery at Westbury (i.e. Westburyon-Trym, Gloucestershire), which, following a period of semi-abandonment, had been restored and endowed by Wulfstan. As in the previous section dealing with Ealdred’s generosity, the claims on the various lands assigned to the monastic community in Wulfstan’s time are backed up by several charters which were copied into the cartulary immediately after the two narrative texts on the bishop. Their ordering reflects that of the narration, so that the charters dealing with lands recovered when Wulfstan was prior precede those concerning the estates which were assigned to the monks after he became bishop (see Table 1). Here too we have a mixture of recent and older documents, of which the latter are generally spurious.41 The inclusion of eighth- and ninth-century charters is once again meant to demonstrate Worcester’s alleged early title to the lands which had now been recovered, but in order to advance such claims the cartulary’s compilers had to modify existing charters and fabricate new ones. For instance, the text of S 211, dealing with land at Wolverley, was created by modifying the contents of S 212, a diploma of AD 866 of King Burgred of Mercia in favour of a certain Wulferd, to read as a grant of the same two hides of land to the ‘fratribus Deo militantibus in Wigornensi monasterio’.42 In its turn, S 201 purports

40 Tinti,

Sustaining Belief, p. 68. pre-eleventh-century charters in this section are (in order of appearance) S 211, 121, 174 and 201. 42 ‘the brothers fighting for God in the monastery of Worcester’. S 212 is edited in BCS 513; for the text of S 211 see BCS 514. The original single sheet for S 212 was still extant in the early eighteenth century when it formed part of a group of twenty-four charters belonging to John, Lord Somers. See S. Keynes, ‘Anglo-Saxon Charters: 41 The

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Francesca Tinti to represent a grant of 851 by King Berhtwulf of Mercia of land at Grimley in favour of the church of St Mary at Worcester, and specifies that the land was assigned ‘ad uictus fratrum in illo monasterio Deo seruientium’ (‘to the sustenance of the brothers who serve God in that monastery’). It has been shown that the bounds appended to this charter in Hemming’s Cartulary are identical to those in S 1370, a tenth-century lease of Bishop Oswald, with which they seem to be contemporary.43 Furthermore, the witness list appears to be largely copied from S 180, a diploma of King Coenwulf dated 816.44 The cartulary compilers clearly went to great lengths to sustain the monks’ claims to all these lands and while this is certainly one of the most representative ways in which the Worcester community ‘constructed history’ at the end of the eleventh century, by looking closely at the later documents included in Section L, one can appreciate that there was more to the construction of their cartulary’s narrative than the production of forgeries. This is especially the case for two of the post-Conquest charters in this section, namely Bishop Wulfstan’s grant of fifteen hides at Alveston to the monks of Worcester, made at Pentecost 1089, and his grant in 1093 of the above-mentioned monastery at Westbury (see Table 1). The two charters were issued by Wulfstan just a few years before the cartulary was produced and, as will be shown below, encapsulate claims and sentiments which the monks of Worcester were keen to maintain and reinforce after the bishop’s death.

Monastic origins and identity Wulfstan’s grant of fifteen hides at Alveston is an unusually informative episcopal charter.45 It states, for instance, that when he joined the Worcester community, this comprised little more than twelve fratres (a number of obvious symbolic significance),46 but by the time the charter was issued in 1089, the bishop had managed to gather as many as fifty monks.47 It is through reference to the increased size of the community that Wulfstan’s decision to enlarge their landed estate is justified. The language employed in this charter is entirely in line with the tone and the nature of the claims found throughout Hemming’s Cartulary, as can be evinced from the passage mentioning that the land at Alveston had been ‘unjustly held for a long time by certain Lost and Found’, in Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Brooks, ed. J. Barrow and A. Wareham (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 45–66 (pp. 58–9). 43 D. Hooke, Worcestershire Anglo-Saxon Charter-Bounds (Woodbridge, 1990), p. 287. 44 H. P. R. Finberg, The Early Charters of the West Midlands (Leicester, 1961), no. 255, p. 104. 45 See EEA 33, no. 8. 46 See also below, n. 56. 47 For a discussion of the shifts in the size of the cathedral community from the second half of the tenth century to Wulfstan’s time see Tinti, Sustaining Belief, pp. 25–67.

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Constructing Narrative powerful men’ (‘multo tempore a quibusdam potentibus hominibus iniuste possessam’). Wulfstan had only managed to recover the estate from King William I through ‘great effort’ (‘maximo labore’) and a ‘donation of money’ (‘peccunię donatione’), before granting it to the monks of Worcester. The document also refers to Wulfstan’s efforts ‘to exalt the monastery with greater honour and dignity’ (‘maiori honore et dignitate amplificare’), and mention of the construction and ornamentation of a new cathedral church (‘ęcclesię constructione et ornatione’) is made both at the beginning of the charter and in the dating clause, where it is revealed that the works had been finalised less than a year earlier (‘anno … ingressioni nostrę in nouum monasterium quod construxi in honore eiusdem Dei genitricis primo’, that is, ‘in the first year of our entering the new monastery which I built in honour of the same mother of God’).48 This charter thus attests to a time of remarkable harmony between bishop and cathedral community, thanks to the leadership of a monk-bishop who had spent most of his long career at Worcester and who had held various offices (including that of prior) within the same community.49 In the opening sentence of this document, we also encounter a reference to Bishop Oswald (961–92) and his foundation of St Mary’s monastery at Worcester: ‘monasterium sanctę Dei genitricis Mariae a pię memorię beato scilicet Oswaldo predecessore meo in sede episcopali constructum’ (‘the monastery of the holy mother of God, Mary, built by my predecessor in the episcopal see, namely, blessed Oswald, of pious memory’). Oswald also appears in several other texts contained in Section L of the cartulary, including the above-mentioned narratives on Ealdred and Wulfstan (see Appendix, nos. 1–3). A cult of St Oswald had been rapidly promoted after his death in 992 and Wulfstan seems to have been especially devoted to his saintly predecessor, as attested by Coleman, who repeatedly depicts him in his Life as looking back to St Oswald’s activities.50 All these texts show the importance – for the Worcester monks – of evoking the deeds of their saintly founder, especially at a time when, following the Norman Conquest, continental clerics looked with suspicion at monastic cathedral chapters.51 After Wulfstan’s death in 1095, Worcester would not be ruled by a monastic bishop for almost a century

48 See

below, p. 109. being first educated at Evesham and Peterborough, Wulfstan joined the household of Bishop Brihtheah of Worcester in the 1030s; following his priestly ordination, he was put in charge of the church at Hawkesbury (Gloucestershire) but later decided to become a monk and joined the monastic community at Worcester: N. Brooks, ‘Introduction: How Do we Know about St Wulfstan?’, in St Wulfstan, ed. Barrow and Brooks, pp. 1–21 (p. 1). 50 E. Mason, ‘St Oswald and St Wulfstan’, in St Oswald of Worcester: His Life and Influence, ed. N. Brooks and C. Cubitt (London, 1996), pp. 269–84 (p. 269). 51 Mason, ‘St Oswald and St Wulfstan’, p. 271; J. Barrow, ‘How the Twelfth-Century Monks of Worcester Perceived their Past’, in The Perception of the Past in TwelfthCentury Europe, ed. P. Magdalino (London, 1992), pp. 53–74 (p. 54). 49 After

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Francesca Tinti and it was this context of uncertainty that most likely led to the invention of Oswald’s sudden expulsion of those members of the cathedral community who refused to accept the monastic habit, as reported by the CC in its annal for 969.52 In fact, as has been shown by several scholars, the introduction of monks at Worcester was gradual and, as Julia Barrow has maintained, we should probably attribute to Wulfstan – rather than Oswald – the realisation of the tenth-century monastic reform.53 The link established in the opening lines of the Alveston charter between the monastic community which was beneficiary of the grant and its very origins in Oswald’s time is just one example of the ways in which the monks of Worcester attempted to evoke and exalt the beginnings of their monastic history after the Norman Conquest. Another episcopal charter contained in Section L of Hemming’s Cartulary, and the corresponding passages which summarise its contents in the narrative texts on Wulfstan included in the same cartulary, portray the connections between the late eleventh-century community, its last Anglo-Saxon bishop and its saintly founder even more eloquently. As mentioned above, the narrative texts name the monastery at Westbury in Gloucestershire as the last example of the donations that Wulfstan made to the Worcester community (see below Appendix, nos. 2–3). Both the Old English and the Latin texts say that St Oswald had built a monastery at Westbury, had endowed it with lands and had established monks in it. However, after his death, it was laid waste by evil men and pirates (called ‘wicingas’ in Old English), so that only one priest, who rarely celebrated mass, was left there. But Wulfstan, after being elected to the bishopric, rebuilt it and endowed it with lands, men and liturgical vestments, and put the monastery and its possessions under the control of the church of Worcester (‘subiugauit’ is the verb used in the Latin version). The text of the episcopal charter from which this information was lifted appears on fols. 188r–189v of the manuscript.54 Here we are told again about the sorry state of the church at Westbury and about Wulfstan’s efforts to restore it and recover its landed estate. The charter details the lands which Wulfstan assigned to Westbury and records the bishop’s grant, in September 1093, of the monastery and its endowment to the monks of the church of St Mary at Worcester. The choice to restore Westbury was especially significant, since we know from Byrhtferth’s Vita Sancti Oswaldi that this was the religious house which had hosted Oswald’s first reformed community, albeit only for a few years until a more suitable place was found at Ramsey, in Huntingdonshire.55 Byrhtferth says that Oswald had recalled a companion of 52 Barrow,

‘How the Twelfth-Century Monks’, pp. 59–60, 73–4. Barrow, ‘The Community of Worcester, 961–c.1100’, in St Oswald, ed. Brooks and Cubitt, pp. 84–99 (p. 99). 54 See EEA 33, no. 11. 55 For further discussion see Tinti, Sustaining Belief, pp. 21, 248–9 and bibliography there cited. 53 J.

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Constructing Narrative his, named Germanus, from Fleury, the monastery where Oswald had been himself for some time to learn proper Benedictine customs, and had put him in charge of a community of more than twelve men at Westbury.56 Emulation of the tenth-century bishop saint seems to have played an important role in Wulfstan’s decision to restore Westbury and grant it to the Worcester monks; similarly, the frequent references to Oswald in the final section of Hemming’s Cartulary appear to be intended to connect recent episcopal initiatives in favour of the Worcester community with their saintly founder and initiator of the monastic reform at several religious houses in the diocese. This link with Oswald can also be observed in the Life of Wulfstan, where an account of the restoration of Westbury and its grant to the Worcester monks is followed immediately by a story about Wulfstan crying while witnessing the removal of the roof of the old cathedral church of St Mary. Wulfstan’s tears may owe more to hagiographical convention than actual sorrow for the need to take down Oswald’s construction so as to make room for the new church, but they certainly attest to the importance attributed to Oswald as saintly founder of the monastic cathedral church by Wulfstan and his biographer.57 In this last respect, it should also be noted that the Life provides another, most valuable piece of information on the restoration of Westbury, since it mentions that Coleman, that is, the author of the original Old English Life of Wulfstan, was put in charge of the new community at Westbury. As mentioned above, Wulfstan granted the monastery at Westbury to the Worcester monks in September 1093, just one year and five months before his death, and Samson was appointed to the Worcester bishopric eighteen months after Wulfstan’s death. Among the many ways in which his pontificate contrasted with that of his predecessor, Samson’s decision to reverse Wulfstan’s course of actions at Westbury, as attested by William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Pontificum, must have been received as a major blow by the Worcester community and by Coleman in particular, who at that point would have returned to Worcester. The tense relationships between the new bishop and the cathedral community can be appreciated most clearly in the section dealing with Samson’s episcopate in the Gesta Pontificum. William wrote: He did his monks no wrong, beyond robbing them of Westbury (‘eis Westberiam abstulit’), where Wulfstan had planted a monastery, fortifying

56 Byrhtferth

of Ramsey, Vita Sancti Oswaldi iii.7–8, ed. and trans. M. Lapidge, OMT (Oxford, 2009), pp. 64–71. Twelve is a recurring number in hagiographical works, but it is possible that Byrhtferth’s Vita Sancti Oswaldi may have inspired Wulfstan’s description in the Alveston charter of the size of the community at Worcester. For Wulfstan’s knowledge and uses of this text, see Mason, ‘St Oswald and St Wulfstan’, p. 269. 57 WM, VW iii.10 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 120–3). The account goes on to report that Wulfstan put 72 marks of silver into the shrine in which he translated Oswald’s remains.

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Francesca Tinti it with his holy charter. This Samson tore up (‘dirupit’); but not many years later he died in the vill where he had done this wrong.58

The image of Samson tearing up Wulfstan’s charter must have stuck in the minds of the monks who reported the incident to William, thus conveying most vividly the resentment they had felt for Samson. The fact that the loss of Westbury should appear so prominently in the short section dedicated to his episcopate becomes even more significant when one takes into account that the so-called ß copy of the Gesta Pontificum, that is, the version preceding William’s purging of possibly offensive material,59 contained a noticeably longer account on Samson, detailing the extent of his gluttony and describing him as a contradictory character. He is said to have died of obesity, ‘when his mountainous frame had to take the further burden of an old man’s years’.60 Hemming and his colleagues would not have known how things would develop with the election of a new bishop, if, as has been suggested above, the cartulary was compiled during the vacancy between Wulfstan and Samson. They did, however, have much to worry about and the closing section of the cartulary allows us to detect the strategies employed to construct a narrative in which their monastic identity, the origins of their institution and their saintly founder helped legitimise their claims to landed estates.

The role of the vernacular From a linguistic point of view, Section L represents a departure from the other sections in Hemming’s Cartulary, where the use of Old English is limited to the copying of boundary clauses.61 The final section contains two texts for which both an Old English and a Latin version are provided; these are the narrative account about Wulfstan and the record of Earl Leofric and his wife’s grant of land at Wolverley and Blackwell (see Table 1 above).62 In both cases the vernacular version was copied first, but while the Latin text of Leofric and Godgifu’s grant is a relatively faithful translation of the preceding Old English record, the Latin account about Wulfstan is longer and more elaborate than the corresponding vernacular text (see Appendix, nos. 2 and 3). This is especially noticeable in passages characterised by the 58 WM,

GP i.iv.150 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom with Thomson, I, 440–1). GP (ed. and trans. Winterbottom with Thomson, I, xvi). 60 ‘cum et moli corporis seniles anni accederent’; WM, GP i.iv.150ß (ed. and trans. Winterbottom with Thomson, I, 438–41). 61 It should be noted that ‘Hand 3’, i.e. the scribe who wrote Section L, is also responsible for the copying of thirty Old English boundary clauses in Section K; see Tinti, ‘From Episcopal Conception’, pp. 238, 255–7. 62 The Old English version of this grant (S 1232) is edited in Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. A. J. Robertson (Cambridge, 1956), no. 113. For the Latin text see KCD 766. 59 WM,

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Constructing Narrative above-mentioned semi-hagiographical features, which are discussed more in detail in the Latin account. The latter provides a fuller portrait of Wulfstan’s saintly conduct and unworldliness, as well as the love and admiration that he elicited. It is not possible to establish with certainty the order of composition of the two texts. The fact that the vernacular, shorter version precedes the other might be taken to indicate that this was the first one to be drafted; however, the shared vocabulary between a passage at the end of the Latin version (‘a peruersis diaboli filiis, scilicet a piratis, uastatum est’, that is, ‘it was ravaged by some wicked children of the Devil, that is, by pirates’) and Wulfstan’s Westbury charter (‘a piratis deuastatam’, that is, ‘laid waste by pirates’)63 might suggest that the Latin text was written first by relying on the charters which were then copied in this section, and that an Old English summary was subsequently produced for inclusion in the cartulary. The Latin version also survived independently on a single sheet until at least the early eighteenth century, when it was transcribed and printed by George Hickes.64 This cartula, as Hickes called it, had an endorsement (or, more likely, a set of different endorsements), of which the first part simply read ‘be Wulstane biscope’ (‘concerning Bishop Wulfstan’). The second portion was apparently no longer entirely legible by the early eighteenth century, as Hickes only printed the words ‘Hu Wulstane b(isceope) manige land….’.65 The last bit, reading ‘Willelm senior’ and thus referring to the older King William, that is, William the Conqueror rather than William Rufus, his son and immediate successor, is the most relevant for our purposes, as it shows that this single sheet was among those that were endorsed by one hand of the later eleventh century with a note of the name of the king in whose reign the charter was issued.66 This can possibly be interpreted as evidence for the Latin account

63 EEA

33, no. 11. Hickes, ‘Cartula historica de Uulstano episcopo’, in Linguarum vett. septentrionalium thesaurus grammatico-criticus et archaeologicus, G. Hickes, A. Fountaine and H. Wanley, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1705), I, 175–6; a facsimile of the first six lines of this single sheet is reproduced among the figures opposite p. 144. Cf. I. Atkins, ‘The Church of Worcester from the Eighth to the Twelfth Century. Part II’, The Antiquaries Journal 20 (1940), 1–38, 203–28 (p. 208), where the Latin text is instead described as a translation of the Life of Wulfstan ‘written in Anglo-Saxon’ which Hemming included in his cartulary. 65 ‘How Bishop Wulfstan many lands.…’. This partially surviving Old English endorsement is interesting because instead of referring to Wulfstan’s career, as the rubrics preceding the two accounts in the cartulary do, it singles out the ‘many lands’ that the bishop gave to the monastic cathedral as the main contents of the text. 66 Ker, ‘Hemming’s Cartulary’, p. 65; for a list see Kelly in this volume, n. 22. In this case, as the text refers to a number of transactions collectively covering several successive reigns, it would seem that the scribe who endorsed the single sheet considered those grants which took place during William the Conqueror’s reign to 64 G.

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Francesca Tinti on Wulfstan to have been composed and endorsed (i.e. to have entered the Worcester archive) before the cartulary was compiled, if the late eleventhcentury endorsement campaign can be interpreted as preparatory work, as Neil Ker first suggested. Considering that the Latin account is longer and more informative than the preceding Old English text, the reasons for the latter’s inclusion in the cartulary are not immediately apparent. One must bear in mind that by the end of the eleventh century the community at Worcester was fairly mixed, comprising both native English speakers and Norman monks, so that the Latin text would have reached a wider audience.67 Indeed, Hemming would not have thought of writing a text such as the Codicellus possessionum in Old English, as he says specifically that he had composed it so that in future times, ‘either the bishop or dean, or any other officer of this monastery, provided a suitable occasion is found, may know in what way he should claim and demand those lands’.68 Wulfstan was famously the only remaining Anglo-Saxon bishop in England when he died in 1095, after outliving both the Conquest and the Conqueror, and for this reason Worcester is frequently depicted as the ultimate repository of traditional English values in the aftermath of 1066.69 Scholars have noted that English books continued to be produced at Worcester throughout Wulfstan’s long episcopate, while Latin texts were often annotated in the vernacular. After the bishop’s death this English language output decreased notably,70 thus making the few vernacular texts known to have been produced in this period (like Coleman’s Life of Wulfstan) all the more remarkable. Coleman’s choice to write his work in English rather than Latin was described be the most significant. It is also worth noting, however, that William is the only king mentioned in the text and that might have been the main reason why his name was reproduced on the dorse of the document if, as it seems, the note was added in the course of a systematic campaign. 67 The main evidence is provided by a list of names dating to c.1100 which was added to the Durham Liber Vitae in the early years of the twelfth century as the fruit of a confraternity agreement between the communities of Worcester and Durham: The Durham Liber Vitae: London, British Library, MS Cotton Domitian A. VII, ed. D. and L. Rollason with A. J. Piper, 3 vols. (London, 2007), III, 25, 127 (B.3.36). As the list comprises many religious names, it is not always possible to identify the geographical origins of the monks listed; the general impression, however, is that a group of English descent was still dominant at Worcester at the turn of the century, though the continental intake was becoming significant. Interestingly, Coleman’s name is not included in this list, probably because he was at Westbury when it was compiled. See also Tinti, Sustaining Belief, pp. 66–7 and O’Donnell’s chapter in this volume. 68 Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię’, p. 493. 69 Mason, St Wulfstan, pp. 198–232. Cf. O’Donnell’s chapter in this volume. 70 E. A. McIntyre, ‘Early-Twelfth-Century Worcester Cathedral Priory, with Special Reference to the Manuscripts there’ (unpublished D.Phil thesis, University of Oxford, 1978), p. 93.

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Constructing Narrative by Antonia Gransden as ‘conscious revivalism, to emphasise the merits of Anglo-Saxon England’.71 Nicholas Brooks also maintained that the decision to write in English must have been deliberate, and he saw a clear connection between Coleman’s language choice and his portrayal of Wulfstan as an English bishop, performing miracles almost exclusively among the English.72 Coleman, in other words, would seem to have had an agenda, likely related to his bitterness towards Bishop Samson, who dismantled the monastery at Westbury, where, as we have seen, Coleman had been appointed prior by Wulfstan. While one might easily be tempted to advance similar arguments to explain the reasons for the use of the vernacular in Hemming’s Cartulary, I think that there are in fact significant differences to consider. First of all, in the cartulary’s case the choice to employ English was not made at the expense of Latin, as the latter is still the main language in the final section of the cartulary, where the vernacular is used alongside Latin, rather than instead of it. It must also be remembered that the cartulary is probably a few years earlier than Coleman’s work and for this reason its employment of English attests less to revivalism than to the continuation of the bilingual written culture which characterised Worcester in the late Anglo-Saxon period.73 In other words, the employment of the vernacular in Hemming’s Cartulary need not be described as a choice meant to enhance the interests of the English members of the community at the expense of the French-speaking ones, but rather as one of the last attestations of the ways in which the Worcester community could use its two written languages almost interchangeably.

Conclusion As we have seen, the closing section of Hemming’s Cartulary displays a set of strategies aiming to build a distinct narrative whose main objective was to secure the cathedral monastic community’s claims to the landed estates which it had been assigned by the last two Anglo-Saxon bishops of Worcester. To construct such a narrative the cartulary compilers carefully selected charters through which they could demonstrate their title to those lands, often fabricating new records or manipulating old diplomas. The contents of the

71 Gransden,

Historical Writing in England, p. 88. ‘Introduction’, pp. 6–8. 73 See R. Gallagher and F. Tinti, ‘Latin, Old English and Documentary Practice at Worcester from Wærferth to Oswald’, ASE 47 (2019 for 2017), 271–325, and F. Tinti, ‘Writing Latin and Old English in Tenth-Century England: Patterns, Formulae and Language Choice in the Leases of Oswald of Worcester’, in Writing, Kingship and Power in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. R. Naismith and D. A. Woodman (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 303–27. See also O’Donnell’s contribution to this volume. 72 Brooks,

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Francesca Tinti charters feed the narrative passages on the two bishops, while these, in their turn, provide coherence and order for the events recorded in the charters. A consistent account was also obtained by glossing over the fairly negative reputation that Bishop Ealdred must have enjoyed at Worcester for quite some time, as the cartulary’s compilers chose to concentrate exclusively on the lands that he had recovered for the monastic community, without specifying that Wulfstan – his successor – only managed to obtain full control of the episcopal estates after Ealdred’s death. Similarly, Earl Leofric who, together with other members of his family, was normally depicted in a rather negative light at Worcester, is mentioned here with his wife and his son because of the estates they had granted to Wulfstan when he was prior. While protection of the monks’ landed estates appears to be the main reason behind the narrative emerging from the closing folios of the cartulary, this analysis has also shown that the strategies employed by its compilers went beyond the production of forgeries or the careful selection of manifestations of generosity on the part of otherwise fairly unpopular characters. The emphasis placed on St Oswald, both as monastic founder and saintly protector of the community, points towards the need to safeguard the monastic chapter as an institution at a time of profound uncertainty. Hence the need to evoke the monastic origins of the Worcester community as well as Oswald’s role as founder of the monastery at Westbury, his first experiment in reformed monasticism. It is probably for this reason that Wulfstan’s grant of Westbury is dealt with in great detail in the two narrative texts on the last Anglo-Saxon bishop of Worcester. Michael Clanchy described English cartularies from this period as products of the insecurity brought about by the Norman Conquest.74 That is certainly the case for Hemming, but while in the preceding sections of the cartulary, the efforts towards memory preservation and record-keeping are characterised by a more holistic approach, aiming at reconstructing the history of all the estates that had been lost or from which the monastic community was no longer receiving service,75 in Section L the attention is more focused. Here the cartulary’s compilers constructed a narrative that aimed to safeguard their interests in the division of the church of Worcester’s estate between bishop and cathedral community through reference to the monastic chapter’s origins, a starting point which was only properly recreated (or even surpassed) in Wulfstan’s time, in the course of an episcopate which had just ended and which the monks feared they would soon be sorely missing.

74 M. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307, 3rd edn (Chichester,

2013), pp. 103–4. ‘From Episcopal Conception’, pp. 253–7.

75 Tinti,

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Appendix 1. A text on the lands that Archbishop Ealdred bestowed on the monks of Worcester (BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fol. 178r) DE TERRIS QVAS ALDREDVS ARCHIEPISCOPVS FRATRIBVS WIGORNENSIS ĘCCLESIĘ CONTVLIT In huius manifestatione patet descriptionis beniuolentia sollicitę bonitatis, ac studiosę caritatis archipresulis ALDREDI, quam ipse monachis, Deo seruientibus, sanctę Marię Wigornensis ęcclesię deuotus submisit. Desiderans autem quam plurimum predicti loci monasterium semper provehere et augere, monachosque ibi inhabitantes largifluo suę dignitatis munere sollerter sustentare, concessit eis has scilicet terras et uillas, Teodintun, et Heamtun; ad Heantun uidelicet .x. hidas, quas ipse .x. marcis auri emerat. Item quoque alias terras ac uillas, Myttun scilicet, et Secgesbearuue, et Hlocceslea, quas Dei aduersarii et sanctę matris ęcclesię inimici, uiribus iniustitię rapientes, crudeliter a loco prescripto alienauerunt, Dei adiutorio, sanctęque matris et uirginis Marię et beati patris OSVVALDI conquisiuit, illisque subministrauit. Quibus factis et cum priuilegio assignatis, excommunicationem subintulit, deprecans Deum, largitatis remuneratorem, et sanctam ac precelsam eius genitricem MARIAM, necnon sanctum OSWALDVM, ut, siquis hęc alienare presumeret, et monachos his bonis priuaret, anathematizationis dampno penas perpetualiter lueret, nisi resipisceret, et ad satisfactionem ueniret. At si quis hęc, ut ipse stabiliuit, seruaret, uel ad seruandum adiuuaret, orationum et beneficiorum communicationem ęcclesię per Dei clementiam semper haberet, atque perpetuę beatitudinis munus ab ipso summo seruatore percipere eternaliter ualeret.76 CONCERNING THE LANDS WHICH ARCHBISHOP EALDRED ASSIGNED TO THE MONKS OF THE CHURCH OF WORCESTER In the demonstration of this description lies open the kindness of the concerned goodness and eager love of Archbishop Ealdred which he, devout, submitted to the monks, servants of God, of the church of St Mary at Worcester. Desiring, moreover, as much as possible always to promote and enhance the monastery of the above-mentioned place, and with the abundant kindness of his status to sustain assiduously the monks who live there, he granted them these lands and vills: Teddington and Hampnett; 76 Slightly

modified from Hemingi Chartularium, ed. Hearne, II, 395–6, following checks against the manuscript, which can be accessed online at http://www.bl.uk/ manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=cotton_ms_tiberius_a_xiii_fs001r.

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Francesca Tinti that is, at Hampnett ten hides which he himself had bought with 10 marks of gold. Likewise, with the help of God and of the saint mother and virgin Mary, and of the blessed father Oswald, he also sought out and gave them [the monks] other lands and vills, namely Mitton, Sedgeberrow and Loxley, which some adversaries of God and enemies of the holy mother church, plundering with the strength of injustice, had alienated cruelly from the above-mentioned place. These things having been done and the lands granted through written documents, he added an excommunication praying God, rewarder of generosity, and his holy and most high mother Mary, as well as Saint Oswald, that, if anyone dares alienate these (lands), and deprive the monks of these possessions, may he suffer perpetually his punishment with the injury of excommunication, unless he repents and makes compensation. Whereas if anyone protects or helps to protect these things that he established, may he always have through God’s mercy the communion of the church’s prayers and benefits, and may he eternally count on receiving the gift of perpetual blessing from the highest Saviour.

2. A text on Wulfstan’s career progression and the lands that he gained for the monastic community (BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fols. 180v–181v) Her ge swutelað hu Wlstan b(isceop) be com to biscoprice BEFORAN GESTIHTIENDE VRE DRIHTENE HÆLENde Christe ⁊ to fultumiende þære eadigan fæmnan sancta MARIAN ⁊ sancte Oswaldes, ALDRED bisceop ærest gesette Wulstan bisceop to ciricwearde þære ciricean on Wihgeraceastre for his clænnysse ⁊ fægrum þeawum; ⁊ hine syddan wurðodon cyningas ⁊ eorlas ⁊ ealdormen, ⁊ rice ⁊ heane hine georne biddende þæt he heom fore to Gode gewingode, heore life ⁊ sawle hæle ⁊ reste. And þæræfter hine God geuferade þæt he wearð prior ⁊ fæder þæs bufan cweðenan mynstres. Betwyxs þissum him getyþade Leofric eorl mid erndunga Godyfan his wifes .ii. land Blakewællan ⁊ Wulfweardiglea þe wæron bereafode þurh Denicemen ⁊ wiðerwearde deman ut of þam mynstre. Syþþan Ælfgar eorl him begeat ⁊ geaf þæt land æt Ickacumbe ⁊ þær æfter he wæs sona to bisceope gesett ⁊ gehahod. ⁊ us is nu swyðe earfoðe to gehreccenne hu wel he þone bisceopdom Gode likigende ⁊ eallum mannum geheold ⁊ gestihte oðð his lifes ende, þæt is twa and þrittig wintra ⁊ .iiii. monþas ⁊ .iii. wucan. Syþþan Ælfstan prior his broðer begeat þæt land æt Lenc ⁊ æt Dunhamstyde ⁊ æt Pecesleage. And æfter þam þe he bisceop wæs he begeat æt Willelme cyninge æt Cullaclif .ii. hida landes, ⁊ æt Ælfestune .xv. hida ⁊ Myttun ⁊ Eastun ⁊ twegen linde hrycgeas ⁊ Penhyll ⁊ Grimanleah ⁊ .ii. hina wican ⁊ hit eal Tome his priore beteahte þe þone anweald æfter Ælfstane underfeng, ⁊ gyt him mare geuþe, þa mylne æt Norðwican ⁊ .i. feorðen dæl landes þær to þara munecena corn on to

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Constructing Narrative grindanne ⁊ þæt mynstre æt Westbyrig on Gleawecestrescire. Ðæt mynster se halga Oswald ærur arærde ⁊ hit mid landum gegodade ⁊ þær munekas gesette, ac hit wearð æfter his forsiðe þurh yfel men ⁊ wicingas eall awest swa þæt þær næs butan .i. preost se þær seldan mæssan gesang. Ac syþþan se arwurða bisceop Wulstan to bisceoprice feng he hit eft geedstaðalade ⁊ hit mid reafum ⁊ lande gegodade ⁊ to sancte Marian mynstre beteahte ⁊ þær munekas gelohgode swa feola swa hit aberan mæg oððæt hit gyt God geyce swa his willa si.77 Here it is shown how Bishop Wulfstan attained to the bishopric Before our Lord the all-disposing Saviour Christ, and with the support of the blessed virgin St Mary and St Oswald, Ealdred bishop first made Wulfstan sacrist of the church of Worcester because of his purity and sweet virtues. And kings and earls and ealdormen afterwards honoured him, and high and low eagerly prayed him that he should intercede for them to God for their life and soul’s health and rest. And afterwards God exalted him so that he became prior and father of the above-said monastery. During this time Leofric earl, at the intercession of his wife Godiva, granted him two lands, Blackwell and Wolverley, which had been taken from the monastery by Danes and adverse judges. Afterwards Ælfgar earl obtained and gave to him the land at Iccomb and after that he was forthwith raised to the bishopric and consecrated. And it is now very difficult for us to relate how well he held and ordered the bishopric, pleasing God and all men, until his life’s end; that is, for thirty-two winters, four months, and three weeks. Afterwards Ælfstan prior, his brother, obtained the land at Lench and at Dunhampstead, and at Peachley. And after he was bishop, he obtained from King William at Cookley two hides of land and at Alveston fifteen hides, and Mitton, and Aston, and two Lindridge and Pen Hill and Grimley and two Henwick and entrusted it all to Thomas, his prior, who undertook the rule after Ælfstan. And gave him still more, the mill at Northwick, and a fourth part of the land in which to grind the monks’ corn; and the monastery at Westbury in Gloucestershire. That monastery St Oswald formerly built and endowed it with lands and placed monks there, but it was all laid waste after his death by evil men and pirates [vikings] so that there was but one priest who seldom sang mass there. But after the illustrious Bishop Wulfstan came to the bishopric, he re-founded it and endowed it with treasure and land, and entrusted it to St Mary’s monastery and lodged as many monks there as it could support until that God may increase it as his will may be.

77 Hemingi

Chartularium, ed. Hearne, II, 403–5. The text on fol. 181r is barely visible because of damage caused in the Cotton fire of 1731. It has thus not been possible to check Hearne’s edition against the manuscript beyond the first few lines of this Old English text. The translation has been adapted from Atkins, ‘The Church of Worcester’, pp. 208–9.

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Francesca Tinti

3. A longer Latin version of the preceding vernacular text on Wulfstan (BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fols. 181v–182v) QVOMODO WLSTANVS EPISCOPVS PER SINGVLOS GRADVS EPISCOPATVS APICEM CONSCENDERIT LARGIFLVA DEI OMNIPOTENTIS GRATIA PREORdinante et beata semperque uirgine Maria, ut fas est credere, suffragante, adiuncta simul beati Osuualdi intercessione, ALDREDVS archiepiscopus uenera­ bilem uirum WLSTANVM, nondum ad episcopatus apicem electum, edituum constituit Uuigornensis ęcclesię. Vidit enim in illo castitatem uigere, aliasque diuersas uirtutes in eo mansionem habere. Illum laude dignis moribus preditum fore, nec suam uitam ceterorum ducere more: mundanam omnino pompam despicere, et celestem dumtaxat inhianter concupiscere. Vnde non solum ab ipso Aldredo archiepiscopo, uerum etiam ab omnibus, regibus uidelicet, ducibus et principibus, honorabatur et summo affectu diligebatur. Dignis eum quique attollebant honoribus et ob religionis cultum diligebant prę omnibus quos ipse mutua caritate ut erat columbinę simplicitatis in Christi complectebatur uisceribus. De die uero in diem ad meliora proficiens, Deique adiutorio uirtutes uirtutibus addens prioratum Uuigornensis ęcclesię dispensatione diuina coactus est suscipere. Quod tamen potius causa obedientię quam adispiscendę suscepit glorię. Venerabilis interea comitissa GODGIVA, fama bonitatis eius audita, totis illum cępit diligere uisceribus et in diuersis huius sęculi subuenire necessitatibus. Cuius siquidem precibus comes LEOFRICVS, coniunx uidelicet suus, duas terras Blacauuella et Vulfordilea uocatas illi donauit, quas antea Dani ceterique Dei aduersarii ui abstulerunt et ab ipsa Uuigornensi ęcclesia penitus alienauerunt. Alteram quoque terram, quam incole illius Ickacumb nuncupant, filius prefati comitis Alfgarus nomine a quibusdam optinuit et pro suę remedio animę predicti uiri Dei iuri tradidit. Cernens autem uenerandus archiepiscopus ALDREDVS hunc seruum Dei bonis operibus insudare, nichil de terrenis curare, solummodo celestibus inhiare, in episcopatum Uuigornensis ęcclesię decreuit eum sulleuare. Quod sicut disposuit mente, licet multum reniteretur ille, non multo post impleuit opere. Suscepto itaque tanti honoris culmine, qualiter illud Deo se protegente tenuerit quam sanctis operibus decorauerit nullus edicere poterit. Mansit autem in episcopatu .XXXII. annis, mensibus .IIII. et .IIIbus. septimanis. Prioratum uero Uuigornensis ęcclesię suscepit pro ipso frater illius, ALFSTANVS nomine, qui terras tres, LENC uidelicet, et DVNHAMSTEDE et Peceslea sua adquisiuit strenuitate. Ipse etiam seruus Dei Wlstanus in hac qua manemus heremo adhuc manens omnibus omnia fiebat ut omnis Christo lucrari posset ideoque quicunque nomen eius uel facta audiebat, illum summopere diligebat. A Willelmo quoque rege ceteris amplius amabatur, ceteris amplius maioris et minoris glorię uiris pro uitę suę merito honorabatur. Cui poscenti dedit terram duorum cassatorum, quę Cullaclif dicitur et alteram .XV. cassatorum quę ALFESTVN nominatur. Has insuper terras MYTTVN scilicet et EASTVN et duas LINDERYCGEAS et PENHYLL et GRIMANLEAH sibi reddidit. Quę ille omnia Thome uenerabili priori,

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Constructing Narrative qui prioratum post Alfstanum optinuit, commisit. Molendinum quoque apud Northuuican et .IIIItam. partem terrę ad usum fratrum donauit, et monasterium quod in Westbyrig situm est eiusdem prioris Thome custodie mancipauit. Quod uidelicet monasterium beatus Osuualdus prius extruxit, monachis stabiliuit, et terris hominibusque illas excolentibus ditauit. Verum post obitum illius sic a peruersis diaboli filiis, scilicet a piratis, uastatum est, ut non remaneret in eo nisi unus solummodo presbiter qui diuinę seruitutis officium raro expleuit. At recordandę memorię Wlstanus, post susceptum episcopatus honorem, illud reedificauit, terris, hominibus et uestimentis ad Dei seruitium nobilitauit, ibidemque secundum loci positionem monachos coadunauit et monasterium cum omnibus quę ibi erant ęcclesię Uuigornensi beneuole subiugauit.78 HOW BISHOP WULFSTAN ASCENDED STEP BY STEP TO THE HIGHEST RANK OF THE EPISCOPACY Through the bountiful preordaining grace of almighty God and the favour of the blessed and always virgin Mary, as is right to believe, also supported by the intercession of the blessed Oswald, Ealdred archbishop appointed the venerable man Wulfstan, not yet elected to the highest rank of the episcopacy, as sacristan of the church of Worcester. For he saw that chastity was strong in him and various other virtues dwelled in him. He would be gifted with praise for his worthy moral conduct and would not lead his life in the manner of others: he would despise altogether mundane ostentation and desire eagerly only heavenly splendour. So that he was honoured and loved with the highest devotion not just by Archbishop Ealdred himself, but also by everybody, that is, kings, earls and ealdormen. Those who elevated him with worthy honours and loved him for his religious devotion above all whom he himself with mutual affection (he was a man of dove-like simplicity) embraced in the bowels of Christ. While accomplishing better things from day to day, and, with the help of God, adding virtues to virtues, he was forced through divine dispensation to accept the priorship of the church of Worcester. Which nevertheless he accepted more due to obedience than because aspiring to fame. Meanwhile, the venerable lady Godiva, having heard about the fame of his goodness, took to favour him profoundly and to assist him in various worldly necessities. Accordingly, because of her prayers, Earl Leofric, that is, her husband, gave him two estates called Blackwell and Wolverley, which the Danes and other adversaries of God had stolen forcibly and had completely alienated from this same church of Worcester. The son of the above-mentioned earl, called Ælfgar, obtained from someone another land, which its inhabitants call Iccomb, and for the salvation of his soul, rightly bequeathed it to the above-mentioned man of God. Moreover, seeing how this servant of God devoted himself to good deeds, not caring at all of worldly things and only desiring heavenly ones,

78 Hemingi

Chartularium, ed. Hearne, II, 405–8. The second half of this text was also severely damaged in the Cotton fire.

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Francesca Tinti Archbishop Ealdred decided to raise him to the episcopacy of the church of Worcester. Just as he disposed to this with his mind, allowed for him to resist a lot, but not long after completed his work. Having accepted such a high honour, nobody will be able to describe the ways in which he would hold it, with God’s protection, or the holy deeds with which he would adorn it. He remained in the episcopate for 32 years, four months and three weeks. Moreover, his brother, called Aelfstan, received in his stead the priorship of the church of Worcester; through his hard work he acquired three estates, that is, Lench, Dunhampstead and Peachley. The same servant of God, Wulfstan, still residing in this monastery where we live, became everything to everyone so that everyone could win in Christ, and for that reason, whoever heard his name or deeds, loved him as much as possible. Likewise, he was more loved by King William than others; more than by other men of major or minor fame he was honoured for the merit of his life. To him, after he asked, he gave an estate of two hides called Cookley and another of fifteen hides which is named Alveston. In addition, he restored to him these lands, that is, Mitton, Aston and two Lindridge and Pen Hill and Grimley. Which Wulfstan assigned all to Thomas, venerable prior, who obtained the priorship after Ælfstan. He granted the mill at Northwick and the fourth part of the land to the use of the monks, and transferred the monastery which is located at Westbury to the custody of the same Prior Thomas. That is the monastery which the Blessed Oswald had previously built, established with monks and endowed with lands and men to develop those lands. But after his death, it was ravaged by some wicked children of the Devil, that is, pirates, to the extent that in it only remained but one priest who rarely performed the divine office. But Wulfstan, of blessed memory, after having accepted the honour of the episcopate, restored the monastery, endowed it with lands, men and liturgical vestments, and there gathered monks according to the possibilities of the place, and willingly put the monastery with all the things that were there under the control of the church of Worcester.

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5 Worcester’s Own History: an Account of the Foundation of the See and a Summary of Benefactions, AD 680–1093 Susan Kelly

In the chief manuscript of John of Worcester’s Chronica Chronicarum (CC), understood to have been his own working copy, OCCC MS 157, the text of the chronicle itself begins only on page 77. The first part of the manuscript contains a large, miscellaneous collection of texts, mostly concerned with establishing chronology – the historian’s tool-box: regnal and episcopal lists, consular tables, lists of popes, genealogies and so on.1 But the very first item stands out. It is a short compilation on the history of the church at Worcester, beginning with a narrative describing the foundation of the see in AD 679, followed by notices of grants of land and privileges by kings and others, carefully arranged in chronological order. The text was copied by two collaborating scribes on a separate quire formed of two bifolia that may represent one of the last additions to the manuscript.2 It has received relatively little attention, but it is significant because it reflects an early attempt to reconstruct a timeline for the history of the church and its estates over an extended period. The details of the benefactions have clearly been gleaned from intensive research in the church’s archive; many of the items can be linked with extant charters, quoting or paraphrasing the texts, while others describe transactions for which no other record survives. The final item deals with acquisitions and donations by Wulfstan II, the latest of 1093; it also mentions his successor Samson. This short compilation can be understood as another offshoot of the ambitious study, reorganisation and refurbishment of the Worcester muniments initiated by Wulfstan, as outlined in the narrative

1 For



a description of the manuscript, with an itemised list of the preliminary material, see JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xxi–xxxv). A digital version of OCCC MS 157 is available online (). 2 The first two leaves are foliated, after which the rest of the manuscript is paginated, so the first item is technically fol. 1 to p. 3 (ibid., p. xxii). On the dating of the script see above Tinti and Woodman’s chapter, at n. 35.

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Susan Kelly sections of Hemming’s Cartulary.3 But it also overlaps with the wider historical project at Worcester in the post-Conquest period, with its strong national focus. The only full printed text is that in the Monasticon.4 The preliminary account of the origin of the see, which includes dubious material on the division of the Mercian kingdom into five dioceses, was extracted and printed by Benjamin Thorpe in an appendix to the chronicle of ‘Florence’ of Worcester, culled from the chronological preliminaries to OCCC MS 157.5 This portion was reprinted with extensive critical notes by Haddan and Stubbs in 1871,6 and has fed into modern scholarly discussion of the early history of Worcester. The rest of the document is less known and has been less studied, in part due to the lack of an accessible edition with numbered items. One scholar who was aware of its value was Finberg, who included entries for otherwise unrecorded benefactions in his Early Charters of the West Midlands.7 However, Sawyer elected not to use information from the compilation in his Anglo-Saxon Charters,8 which means that the data has tended to hover below the scholarly radar, with most citations derived from Finberg’s references rather than study of the document itself. This is a pity, because this short compilation is full of interest as a reflection of historical research at Worcester, as well as a source of additional information about the history of the church’s endowment. The chronological organisation of the material required the deployment of historical skills, and the exploitation of written records stretching back some four centuries. Underpinning the compilation is a sturdy chronological framework, based on a confident appreciation of the sequence of the bishops of Worcester, and of the kings of Mercia (with the various subordinate rulers of the Hwicce) and of their successors, the ninth-century kings of Wessex and the later monarchs of

3 See





especially F. Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię commendaretur: Memory and Cartularies in Eleventh-Century Worcester’, in Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald, ed. S. Baxter, C. Karkov, J. L. Nelson and D. Pelteret (Farnham, 2009), pp. 475–97. 4 Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. R. Dodsworth and W. Dugdale, 3 vols. (London, 1655–73), I, 137–40; 2nd edn by J. Caley et al., 8 vols. (London, 1817–30), I, 607–9. 5 Florentii Wigorniensis Monachi Chronicon ex Chronicis, ed. B. Thorpe, 2 vols. (London, 1848–9), I, 239–41 (inserted into a list of bishops of the Hwicce). The same was printed in the same year in Monumenta Historica Britannica or Materials for the History of Britain from the Earliest Period to the End of the Reign of King Henry VII, ed. H. Petrie and J. Sharpe (London, 1848), I, 622. 6 Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Britain and Ireland, ed. A. W. Haddan and W. Stubbs, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1869–71), III, 127–30 (from Petrie and Sharpe). 7 H. P. R. Finberg, The Early Charters of the West Midlands (Leicester, 1972), p. 18. 8 P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks 8 (London, 1968); interim 2nd edn available online as ‘The Electronic Sawyer’ .

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Worcester’s Own History England. The assembly of this kind of detail, as it related to the accumulation of Worcester’s landed endowment, is demonstrated in two much shorter texts copied into Hemming’s Cartulary.9 The first is headed ‘Of the kings of the Mercians, how long they reigned, and of the lands which they gave to this monastery’, and in its original form listed forty-two kings from Penda to William Rufus, with notes of reign-lengths and (in some cases only) the names of sundry estates which they were deemed to have granted to Worcester. The second list is of twenty-five bishops of Worcester, originally running from Saxwulf to Samson, again linked with the names of lands ‘which they gave to the monks serving God and St Mary here’.10 There is only a minimal overlap between the estates mentioned in these two documents and the much more ambitious compilation in OCCC MS 157, but all three reflect an interest in tracing the accumulation of the endowment over an extended period of time. This chronological perspective contrasts with the primarily topographical organisation of the records in the eleventh-century Worcester cartularies.11 An Old English list of royal benefactions in the ‘Wulfstan Cartulary’ has a geographical scheme.12 The preliminary narrative section in the OCCC MS 157 compilation describes how King Æthelred was persuaded by his sub-king Oshere of the Hwicce that more bishoprics should be established in the Mercian kingdom. So in 679 Archbishop Theodore divided Mercia into five dioceses. The first covered the kingdom of the Hwicce, with a see at Worcester, ‘the famous metropolis of the Hwicce and the Magonsæte’;13 the original choice of bishop, Tatfrith, died before consecration and was later replaced by Bosel. Subsequently the church at Worcester was munificently enriched by Æthelred

9 London,

BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fols. 167rv, 176r; printed in Hemingi Chartularium ecclesiæ Wigorniensis, ed. T. Hearne, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1723), II, 369–70, 390–1. 10 Both documents are followed in the cartulary by copies of charters (the first by twenty-one royal diplomas, the second by thirteen royal and episcopal diplomas); the two groups of texts are not chronologically ordered and have little overlap with the estates named in the regnal and episcopal lists. For discussion, see F. Tinti, ‘From Episcopal Conception to Monastic Compilation: Hemming’s Cartulary in Context’, EME 11 (2002), 233–61 (pp. 248–57). On these lists see also above, Tinti and Woodman’s chapter, text corresponding to notes 31–2. Annotated texts of these lists will be included in my edition of the Anglo-Saxon charters of Worcester, in preparation. 11 For an overview, see F. Tinti, Sustaining Belief: The Church of Worcester from c.870 to c.1100 (Farnham, 2010), chapter 3. 12 London, BL, Cotton MS Nero E. i, part 2, fol. 184v. See Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię’, pp. 485–8. 13 Worcester is called the ‘metropolis’ of the Hwicce in S 1254 (AD 718 × 745, possibly revised) and an Oswald lease, S 1308 (c.AD 991); see also S 1273. But the suggestion that it was also the ancient central place of the Magonsæte is mischievous, since that kingdom had its own diocese, with a see at Hereford.

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Susan Kelly and Oshere, with the property supposedly shared out between the bishop and the cathedral community, as arranged by Archbishop Theodore. This account combines information from Bede (primarily Historia ecclesiastica IV.23) with names from episcopal lists and what is clearly Worcester tradition about the ancient origins of the church. The material recurs, in various states, in three works attributed to or associated with John of Worcester, and I do not propose to explore the historiographical complexities here.14 In the main chronicle Wulfstan II is said to have proclaimed Æthelred and Oshere as the ‘first founders’ of the see, during the synod on the Parrett adjudicating his dispute with Archbishop Thomas.15 More interesting (from my perspective) is the long sequence of benefactions that follows the initial narrative. There is a total of sixty-five items, representing (approximately) eighty-four transactions; in the edition below I have given each item an individual number for ease of reference (C1, C2 etc.).16 In the majority of cases the detail does more or less correspond to a surviving charter, sometimes with an opportunistic spin that simplifies a transaction to Worcester’s benefit: so C38 states that an abbot granted his hereditary lands to Worcester, although in the source-document he gives them to his descendants in priestly orders, with ultimate reversion to the cathedral community. In some of the longer items the formulation of the charter is partly reproduced: for instance, C59 repeats the royal style and phrases from the dispositio of the source, a diploma of King Æthelstan (S 401).17 An item summarising a complicated dispute-settlement (C18) has a superior reading which corrects a confusing scribal error in the cartulary copy of the charter (S 1255). Other entries include details of transactions which are not otherwise recorded. In some cases this information was clearly derived from a full-scale record, for example, C47, which describes how the familia leased the minster at Kempsey and land at Bredon to Bishop Alhhun for two lives, specifying the details of an annual food-render. Some briefer references to unknown transactions could potentially have been extrapolated from non-diplomatic records, such as lists of benefactors, but for the most part it looks as if the information

14 For

the different versions, see P. A. Hayward, ‘The Chronica de Anglia in London, British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius C.VIII, fols. 6v–21v: Another Product of John of Worcester’s Historical Workshop’, Traditio 70 (2015), 159–236 (pp. 182, 202–3). For the foundation-date of 679, see P. Sims-Williams, ‘St Wilfrid and Two Charters Dated AD 676 and 680’, JEH 39 (1988), 163–83 (p. 168). 15 JW, Chron. s.a. 1070 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 16–17). Wulfstan is said to have cited liberties from later kings of Mercia, as well as Edward the Elder, Æthelstan, Eadred and Edgar. 16 The prefixed C is to distinguish this list of benefactions from other lists relevant to the Worcester archive (for instance, the list of single sheets compiled in 1643 by William Dugdale), all of which will be printed and collated in my edition of the Worcester diplomas. 17 The abbreviation ‘S’ refers to the number in Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters.

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Worcester’s Own History was directly or indirectly drawn from the large body of charters which had accumulated in the church’s possession over four centuries. What survives of the Anglo-Saxon archive of Worcester is pretty impressive. My forthcoming edition will comprise some 252 documents, including a small number of incomplete texts and fragments.18 A substantial proportion of these have been faked or rewritten, for the Worcester community seems to have been enthusiastic about ‘refreshing’ their muniments, both before and after 1066. There are now only twenty-four charters extant in the form of single sheets, so the primary sources are the three eleventh-century cartularies (the Liber Wigorniensis, the fragmentary Wulfstan Cartulary/Nero-Middleton Cartulary and Hemming’s Cartulary), and a series of antiquarian transcripts and early printed editions which preserve the texts of lost charters. Study of the Worcester archive is haunted by such ghosts – well over a hundred singlesheet diplomas from this period were still available in the cathedral archive in the early seventeenth century, but many of them vanished over the next century and are now known only from brief references. A number of items in the compilation edited here are probably witnesses to further lost charters (genuine or forged): diplomas of Æthelred and Æthelbald of Mercia (C2, C5, C6), of the rulers of the Hwicce (C11, C15), and of Kings Offa, Coenwulf, Ceolwulf, Berhtwulf and Burgred (C22, C33, C40, C43, C46, C51). Some references may be to otherwise unknown records of private donations, perhaps including wills (C7, C27, C52, C57), and there are two items which surely derive from written records of leases by the familia to the bishop (C36, C47). The extant archive has a distinctive chronological profile. Roughly the first half of my edition comprises an exhilarating mix of royal and sub-royal diplomas up to the reign of Edgar (the majority from the eighth and ninth centuries), with smaller numbers of episcopal charters, leases and other types of document, such as dispute-settlements. Then comes the large collection of Oswald’s leases (seventy-six documents, dated 962–91). From the seventy years after Oswald’s death there are only thirty-two texts: mostly episcopal leases, with three royal writs.19 This general pattern – with a rough division between (on the one hand) royal diplomas and miscellaneous records up to the mid-tenth century and (on the other) episcopal leases of Oswald’s time and later – is a reflection of a fundamental archival approach in late Saxon Worcester: it underlies the arrangement of the Liber Wigorniensis, and was the basis for the reorganisation of the archive by Wulfstan II.20 The chronological

18 S.

E. Kelly, The Charters of Worcester: in preparation, to be published as part of the British Academy’s series ‘Anglo-Saxon Charters’. 19 The only royal diploma later than Edgar’s time is S 913 (AD 1005), recording a grant by King Æthelred II to St Davids in Wales (an early addition to the Liber Wigorniensis). 20 For an overview of the organisation of the cartularies, see Tinti, Sustaining Belief, pp. 122–3; for Wulfstan, see especially Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię’, pp. 492–7.

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Susan Kelly profile of the present compilation mirrors that of the full archive: the great majority of the items refer to royal grants from the seventh to mid-tenth centuries, with a mix of other types of document (up to item C61, corresponding with a diploma of Eadwig dated 956). Since the leases of Oswald and his successors are not relevant to the theme of benefaction to the church, there is then a leap to the acquisition and reclamation of estates in the time of Ealdred (C62, C63, C64), followed by a summary of transactions involving Wulfstan II (C65). The compiler has necessarily made a selection from the vast amount of documentary material available to him. Many of the charters he drew on had been copied into the Liber Wigornienis (and would probably have been incorporated into the Wulfstan Cartulary, now only partially preserved), while others survive in Hemming’s Cartulary; but some are only known as single sheets. There is no strong correlation with the project to seek out and reclaim estates lost during the eleventh century, which is the central theme of the narrative sections of Hemming’s Cartulary, although some of the benefactions refer to property that was disputed then.21 The compiler’s preoccupation was rather to demonstrate long-term patronage, by ‘kings, sub-kings and men of good memory’, as well as the process by which the church accumulated and defended its possessions over time. There is some hint that he was dipping into an archive that was at least partly organised in the form of dossiers of documentation relating to specific capital manors (many of them former minsters). Six entries refer to the minster at Bredon and its lands (C5, C15, C20, C24, C44, C63), four to the minster at Kempsey (C29, C36, C37, C47) and three to the minster at Twyning (C18, C27, C33) and there are multiple references to Stratford, Ripple, Withington and Wolverley, among others. The previous archival labours of the compiler’s colleagues and predecessors will have provided useful assistance. A substantial number of the surviving single sheets have a primary endorsement, typically naming the estate, which has been supplemented by a later note naming a king, either the donor or more generally the king in whose reign the charter was issued.22 It has been suggested that the kings’ names were added during Wulfstan II’s examination of the archive, and further that this initiative marked a shift from a filing arrangement based on location to one at least partly based on chronology.23 Identifying the relevant king might require careful cross 21 Estates

at Sedgeberrow, Loxley and Mitton recovered by Archbishop Ealdred (C19, C35, C45; Hemingi Chartularium, ed. Hearne, II, 395, cf. I, 278; see also Tinti’s contribution to this volume). The Codicellus mentions Wychbold (C3), Wolverley (C7, 62), Pencofan (C22), Chaddesley and its members (C31), Himbleton and Dunhampstead (C57), Marlcliff (C58): see, Hemingi Chartularium, ed. Hearne, I, 261–2, 266, 274, 278. 22 See S 89, 56, 59, 190, 1281, 772, 1326, 1347, 1393, 1405. The same feature can be seen in several seventeenth-century transcripts of lost charters (S 58, 113, 180, 1416, 1430). 23 N. Ker, ‘Hemming’s Cartulary: A Description of the two Worcester Cartularies in Cotton Tiberius A. xiii’, in Studies in Medieval History Presented to F. M. Powicke, ed.

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Worcester’s Own History referencing of dates and other contemporary documents: for instance, the lost S 1416, a lease of Bishop Wærferth dated 892, makes no reference to a king but was endorsed Ælfred rex. The end-result of this careful research would be a chronological framework combining details of regnal succession with episcopal succession, anchored where possible to firm AD dates, which could function as a tool for studying and ordering the muniments. The difficulty of organising the charter-material into a chronological format should not be under-estimated. Eighth-century Mercian royal diplomas very often lack a formal dating clause, as do some later episcopal documents and the miscellaneous records of private grants and bequests. The Worcester archivists also had to deal with the records of early grants by obscure kings and sub-kings of the Hwicce, often joint-rulers. The compiler of the present list of benefactions has succeeded admirably in organising his material. He has a certain number of dated transactions, which are carefully placed in order, with the undated benefactions neatly inserted between them (as in the sequence C15–C18, where the first and last items are dated 773 and 774). He makes some canny deductions. A grant to Worcester for the soul of King Æthelbald has been tucked onto the end of a sequence of Æthelbald’s undated grants (C10), and a benefaction referring to the soul of Bishop Heathored is placed among the charters associated with his successor (C38). There is an outside possibility that he was being guided by some form of register which noted under which bishop a particular estate was acquired. In the Latin text below I have introduced modern punctuation. The underlined portions concern transactions for which there is no separate documentary evidence. Small scribal errors (erasures and corrections) have not been noticed. A translation is provided, in which the place-names are identified. In the notes I have given details of the corresponding charters, with references to the sources of the surviving texts.24 There is no discussion here of the authenticity or otherwise of the transactions, which will be covered in the integrated discussion in my edition of the archive.

Rubric De pontificali sede quomodo primitus statuta sit Wigorne et de possessionibus quę a regibus, subregulis et a bonę recordationis uiris datę sunt Wigornensi ęcclesię.

R. W. Hunt, W. A. Pantin and R. W. Southern (Oxford, 1948), pp. 49–75 (p. 65); Tinti, Sustaining Belief, pp. 136–7. 24 Abbreviations used in footnotes to the individual benefactions: S (for Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters); ECWM (for Finberg, Early Charters of West Midlands); ‘lost ss’ (for ‘lost single sheet, preserved as an antiquarian transcript’); LW (for Liber Wigorniensis); WC (for ‘Wulfstan Cartulary’); HC (for ‘Hemming’s Cartulary’).

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Susan Kelly Concerning how the episcopal seat of Worcester was first established and concerning the possessions which have been granted to the church of Worcester by kings, sub-kings and by men of good memory.

Foundation of the See Egregio Merciorum regi Wlfario qui regum totius Mercię fidem Christi primus suscepit, germanus suus gloriosus rex sanctus Æthelredus in regnum successit. Cui Huuicciorum subregulus Osherus, uir multum laudabilis, Huuicciam cui dignitate presidebat regia, proprii antistitis dignitate honorari sullimarique desiderans regimine, consilium dedit utile rogauitque summopere quatinus suum quod tunc ceteris regnis preminebat Anglię pluribus antistitibus decoraret uenustius ac honoraret sullimius, sicut quosdam reges Anglię nouerat olim fecisse. To the excellent king of the Mercians Wulfhere, who first of all the kings of Mercia accepted the faith of Christ, there succeeded in the kingdom his brother the glorious king, St Æthelred. The sub-king of the Hwicce, Oshere, a man worthy of great praise, who then ruled the Hwicce with royal rank, desiring that his regime should be honoured and elevated to the dignity of its own bishop, gave useful advice to King Æthelred and asked especially that he should ornament more pleasingly his [Æthelred’s] kingdom (which was then the most eminent of all the kingdoms of England) with several bishops, and should thus honour it more excellently, just as he knew that certain kings of England had once done. Qui cum prius id idem faciendi magno flagraret desiderio, mox eius suasionibus salubribusque consiliis acquieuit, et archipresule Dorubernię Theodoro ad se accersito, rogauit ut regno suo plures in parrochias diuiso, episcopos locis constitueret oportunis. Ille autem utile satis regis uotum gratanter approbans, quod rogabatur sine dilatione maturauit explere. Itaque diocesim cum tunc Saxulfus pontificali regimine prefuit, cum consensu eiusdem regis ac principum illius, in quinque parrochias diuisit, anno ab incarnatione Domini .dclxxviiii. Æthelred, since he already burned with a great desire to do this, quickly acquiesced to his arguments and his sound advice. He summoned to him Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, and requested that, once the kingdom had been divided into several dioceses, he should establish bishops in suitable places. Theodore indeed, happily approving the king’s most useful desire, hastened to fulfil what he had been asked without delay. Therefore, with the consent of the king and his nobles, he divided the diocese over which Saxwulf then presided as bishop into five separate dioceses, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 679. Et quia ciuitas Wigorna, tempore quo regnabant Brytones uel Romani in Brytannia et tunc et nunc totius Huiccię uel Magesetanię metropolis extitit 128

Worcester’s Own History famosa, cathedram erexit pontificalem digniter in ea, parrochiarum iam diuisarum primam constituens Huuicciam. Ad quam de monasterio Hild abbatissę uir strenuissimus ac doctissimus Tatfrithus electus est antistes. Sed priusquam ordinari posset, morte prereptus est immatura. And because the city of Worcester, at the time when the Britons and the Romans ruled in Britain and then and now was the famous metropolis of all the Hwicce and the Magonsæte, he worthily established an episcopal seat there, creating the Hwiccean diocese as the first of the now-divided dioceses. The very vigorous and learned man Tatfrith, from the monastery of the Abbess Hild, was chosen as its bishop. But before he could be consecrated he died prematurely. Secundam autem illam quę pertinet ad episcopatum Licetfeldensem, cui uirum religiosum ac modestum Cuthuuinum prefecit. Tertiam uero Mediterraneam Angliam in qua predictus episcopus Saxuulfus, quia ita sibi placuit, resedit, pontificali cathedra illi constituta in ciuitate Leogora.25 Quartam denique Lindissim prouinciam, cui preposuit uirum sanctum Æthelwinum germanum sancti Alduuini abbatis monasterii quod Partaneu nuncupatur, statuens ei episcopalem sedem in ciuitate quę uocabatur Syddena. Quintam uero constituit Suthangliam. Ad quam de prefato monasterio Hild abbatissę singularis meriti et sanctitatis uirum Aetlam elegit antistitem eique presulatus sedem in loco qui uocatur Dorkacestre constituit. The second diocese is that which pertains to the bishopric of Lichfield, to which he [Theodore] appointed the religious and modest man Cuthwine. The third diocese [pertains to the bishopric of] Middle Anglia, in which the aforesaid Bishop Saxwulf settled, by his choice, the episcopal see having been established in the city of Leicester. The fourth diocese [pertains to the bishopric of] the province of Lindsey, to which he [Theodore] appointed the holy man Æthelwine, brother of St Aldwine, abbot of the monastery which is called Bardney, establishing for him an episcopal seat in the city called Syddena . The fifth diocese [pertains to the bishopric of South Anglia], to which he appointed Ætla bishop, a man of particular merit and holiness from the aforesaid monastery of Abbess Hild, and he set up for him an episcopal see in the place called Dorchester-on-Thames. Porro pro Tatfritho uenerabilis uir Bosel electus, ab ipso Theodoro sicut et ceteri ordinatus est episcopus, habens episcopalem sedem in predicta ciuitate Wigorna, quę tunc temporis altis muris et moenibus pulchris decorata, multis urbibus clarior exitit atque sullimior. Interea sanctus rex Æthelredus ęcclesias in quibus noui constituti sunt episcopi ornamentis ditare terrisque studuit locupletare. Uberius tamen et locupletius ipse ac predictus Osherus eius subregulus ecclesiam Wigornensem et tunc et post uariis ac pretiosis

25 This

name is written on an erasure of another name beginning with L. Saxwulf was associated with Lichfield.

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Susan Kelly ornamentis decorauere, terrisque ab eis eidem ęcclesię delegatis, partim ad antistitis, partim ad canonicorum uictum uestitumque, secundum archipresulis Theodori dispositionem distributis, non mediocriter locupletauere. Later the venerable man Bosel was chosen in place of Tatfrith and like the others was consecrated bishop by Theodore himself, having his episcopal see in the aforesaid city of Worcester, which was then resplendent with tall walls and beautiful fortifications, and was more famous and more exalted than many other towns. Meanwhile the saintly King Æthelred took pains to enrich with ornaments the churches in which the new bishops were settled, and to endow them with estates. Moreover he and the aforesaid Oshere, his sub-king, then and later enriched the church of Worcester more abundantly and more richly with various precious ornaments. And, assigning estates to the same church, some for the support and clothing of the bishop, some for that of the cathedral community, shared out according to the plan of Archbishop Theodore, they gave a generous endowment.

Benefactions to the Church of Worcester C1 Osherus Huuicciorum subregulus, licentia domini sui regis Æthelredi, uicum qui dicitur Rippel Fritheuualdo, Winfridi quondam Merciorum episcopi monacho, ut ibidem ęcclesiasticę conuersationis normam exerceret, anno dominicę incarnationis .dclxxx., Boselo pontificante, dedit, et ab omnibus tributis operibusque regis et principis gratis liberauit. Oshere sub-king of the Hwicce, with the permission of his lord King Æthelred, gave the vill called Ripple [Worcs.] to Frithewald, monk of Wynfrith (the former bishop of the Mercians), that he might pursue there an ecclesiastical life according to a rule, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 680, when Bosel was bishop. And he freely liberated it from all tributes and services owed to king or ealdormen.26 C2 Æthelredus rex Merciorum terram quę dicitur Fledanbyrig, et in Wic unum casulum cum duobus caminis de magno puteo ad eandem terram pertinentem, et Suthheanbyrig et Austan, Oftforo episcopo ad Wigornensem ęcclesiam, anno dominicę incarnationis .dcxci. dedit. Æthelred, king of the Mercians, gave the land called Fladbury [Worcs.] – and a small salt-house in Droitwich with two salt-ovens in the great well,

26 Summary

of S 52 (LW), which has no internal reference to Bishop Bosel (and no witnesses); in the charter Oshere is rex (rather than subregulus) and Wynfrith is not explicitly identified as a former bishop of the Mercians.

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Worcester’s Own History which pertains to that land – and Henbury and Aust [Gloucs.], to Bishop Oftfor for the church of Worcester, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 691.27 C3 Idem rex uicum qui uocatur Wicbold Ecguuino pontificante Wigornensi ęcclesię anno dominicę [incarnationis] .dcxcii. dedit et ab omnibus seruitiis secularibus gratis liberauit. The same king gave the vill which is called Wychbold [Worcs.], when Ecgwine was bishop, to the church of Worcester, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 692, and freely liberated it from all secular obligations.28 C4 Idem rex et eius subregulus Osherus terram quę Widiandun uocatur duabus sanctimonialibus, Dunnę famulę Dei eiusque filię Bucgę, ut esset iuris ęcclesiastici, ad construendum in ea monasterium, sub libera potestate, condonauerunt. Eandem terram cum monasterio ipsa Dunna ad Dominum migratura, licentia Ecguuini episcopi, filię [MS: filię repeated in error] suę Rothuuarę abbatissę reliquit, ea conuentione ut post cursum uitę suę ad Wigornensem ęcclesiam traderetur. The same king and his sub-king Oshere together gave the land called Withington [Gloucs.] to two nuns, Dunne, servant of God, and her daughter Bucga, that it might be under ecclesiastical law, for the construction of a monastery there, with free powers. When Dunne was about to leave this life, she gave this land and the monastery, with the permission of Bishop Ecgwine, to her daughter Abbess Hrothwaru, on the condition that after the end of her life it would be given to the church of Worcester.29 C5 Æthelbaldus rex Merciorum terram quę uocatur Breodun propinquo suo comiti Eanulfo ad monasterium construendum Ecguino pontificante dedit, et excepta pontis et arcis constructione liberauit. Æthelbald, king of the Mercians, gave the land which is called Bredon [Worcs.] to his kinsman, the comes Eanwulf, for the construction of a monastery, 27 Fladbury

granted to Bishop Oftfor in S 76 (lost ss, LW, WC); Henbury and Aust granted to the bishop for Worcester in S 77 (lost ss): both undated. Oftfor’s appointment is placed in 691 by John of Worcester. Grant of a saltpan at Droitwich is ECWM no. 197. See S 102 for an exchange of saltworkings with King Æthelbald at Droitwich, perhaps 716/17; also S 1824 for Æthelbald’s grant of a share of a Droitwich mansio with two caminis salis to a famula Dei. 28 Summary of S 75 (lost ss, HC), actually a grant to Oslaf, former thegn and now servant of God at Worcester. 29 Summary of past history of estate in dispute-settlement S 1429 (lost ss, LW; undated); placed here because of reference to Bishop Ecgwine. See also C18.

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Susan Kelly while Ecgwine was bishop, and freed it, apart from the building of bridges and fortifications.30 C6 Idem rex Suthhænburh et Austan liberauit, Wudatun etiam et Bæccesoran, et curtem unam in Lundonia inter duas stratas quę Tiddbertistret et Sauinstret, Wilfrido pontificante Wigornensi ęcclesię dedit et liberauit. The same king freed Henbury and Aust [Gloucs.], and gave and freed Wootton [Wawen, Warwicks.] and Batsford [Gloucs.], and a tenement in London between the two streets [called] Tiddberhti street and Savin street, while Wilfrid was bishop, to the church of Worcester.31 C7 Dux Hwita terram que Wlfordilea dicitur, quam ei suus dominus rex Æthelbaldus concessit, Wigornensi ęcclesię, ipsius regis licentia, Wilfrido pontificante, dedit. Hwita, dux, gave the land called Wolverley [Worcs.], which his lord King Æthelbald gave him, to the church of Worcester, with the permission of the king, while Wilfrid was bishop.32 C8 Idem rex Æthelbaldus terram quę dicitur Bradanleach, Wilfrido pontificante, dedit Wigornensis ęcclesię. The same King Æthelbald gave the land that is called Bradley [Green, Worcs.], while Wilfrid was bishop, to the church of Worcester.33 C9 Dedit etiam Wigornensi ęcclesię [terram] qui dicitur Wuduceaster, rogante Wilfrido episcopo. 30 ECWM

no. 208. References to the foundation of Bredon by Eanwulf, grandfather of King Offa, in S 116, 117 (see C20). 31 Offa’s grant of Henbury to Worcester (S 146) refers to King Æthelbald giving the estate to his grandfather Eanwulf. In a 794 synod Bishop Heathored secured the restoration of Aust by deploying a charter of Æthelbald freeing the estate to his predecessors (S 137; see ECWM, no. 19). Wootton is granted to Æthelric, comes, in S 94 (LW; undated), and Batsford to Bishop Wilfrid in S 101 (LW, WC, HC; undated). There is no other documentation for the London curtis or the two enclosing streets. For Worcester interest in London at this time, see S 98. 32 ECWM no. 210. See S 1826 (lost ss charter of Æthelbald referring to Sture and Wolverley, AD ‘700’) and S 1827 (lost ss charter of Æthelbald concerning Wolverley, AD 864). For Wolverley, see also S 212. 33 Æthelbald gave Bradley to Cyneburg (S 95; lost ss, LW, WC; undated). Bishop Wilfrid subscribes, but there is no reference to Worcester in the text.

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Worcester’s Own History He also gave to the church of Worcester [the land] which is called Woodchester [Gloucs.], at the request of Bishop Wilfrid.34 C10 Pro eiusdem regis anima, uici Eastun et Natangraf et Salemonesbyrig dati sunt Wigornensi ęcclesię ita liberi ut tantum Deo omnipotenti ęcclesiasticę seruitutis famulatus impenderetur. For the soul of this same king, the vills at Aston and Notgrove and Salmonsbury [Gloucs.] were given to the church of Worcester, with the freedom that the duty of ecclesiastical service should only be rendered to Almighty God.35 C11 Uhtredus Wicciorum subregulus, licentia regis Offani, Uuerabyrig anno dominicę incarnationis .dcc.lvi. Milredo pontificante, ad uictum Wigornensis familię dedit et liberauit. Uhtred, sub-king of the Hwicce, with the permission of King Offa, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 756, while Mildred was bishop, gave and freed Overbury [Worcs.], for the sustenance of the Worcester community.36 C12 Offa rex Merciorum uicum qui Piritun uocatur, anno dominicę incarnationis .dcclxv., Milredo pontificante, Wigornensi ęcclesie dedit et liberauit. Offa, king of the Mercians, gave and freed the vill which is called Pyrton [Oxon.], in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 765, while Milred was bishop, to the church of Worcester.37

34 Summary

of S 103 (lost ss, LW, HC; undated). grants Aston and Notgrove to Osred his thegn, reserving ecclesiastical service, in S 99 (LW); the text incorporates a note stating that the land was later given to St Mary’s in Worcester for the king’s soul. An associated vernacular note says that Æthelbald gave Aston to Utel, bishop of Hereford, in 743. No Worcester documentation survives for Salmonsbury, but the Evesham archive has an original of Offa granting land there to his thegn Duddonus (S 114). 36 ECWM no. 215. There is clearly some connection with S 57 (lost ss), a charter of Uhtred and Offa dated AD 756 (but also the third year of King Offa, i.e. 759–60) granting Habene homme to a thegn, with brief boundary details that could be taken as referring to Overbury (although modern scholars prefer to associate the diploma with Kemerton, immediately to the east of Overbury). 37 Summary of S 107 (LW, HC), actually a grant to Milred. 35 Æthelbald

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Susan Kelly C13 Prefatus subregulus Uhtredus seruis Dei Uuigornensis ęcclesię, ad mensam illorum, Eastun iuxta fluuium Saleuuearpe, cum consensu regis Offani, anno dominicę incarnationis .dcclxvii., Milredo pontificante, dedit et liberauit. The aforesaid sub-king Uhtred gave and freed Aston by the river Salwarpe [i.e. Aston in Stoke Prior, Worcs.] to God’s servants of the church of Worcester, for their sustenance, with the consent of King Offa, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 767, while Milred was bishop.38 C14 Idem subregulus, Offano rege consentiente, ad uictum Uuigornensis familię, uicum qui Scepuueasctun nuncupatur, Milredo pontificante, dedit et liberauit. The same sub-king, with the consent of King Offa, gave and freed the vill which is called Shipston[-on-Stour, Warwicks.] for the sustenance of the Worcester community.39 C15 Ald\r/edus Huuiciorum subregulus, germanus Uhtredi subreguli, uiculum Westun qui situs est in utraque parte riuuli Tyrli minoris, Milredo pontificante, anno dominicę incarnationis .dcclxxiii., Breodunensis ęcclesię dedit. Ealdred, sub-king of the Hwicce, brother of the sub-king Uhtred, gave the vill at ‘Weston’, which is situated on both sides of the lesser Tyrl, while Milred was bishop, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 773, to the church of Bredon.40 C16 Eanbertus subregulus, germanus Uhtredi et Aldredi subregulorum, licentia regis Offani, uillam que Tredintun uocatur, Milredo pontificante, Uuigornensi ęcclesię dedit et liberauit. The sub-king Eanberht, brother of the sub-kings Uhtred and Ealdred,

38 In

S 58 (lost ss), which is dated 767, Uhtred grants Aston to a thegn. In S 59 (extant ss), dated 770, this grant is modified to specify reversion to Worcester after three lives. For these charters see F. Tinti, ‘The Reuse of Charters at Worcester Between the Eighth and the Eleventh Century: A Case-Study’, Midland History 37 (2012), 127–41. 39 See S 61 (HC; undated), a grant to St Mary’s. 40 ECWM no. 31. Finberg suggests Weston-on-Avon (Warwicks.), later disputed between Worcester and Evesham. But this estate is perhaps more likely to be in the vicinity of Bishops Cleeve (Gloucs.), where a boundary clause refers to a river Tirle and ‘south Tirle’ (S 141; see C21). There could also be a connection with nearby Tyreltun (see S 1413, and cf. S 56), perhaps part of the manor at Withington (Gloucs.) described in S 1556.

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Worcester’s Own History with the permission of King Offa, gave and freed the vill called Tredington [Warwicks.] to the church of Worcester, while Milred was bishop.]41 C17 Ceo\l/fridus abbas, regis Offani licentia, pro anima sua et patris sui Cineberti, comitis regis eiusdem, Milredo pontificante, Norð He\a/nburh et Norð Sture Uuigornensi ęcclesię dedit. Abbot Ceolfrith, with the permission of King Offa, for his own soul and that of his father Cyneberht, comes of the same king, while Milred was bishop, gave Hanbury and Sture [in Ismere, both Worcs.] to the church of Worcester.42 C18 Eodem etiam pontificante, Rothuuara abbatissa monasterium quod Widiandun nominatur, cum terris, in ius proprię libertatis et possessionis, ut ante statutum erat a senioribus suis et decreto sinodali, ad episcopalem sedem Wigornensis castri tradidit. Episcopus autem predictus eandem terram, cum licentia Wigornę congregationis, Æthelburgę abbatissę, filię Ælfredi comitis, anno dominicę incarnationis .dcc.lxx.iiii. concessit, ita tamen ut post obitum eius ad ęcclesiam Wigornensem ipsum monasterium et etiam illud ad Tuueoneaum cum terris, sicut pater suus preceperat, redderetur. Also, while the same man was bishop, Abbess Hrothwaru gave the minster which is called Withington, with its lands, with the right of proprietorial liberty and possession, as had previously been established by her elders and by synodal decree, to the episcopal see of Worcester. The aforesaid bishop gave this same land, with the permission of the Worcester community, to Abbess Æthelburh, daughter of the comes Ælfred, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 774, on the condition that after her death this minster and that at Twyning would be restored to the church of Worcester, with their lands, as her father had ordered.43

41 Summary

of S 55 (LW, WC; undated). of S 1411 (LW, WC; undated). The land at ‘Stour in Ismere’ had been granted to Ceolfrith’s father in 736 (S 89; original). The second estate, which is Heanbu’ in the charter-text, is here identified as ‘north’ Heanburh, i.e. Hanbury (Worcs.), so-called to distinguish it from the Worcester manor at ‘south’ Heanburh, i.e. Henbury (Gloucs.). The compiler of LW placed S 1411 in the Gloucestershire section, so assuming it to refer to Henbury, but there is a better context for preferring the Hanbury reference here. For Hanbury see also C41. 43 Summary of S 1255 (lost ss, LW), with a better reading than the cartulary text in the reference to the final post-obit arrangements; here there is a reference to Twyning minster (ad Tweoneaum) where the LW scribe has misunderstood and inserted a reference to Worcester. 42 Summary

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Susan Kelly C19 Prędictus subregulus Aldredus, lice\n/tia regis Offani, Secgesbearuue [MS: Secgesbearuuue], anno dominicę incarnationis .dcclxxviii., Wermundo pontificante, ad uictum dedit Uuigornensis familię. The aforesaid sub-king Ealdred, with the permission of King Offa, gave Sedgeberrow [Worcs.], in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 778, while Wermund was bishop, for the sustenance of the Worcester community.44 C20 Pręfatus rex Offa ad ęcclesiam sancti Petri, quam Eanulfus auus suus in Breodune construxit, uillam quę Ælfgithecirce dicitur et has uillas Wassaburnan, Codesuueallan, Norðtun, Eouuengelad, Wearsthylle et Coftun et Wreodenhale, Tilhero pontificante, anno dominicę incarnationis .dcclxxx. dedit et ab omni regis exactione gratis liberauit. The aforesaid King Offa gave to the church of St Peter, which his grandfather Eanwulf had built in Bredon, the vill which is called Alvechurch [Worcs.] and these vills – [Little] Washbourne [Gloucs.], Codesweallan [Gloucs.], [Bredons] Norton [Worcs.], Evenlode [Gloucs.], Wast Hills, and Cofton [Hackett] and Rednal [all Worcs.], – while Tilhere was bishop, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 780, and he freed them from every royal exaction.45 C21 Idem rex et eius subregulus terram quę Geate uocatur, Tilhero pontificante, Uuigorne\n/si ęcclesię dederunt. Terram etiam quę Timbinctun uocatur ad Uuendesclif dederunt et gratis liberauerunt. The same king and his sub-king gave the land which is called Yate [Gloucs.], while Tilhere was bishop, to the church of Worcester. They also gave the land which is called Timbinctun by Wendesclif [Bishops Cleeve, Gloucs.], and generously freed it.46 C22 Idem quoque rex Tettanbyrig, Beccanford, Pencouan et Rippel Wigornensi ęcclesię liberauit.

44 A

reference to the unreliable coda to S 113 (lost ss, HC), where the original beneficiary (Ealdred) grants the estate to St Mary’s. Sedgeberrow was one of the lost estates regained by Archbishop Ealdred (Hemingi Chartularium, ed. Hearne, I, 395). 45 Summary of S 116 (lost ss, LW, WC) and S 117 (extant ss, LW, WC). Several of these places were berewicks of the Domesday manor at Alvechurch, to which a reference is inserted (see also C60). For Evenlode see S 109 (lost ss, LW, HC). 46 Summary of S 147 (lost ss, LW), and S 141 (LW), the latter in favour of the minster at Bishops Cleeve.

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Worcester’s Own History Also the same king freed Tetbury [Gloucs.], Beckford [Worcs.], Pencofan [Herefords.] and Ripple [Worcs.] for the church of Worcester.47 C23 Prędictus rex Offa duos uicos, Ductun et Esin, Wermundo pontificante, Wigornensi ecclesie dedit et liberauit. The aforesaid King Offa gave and freed to the church of Worcester two vills, Doughton [in Tetbury, Gloucs.] and Eisey [in Latton, Wilts.], while Wermund was bishop.48 C24 Heathoredus episcopus et Wigornensis familia cum Offano rege Merciorum de aliquibus agellis conflictationis querulam per aliquod tempus habuerunt. Aiebat enim rex eos sine iure hereditario propinqui eius regis Æthelbaldi hereditatem sub iniusto dominio habere, id est in loco qui dicitur Bathum et in aliis locis Stre[t]ford, Sture, Sture in Usmærum, Hamtun [MS: Hamtum], Feccanlea et de Breodune .xii. man[entes]. Sed prefatę contentionis causa, anno ab incarnatione Domini .dcclxxxi. in sinodo in loco qui dicitur Bregen\t/ford finita est hoc modo. Nam ei monasterium celeberrimum Bathum et \in/ australi parte fluminis Auene terram quam a Cineuulfo rege Uuestsaxonum sunt mercati concesserunt. Pro quo ipse rex, ad recompensationis satisfactionem et pro unanimitate firmissimę pacis, prefatas terras quas ab eis abstulerat, uidelicet Stre[t]ford, Sture, Bre\o/dun, Hamtun, Sture in Usmearum, ad Wigornensem ęcclesiam ea libertate liberatas reddidit et concessit, qua sedes episcopalis Uuigornę ciuitatis a se suisque predecessoribus liberata extitit. Bishop Heathored and the Worcester community had for some time a dispute with Offa, king of the Mercians, concerning certain estates. For the king said that they were holding without hereditary right the hereditary property of his kinsman King Æthelbald, in wrongful lordship, that is, in the place called Bath and in other places – Stratford [upon Avon, Warwicks.], Sture, Stour in Ismere, Hampton [Lucy], Feccanlea, and from Bredon twelve hides [all Worcs. except Hampton Lucy, Warwicks]. But the case of the aforesaid dispute, in the year 781 from the Lord’s incarnation, was resolved in a synod in the place called Brentford, in this way. For they ceded to him the very famous minster at Bath and the land on the south bank of the River Avon which they had bought from Cynewulf, king of the West Saxons. In return the

47 ECWM

nos 36 (Tetbury), 221 (Beckford), 222 (Ripple), 412 (Pencofan). Offa’s grant of Tetbury is mentioned in the benefaction lists in WC and HC, the latter also mentioning Beckford (for these, see above, p. 123). Worcester lost Pencofan and other Herefordshire properties in Cnut’s reign (Hemingi Chartularium, ed. Hearne, I, 274). 48 Summary of S 145 (LW, HC).

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Susan Kelly king himself, as proper compensation and for the agreement of a very firm peace, restored and conceded to the church of Worcester the aforesaid lands which he had stolen from them – that is, Stratford, Sture, Bredon, Hampton, Stour in Ismere – freed with that liberty, by which the episcopal see of Worcester had been freed by himself and his predecessors.49 C25 Eodem anno idem rex uicum qui Iccacumb dicitur Uuigornensi ęcclesię dedit et ab omnibus secularibus negotiis liberauit. In the same year the same king gave the vill which is called Iccomb [Gloucs.] to the church of Worcester and freed it from all secular burdens.50 C26 Heathoredus episcopus terram Austan quam Beonna comes iniuste tulit et quam rex Æthelbaldus antea liberauit, anno dominicę incarnationis .dccxciiii. sinodali iudicio recuperauit. Bishop Heathored recovered the land [called] Aust [Gloucs.] which Beonna comes unjustly seized and which King Æthelbald previously freed, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 794, by synodal judgement.51 C27 Ælfredus dux regis Offani monasterium quod Tuueoneaum uocatur cum terris quę ad illud pertinent, scilicet .iii. cassatorum in orientali parte fluminis Sabrinę, in occidentali uero .x. man’, ab omni tributo et operibus regis liberum Wigornensi ęcclesię, cum licentia ipsius regis, Heathoredo pontificante, tradidit. Ælfred, dux of King Offa, gave the minster which is called Twyning [Gloucs.], with the lands belonging to it, namely three hides to the east of the river Severn and ten hides to the west, free from all royal tribute and service, to the church of Worcester, with permission of the king himself, while Heathored was bishop.52 C28 Wiferthus Dei amicus et coniunx eius Alta nomine .iii. uicos, scilicet

49 Summary

of S 1257 (LW). For Feccanlea, see S 120 (lost ss, LW, HC). of S 121 (HC). 51 Summary of S 137 (LW). 52 ECWM no. 22. See S 1255 (C18): Twyning was to revert to Worcester after Æthelburh’s death, as decreed by her father Alfred. This entry may indicate that Worcester gained possession under Heathored (781–c.800), with the grant attributed to Alfred. 50 Summary

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Worcester’s Own History Cnihtatun et Eardulfestun cum suis appendicibus, de parentum suorum hereditate, licentia et consensu regis Offani, Heathoredo pontificante, Wigornensi ęcclesię dederunt. Wiferth, friend of God, and his wife, Alta by name, gave three vills, namely Knighton[-on-Teme] and Eardiston [Worcs.], with their appurtenances, from the hereditary property of their kinsmen, with the permission and consent of King Offa, while Heathored was bishop, to the church of Worcester.53 C29 Kenulfus rex Merciorum monasterium Kemeseg et uicum qui dicitur Dorene Wigornensi ęcclesię liberauit. Coenwulf, king of the Mercians, freed the minster at Kempsey [Worcs.] and the vill called Dorn [in Blockley, Gloucs.], for the church of Worcester.54 C30 Idem rex omnia monasteria quę proprii iuris Wigornensis ęcclesię extiterant, anno dominicę incarnationis .dccc.xiiii., Deneberto pontificante, liberauit. The same king freed all the minsters which the church of Worcester held by proprietary right, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 814, while Deneberht was bishop.55 C31 Cuius petitione idem rex Wigornensi congregati\o/ni terram que Ceaddesleah uocatur et in occidentali parte Sabrine fluminis totam Wigornaleagam et in orientali eiusdem fluminis parte Huuitintun, Speaclea, Teoleuualdincotan, Reafneshyll et in Warewicensi pago Lappawurðe liberauit. At whose request [i.e. Deneberht’s], the same king freed for the congregation of Worcester the land which is called Chaddesley [Corbett] and to the west of the river Severn the whole of Hallow and to the east of the same river Whittington, Spetchley, Tollandine, Ravenshill [all Worcs.] and in Warwickshire Lapworth.56 C32 Idem rex uicum qui uocatur Sluhford in occidentali plaga fluminis Sture anno

53 To

be linked with S 1185 (HC; undated, no witnesses), which adds an estate at Newnham. 54 See S 154 (lost ss, LW; AD 799), in favour of an Abbot Balthhun. The reference to Dorn is ECWM no. 54. 55 Information from S 172 (LW, WC); the bishop gave Twyning minster in exchange. 56 Summary of S 180 (lost ss, LW, HC) and S 179 (HC), dated 816.

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Susan Kelly dominicę incarnationis .dcccxvii. Wigornensi familię, Deneberto pontificante, dedit et liberauit. The same king gave and freed the vill which is called Sluhford on the west side of the river Stour, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 817, to the Worcester community, while Deneberht was bishop.57 C33 Terram etiam quę nominatur bi Tuueoneaum quam ei Denebertus pro libertate dederat, Wigornę ęcclesię reddidit et liberauit. He also restored and freed the land which is called Twyning, which Deneberht had given to him in return for exemption.]58 C34 Æthericus filius Athelmundi principis terras Feccanham et Bremesgrauan, ut pater suus dum testamentum suum concederet preceperat, Wigornensi ęcclesię tradidit. Terras etiam Westbyrig et Stoke ea libertate qua rex Offa eas liberauit, Wigornensi ęcclesię, cum licentia regis Kenulfi, Deneberto pontificante, dedit. Æthelric, son of Æthelmund princeps, granted the lands at Feckenham and Bromsgrove [Worcs.], as his father had ordered when he had made his will, to the church of Worcester. He also gave the lands at Westbury[-on-Trym] and Stoke [Bishop, Gloucs.] with the same freedom as King Offa had freed them, to the church of Worcester, with the permission of King Coenwulf, while Deneberht was bishop.59 C35 Dei amicus Alferthus uicum qui Locceslea uocatur et alium qui Coueslea dicitur, consensu regis eiusdem, Wigornensi familię dedit. The friend of God Ealhferth gave the vill called Loxley [Warwicks.] and another called Coueslea, with the consent of the same king, to the Worcester community.60

57 Summary

of S 182 (HC). a hopeful interpretation of S 185 (see ECWM no. 241). Deneberht had ceded Twyning to Coenwulf in exchange for exemption (S 172; C30). Coenwulf then granted Fladbury to Worcester, and just possibly allocated half of Twyning to Fladbury (but the wording is very unclear). 59 Information from Æthelric’s nuncupative will, S 1187 (LW, WC, HC), highly simplified. 60 Possibly from another will. Loxley was lost in Cnut’s reign for non-payment of geld but regained by Ealdred (Hemingi Chartularium, ed. Hearne, I, 277–8; II, 395). Coueslea is unidentified. 58 Probably

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Worcester’s Own History C36 Familia Wigornensis ęcclesię suo episcopo Deneberto monasterium Kemeseg et post se uni heredi cui uoluerit ea conditione prestitit, ut post diem ipsius heredis eidem familię sine aliqua dissensione restitueretur [MS: restituerentur]. The community of the church of Worcester leased to its bishop Deneberht the minster at Kempsey [Worcs.], and after him to one heir of his choice, on this condition, that after the death of his heir it should be restored without any dispute to the same community.61 C37 Idem episcopus et Wigornensis familia terram Beormodeslea et in alio loco uicum Colesburnan Kemesigensi abbati Balthuno, quia Wigornensis ęcclesię alumnus extitit, ea conditione prestiterunt, ut post finem uitę illius eidem familię restituerentur. The same bishop and the Worcester community leased the land at Barnsley, and in another place Colesborne [both Gloucs.], to the abbot of Kempsey, Balthhun, because he had been trained in the church of Worcester, on this condition, that after his death they should be restored to the same community.62 C38 Headda abbas de propria hereditate Dogedeswe\a/llan, Tyrltun et Onnandu\n/, pro remedio animę suę et propinqui sui Heathoredi episcopi, Wigornensi ęcclesię dedit. Abbot Headda gave from his own hereditary property Dowdeswell, Tyrltun and Onnandune [Gloucs.], for the ransom of his own soul and of that of his kinsman Bishop Heathored, to the church of Worcester.63 C39 Denebertus episcopus cum sua familia terram quę Hereford dicitur uenerabili matronę Eansuuithę concessit ea conditione, ut semper Wigornensis ęcclesię indumenta innouaret, mundaret et augeret, et post finem uitę ipsius terram redderet. 61 ECWM

no. 238. See also S 154 (and C29), a grant of privileges for Kempsey to the Balthhun named as abbot of Kempsey in next entry. See also C47, a lease of Kempsey to a later bishop. 62 Summary of S 1262 (LW; undated), although there Balthhun is priest, not abbot; in the charter Barnsley is leased for two lives and Colesborne for three. See also previous entry and C43. 63 Summary of S 1413 (LW, undated), omitting the detail that Headda had granted the land to his descendants in priestly orders, with ultimate reversion to Worcester. The entry is placed in Deneberht’s time because it refers to the soul of his predecessor.

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Susan Kelly Bishop Deneberht with his community granted the land called Harvington [Worcs.] to the venerable matron Eanswith, on this condition, that she should always repair, clean and increase the clothing of the church of Worcester, and after the end of her life she should give back the land.64 C40 Ceoluulfus rex Merciorum uicos Rippel, Stretford, Deilesford, quos antecessores eius liberauerant, Deneberto pontificante, Wigornensi ęcclesię liberauit. Ceolwulf, king of the Mercians, freed the vills of Ripple [Worcs.], Stratford [upon Avon, Warwicks.], Daylesford [Gloucs.], which his predecessors had freed, while Deneberht was bishop, for the church of Worcester.65 C41 Wiglaf rex Merciorum Northheanbyrig anno dominicę incarnationis .dccc. xxxvi. Heaberto pontificante, Uuigornensi ęcclesię liberauit. Wiglaf, king of the Mercians, freed Hanbury, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 836, while Heahberht was bishop, for the church of Worcester.66 C42 Beorhtuulfus rex Merciorum, ut se inimici homines docuerunt, Uuigornensi ęcclesię abstulit uillas Stoltun, Wassaburnan, Cineburhgintun, Taterinctun, Codesuueallan. Sed Heabertus episcopus anno dominicę incarnationis .dccc. xl. illas ab eo pretio redemit. Berhtwulf, king of the Mercians, as wicked men advised him, stole from the church of Worcester the vills of Stoulton [Worcs.], Little Washbourne [Gloucs.], Kemerton [Worcs.], Tæteringtun, Codesweallan [in Cutsdean, Gloucs.]. But Bishop Heahberht, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 840, redeemed them from him for a price.67 C43 Eodem anno idem rex Colesburnan liberauit. In the same year the same king freed Colesborne [Gloucs.].68

64 Summary

of S 1261 (HC). no. 59 (p. 45, Daylesford; p. 100, Ripple). 66 Summary of S 190 (original, LW), which does not explicitly say that Hanbury was subject to Worcester. 67 Summary of S 192 (LW, WC). 68 ECWM no. 66. Colesborne was leased to Balthhun for three lives by Bishop Deneberht, so could have returned to Worcester c.840 (see S 1262; also C37 above). 65 ECWM

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Worcester’s Own History C44 Monasterium etiam Breodunense anno dominicę incarnationis .dcccxli. Heaberto pontificante liberauit. Also he freed the minster at Bredon [Worcs.], in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 841, while Heahberht was bishop.69 C45 Eodem anno uiculum unius mansionis quem ruricoli Myttun appellant, ad uictum Uuigornensis familię, dedit et liberauit. In the same year he granted and freed the vill of one hide which the countryfolk call Mitton [Worcs.], for the sustenance of the Worcester community.70 C46 Idem rex terram Wudatun anno dominicę incarnationis .dccc.xliiii. et Stretford anno dominicę incarnationis .dccc.xlv., quas predecessores eius liberauerant, liberauit. The same king freed the land at Wudatun [? Wootton Wawen, Warwicks.] in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 844 and Stratford [upon Avon, Warwicks.] in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 845, which his predecessors had freed.71 C47 Familia Wigornensis ęcclesię suo episcopo Alhhuno monasterium Kemeseg et .xii. manentes de terris Breodunensis monasterii, anno dominicę incarnationis .dccc.xlvii., prestitit, ea conditione ut post finem uitę suę ac unius heredis ipsius sine contradictione illis restituerentur, ipseque heres unoquoque anno quamdiu [MS: quandiu] uiueret, die anniuersarii eiusdem episcopi, .iii. cupas ceruisa plenas et .iii. dolia brytannicę ceruisę quorum unus sit melle dulcoratum, iii. modios medonis, iii. uaccas crassas, .vi. uerueces, .vi. pernas, .lx. formaticos, .dc. panes mundos, .iiii. grossos cereos et saginam ad omnes lichinos, monasterii Wigornensi familię persolueret. The community of the church of Worcester leased to its bishop, Alhhun, the minster at Kempsey [Worcs.] and twelve hides from the lands of Bredon

69 Summary

of S 193 (lost ss, LW, WC). of S 195 (HC). Mitton was lost in the eleventh century and regained by Ealdred (Hemingi Chartularium, ed. Hearne, II, 395). 71 The Stratford grant is S 198 (LW), dated 845. The transaction of 844 involving Wudatun (probably Wootton Wawen) has not left any other trace. According to a list of royal benefactions in HC (see p. 123 above), Wuttun was given to Worcester by King Wiglaf (827 × 829, 830 × 840). For a link with King Æthelbald, see S 94 (and C6). 70 Summary

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Susan Kelly minster, in AD 847, on that condition that, after the end of his life and of a single heir, they should be restored to them without argument, and the heir himself, every year as long as he lives, on the day of the anniversary of the same bishop, shall render three vats full of ale and three casks of British ale, of which one shall be sweetened with honey, three measures of mead, three fattened cows, six wethers, six hams, sixty cheeses, 600 good quality loaves, four fat wax candles, and lard for all the lamps, to the community of the minster of Worcester.72 C48 Burhredus rex Merciorum uillas Esin, Pultun, Eadboldingtun, Beonetleah, Beorendeslea, anno dominicę incarnationis .dccc.lv., Alhhuno pontificante, Wigornensi ęcclesię liberauit. Burgred, king of the Mercians, freed for the church of Worcester the vills at Eisey [Wilts.], Poulton [Wilts.], Ablington [Gloucs.], Bentley [Worcs.], Barnsley [Gloucs.], in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 855, while Alhhun was bishop.73 C49 Eodem anno Bloccelea dedit et liberauit. In the same year he granted and freed Blockley.74 C50 Ab eodem rege idem episcopus uillam quę uocatur Eatun iuxta flumen Cearwealle ab ipso rege prius liberatam emit et Wigornensi familię dedit. The same bishop purchased from the same king the vill called Eaton by the river Cherwell [Oxon.], previously freed by that same king, and he gave it to the Worcester community.75 C51 Humbrihtus comes regis Burhredi Rippel Wigornę ęcclesię iniuste abstulit, sed idem rex, Alhhuno allaborante, restituit. Humberht, comes of King Burgred, wrongly stole Ripple [Worcs.] from

72 ECWM

no. 253. A single-sheet charter extant in 1643 (dated 844) described a grant by Bishop Alhhun to the Worcester community of thirty hides at Kempsey and twelve at Bredon, originally granted by King Coenwulf (S 1833). This may imply that the arrangement between bishop and community was more complicated than a simple lease. For an earlier lease of Kempsey to Bishop Deneberht, see C36. 73 Summary of S 206 (LW, HC). 74 Summary of S 207 (LW, WC). 75 Summary of S 210 (LW), a grant to Bishop Alhhun.

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Worcester’s Own History the church of Worcester, but the same king, through the efforts of Alhhun, restored it.76 C52 Eadem uice regina eius Eansuuitha uicum qui Crombe dicitur ut ibi suum haberet uaccarium, Wigornensi familię dedit. At the same time his queen Eanswith gave to the Worcester community the vill called Crombe, so that it could have its dairy-farm there.77 C53 Ceoluulfus rex Merciorum, Werefritho episcopo et familia Wigornensi petente, totam parrochiam Huuicciorum a pastu equorum regis et eorum qui eos ducunt et ab omnibus aliis grauibus consuetudinibus, anno dominicę incarnationis .dccclxxv., absoluit. Ceolwulf (II), king of the Mercians, at the request of Bishop Wærferth and the Worcester community, exempted the whole diocese of the Hwicce from the feeding of the king’s horses and of those who lead them, and from all other heavy burdens, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 875.]78 C54 Alfredo rege regnante, abbas et tota familia monasterii quod Beorclea uocatur Ætheredo subregulo Merciorum uicum Stoce [MS: altered to Stoke] nuncupatur iuxta Westbyriam pro libertate sui monasterii in perpetuam hereditatem dederunt. Quem ipse, rege Ælfredo teste, Wigornensi ęcclesię restituit, anno dominicę [incarnationis] .dccc.lxxxiii., Werefritho pontificante. While King Alfred was reigning, the abbot and the whole of the community of the minster called Berkeley granted in perpetual inheritance to Æthelred, sub-king of the Mercians, the vill called Stoke by Westbury [i.e. Stoke Bishop in Westbury-on-Trym, Gloucs.], in return for the liberty of their minster. He restored it to the church of Worcester, with the witness of King Alfred, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 883, while Wærferth was bishop.79

76 ECWM

no. 257. On Ripple see also S 52, and C22, C40. no. 260, noting that Burgred married Æthelswith in 852; possibly Eanswith was an earlier wife, or the name/identification is an error. This may be Croome, Worcs. An Eanswith was the beneficiary c.814 of a lease of Harvington, about six miles from Croome (S 1261; C39). 78 Summary of S 215 (LW), quietly omitting the bishop’s counter-gift of a four-life lease of Daylesford. 79 Summary of S 218 (lost ss, LW; Old English), although the estate at Stoke Bishop was actually leased to a layman for three lives in 883, with ultimate reversion to Worcester. 77 ECWM

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Susan Kelly C55 Ælfredus rex Angulsaxonum et Ætheredus subregulus, Werefritho episcopo petente, ad ęcclesiam Wigornensem, in Lundonia unam curtem, a strata publica usque ad murum eiusdem ciuitatis, anno dominicę incarnationis .dccc.lxxxix., dederunt et ab omni regali seruitute et exactione liberauerunt. Alfred, king of the Anglo-Saxons, and Æthelred, sub-king, at the request of Bishop Wærferth, gave to the church of Worcester a tenement in London, between the public street and the wall of that city, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 889, and they freed it from all royal service and tax.80 C56 Eodem anno dux Athulfus, regis Kenulfi propinquus, vicos qui Uptun et Wenlond appellantur, consentientibus Ætheredo et Ægelfleda Merciorum dominis, de hereditate eiusdem regis Kenulfi, sub testimonio regis Ælfredi, Werefritho pontificante, Wigornensi ęcclesię dedit. In the same year Æthelwulf dux, kinsman of King Coenwulf, gave to the church of Worcester the vills which are called Upton and Welland, with the consent of Æthelred and Æthelflæd, lords of the Mercians, concerning the hereditary property of the same King Coenwulf, with the witness of King Alfred, while Wærferth was bishop.81 C57 Earedus et eius coniunx Tunðrytha Hymeltun, Dunhamstede, Werefritho pontificante, Wigornensi ęcclesię, anno dominicę incarnationis .dccc.xcvi., dederunt. Eared and his wife Tunthryth gave Himbleton, Dunhampstead [Worcs.], while Wærferth was bishop, to the church of Worcester, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 896.82 C58 Quidam prepotens minister Cuthulfus nomine terram quę Mearnecliue uocatur, Ælfredo rege consentiente et Ætheredo Merciorum duce permittente, ad uictum dedit Wigornensis ęcclesię. A certain powerful thegn named Cuthwulf gave the land called Marlcliff

80 Summary

of S 346 (LW), omitting name of property. partly drawn from the dispute-settlement S 1442 (LW, WC), which is dated 897, not 889. Although S 1442 is understood to refer to Upton in Blockley, the association here between Uptun and Welland shows that the scribe was thinking of Upton on Severn. Listed ECWM no. 267. 82 ECWM no. 269. See S 219 (AD 884): Ealdorman Æthelred gave five hides at Himbleton to Æthelwulf. 81 Information

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Worcester’s Own History [in Cleeve Prior, Worcs.], with the consent of King Alfred and the permission of Æthelred, ealdorman of the Mercians, for the sustenance of the church of Worcester.83 C59 Æthelstanus rex totius Albionis uicum qui uocatur Austan, ad piscium utilitatem capiendorum, episcopo Kineuuoldo petente, ualde beniuolo animo Wigornensi ęcclesię, anno dominicę incarnationis .dccc.xxix., restituit. Æthelstan, king of the whole of Albion, restored the vill called Aust, for use as a fishery, at the request of Bishop Cenwold, most happily to the church of Worcester, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 929.84 C60 Idem rex Ælfiðecirce Wigornensi ęcclesię restituit et anno dominicę incarnationis .dcccc.xxx. liberauit. The same king restored Alvechurch [Worcs.] to the church of Worcester and in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 930 freed it.]85 C61 Eduuius rex Anglorum uiculum cui uocabulum Fepsetnatun, Kinewaldo pontificante, ad uictum Wigornensis familię, anno dominicę incarnationis .dccc.lvi., dedit. Eadwig, king of the English, gave the vill named Phepson [Worcs.] while Cenwold was bishop, for the sustenance of the Worcester community, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 956.86 C62 Leofricus Merciorum comes et eius coniunx Godgiua uillam Wlfordilea nominatam, quę diu monasterio fuerat ablata, petente beatę memorię Wlstano episcopo, tunc decano, Wigornensi ecclesię restituerunt, et aliam quę Blacwealle dicitur et unam curtem in ciuitate Wigorna ad uictum monachorum dederunt. Leofric, earl of the Mercians, and his wife Godgifu, restored to the church 83 Summary

of postscript to S 222 (HC; undated). In the episcopal list in HC (see p. 123) Bishop Wærferth is said to have transferred Marlcliff to the Worcester community (Hemingi Chartularium, ed. Hearne, II, 390, and cf. I, 278). 84 Summary of S 401 (LW, HC), repeating some of the wording of the charter. S 401 is a grant, but the transaction is presented here as a restoration (for Aust see also C2, C6). 85 A highly succinct version of S 428 (LW, WC), which concerns a number of estates later associated with the Worcester manor of Alvechurch (see also C20). 86 Summary of S 633 (HC).

147

Susan Kelly of Worcester the vill named Wolverley [Worcs.], which had long before been stolen from the monastery, at the request of Bishop Wulfstan of blessed memory, then dean. And they gave another vill called Blackwell [Worcs.] and a tenement in the city of Worcester, for the sustenance of the monks.87 C63 Villam quę Teodintun uocatur Aldredus Wigorciorum episcopus, anno ab incarnatione Domini .[m]l., a quodam regis Eadwardi ministro, Aki nomine, .viii. marcis auri emit et eam curtemque unam in ciuitate Wigorna ad illam pertinentem ad uictum et uestitum monachorum Wigorne degentium a Breodune penitus liberatam dedit. Ealdred, bishop of Worcester, in the year from the Lord’s incarnation 1050, purchased the vill called Teddington [Gloucs.] from a certain thegn of King Edward, named Aki, for 8 marks of gold, and he gave the vill and the city tenement for the sustenance and clothing of the monks dwelling in Worcester, entirely freed from Bredon.88 C64 Idem episcopus terram quę Hamtun uocatur, in Glauuornensi uicecomitatu sitam, .x. marcis auri de pecunia monasterii a Godwino regis Eadwardi ministro emit ipsamque ad uictum monachorum Wigornensium, cum consensu regis eiusdem, anno dominicę incarnationis .[m]lxi. tradidit. The same bishop purchased the land called Hampnett, located in Gloucestershire, for 10 marks of gold from the funds of the monastery, from Godwine, thegn of King Edward, and allocated it for the sustenance of the monks of Worcester, with the consent of the same king, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 1061.89 C65 Wlstanus Uuigornensis episcopus a Willelmo rege Anglorum terram quę Cullaclif nuncupatur, anno dominicę incarnationis .[m]lxvii., acquisiuit, eamque Wigornensi ęcclesię dedit. Ab eodem etiam rege uillam quę uocatur Ælfestun acquisiuit et anno dominicę incarnationis .[m]lxxxix. eam, cum molendino in Tapenhala sito, eidem ęcclesię dedit. Ecclesiam quoque sitam in uilla quę nominatur Westbyria, anno dominicę incarnationis .[m]xciii. usibus

87 See

S 1232 (HC; undated), which has no reference to a restoration (for an earlier Wolverley entry, see C7). 88 See S 1408 (HC; undated), which also refers to Alstone. 89 S 1408 (HC) records Ealdred’s purchase of Hampnett from an unnamed vendor and his grant of the estate to the monks.

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Worcester’s Own History monachorum Wigornensium concessit, sed eam successor illius Samson episcopus abstulit. Wulfstan [II], bishop of Worcester, acquired from William, king of the English, the land called Cookley [in Wolverley, Worcs.], in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 1067, and gave it to the church of Worcester. From the same king he acquired the vill called Alveston [Warwicks.] and in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 1089 he gave it to the same church, with the mill located in Tapenhall [Worcs.]. He also conceded the church located in the vill called Westbury [on-Trym, Gloucs.] in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 1093, for the use of the monks of Worcester, but his successor Bishop Samson seized it.90

90 Cookley:

see Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I (1066–1087), ed. D. Bates (Oxford, 1998), no. 345. Alveston, Tapenhall, Westbury: EEA 33, nos. 8, 9, 11.

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6 Worcester and the English Reception of Marianus Scotus C. Philipp E. Nothaft

A bold proposal Chronicles past and present have derived much of their allure from the threefold promise of clarity, objectivity and reliability inherent in their structural format, which treats the chronological sequence of events as the very bedrock of history. The psychological benefits of this format are easily compromised, however, where chronicles are found to disagree with each other, or where the year counts used in different sources seem to resist synchronisation. Attempts to overcome these pitfalls by employing the tools of technical chronology have a long history that reaches back to antiquity.1 In the early decades of the twelfth century, the scribes at Worcester priory had the opportunity to contemplate a particularly far-reaching attempt in this direction as they laboured to augment and continue the famous Chronicon (or Chronica) by Marianus Scotus (1028–82/87), an Irish monk who had reviewed and revised the history of the world while living in voluntary enclosure in a cell in Mainz.2

1 For



general orientation, see C. P. E. Nothaft, ‘Chronology’, in Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World, ed. C. Kallendorf, published online March 2017, http://dx.doi. org/10.1163/9789004271296_enlo_B9789004271029_0147 (accessed 5 April 2020). 2 On Marianus Scotus and his Chronicon, see B. MacCarthy, The Codex PalatinoVaticanus, no. 830 (Texts, Translations and Indices) (Dublin, 1892); A.-D. von den Brincken, ‘Marianus Scottus: Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der nicht veröffentlichten Teile seiner Chronik’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 17 (1961), 191–238; von den Brincken, ‘Marianus Scottus als Universalhistoriker iuxta veritatem Evangelii’, in Die Iren und Europa im früheren Mittelalter, ed. H. Löwe, 2 vols. (Stuttgart, 1982), II, 970–1009; Sigebert von Gembloux: Liber decennalis, ed. J. Wiesenbach (Weimar, 1986), pp. 94–102; P. Verbist, ‘Reconstructing the Past: The Chronicle of Marianus Scottus (d. 1082)’, Peritia 16 (2002), 284–334; P. Verbist, Duelling with the Past: Medieval Authors and the Problem of the Christian

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Worcester and the English Reception of Marianus Scotus At the core of Marianus’s Chronicon was the careful elaboration and defence of two interlocking chronological arguments. The first of these concerned the number of years between the creation of the world and the incarnation of Christ, which according to Marianus was 230 years higher than the 3952 years that Bede had counted on the basis of the Hebraica veritas of the Old Testament. The other argument entailed a substantial correction to the accepted number of years between the incarnation and the present, as based on the standard era ab incarnatione introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the sixth century.3 According to Marianus, this interval had to be increased by no fewer than twenty-two years, as Christ’s incarnation and birth really fell in the year we know as 22 BC. The technical foundation for both these proposed changes was supplied by the medieval computus and its 532-year Easter cycle, which resulted from combining two shorter calendrical cycles of nineteen and twenty-eight years. The nineteen-year ‘lunar’ cycle governed the recurring correlations between a given date in the Julian calendar and the concomitant age of the moon. The twenty-eight-year ‘solar’ cycle did the same for Julian dates and days of the week, while also predicting each year’s position within the Julian pattern of leap years. From the vantage point of a chronicler such as Marianus, the special utility of these cycles lay in the rigorous limits they imposed on the intervals between years whose calendrical parameters were independently known. In the case of Christ’s crucifixion, the accepted parameters demanded that it occurred on Friday, 25 March, when the moon was full on its fifteenth day. For such a combination of data to arise, the year of the crucifixion had to have been year 13, 260, 355 or 450 of the 532-year cycle. The only one of these options to come anywhere close to AD 34, the commonly accepted year of Christ’s Passion, was year 13, which corresponded to AD 12 of the Dionysiac era. A twenty-two-year shift of Christ’s year of incarnation, from AD 1 to 22 BC, seemed to be the logical consequence of this finding. Marianus worked strenuously to make this conclusion historically plausible, as he collated numerous sources and deployed further calendrical data in order



Era, c.990–1135 (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 85–146; W. Baran-Kozłowski, ‘Chronicon by Marianus Scotus – between Computistic and Hagiography: World Chronicles and the Search for a Suitable Chronology of History’, Quaestiones medii aevi novae 13 (2008), 313–47; W. Baran-Kozłowski, Kronika świata, Mariana Szkota: studium źródłoznawcze (Poznań, 2009); R. Gamberini, ‘Il tempo e la storia in Mariano Scoto’, in Le sens du temps: actes du VIIe Congrès du Comité International de Latin Médieval/ The Sense of Time: Proceedings of the 7th Congress of the International Medieval Latin Committee, ed. P. Bourgain and J.-Y. Tilliette (Geneva, 2017), pp. 601–17. 3 On the background, see G. Declercq, ‘Dionysius Exiguus and the Introduction of the Christian Era’, Sacris Erudiri 41 (2002), 165–246; A. A. Mosshammer, The Easter Computus and the Origins of the Christian Era (Oxford, 2008).

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C. Philipp E. Nothaft to trace down the twenty-two years that, on his hypothesis, had remained unaccounted for in the existing chronicles.4 Aside from its technical content, Marianus’s Chronicon is also remarkable for its state of transmission. What can be regarded as the ‘master’ or ‘author’s copy’ of the entire work still survives as Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Pal. lat. 830 (= V), a quarto-codex of 170 leaves.5 Although Marianus’s own hand features prominently in this manuscript, most of the actual Chronicon was the scribal work of an amanuensis, whom he had tasked with producing a fair copy up to the year AD 532. From the glosses left by this amanuensis, we learn that he, too, was an Irishman and that he had begun working on the manuscript by the end of June 1072.6 Marianus later augmented his copy of the text with an array of chronological lists and computistical tables that take up the first twenty-five leaves of the completed volume. He also picked up where his assistant had left off and extended the third and final book of the Chronicon from AD 532 to AD 1073. An entry for AD 1076 was added to serve as a chronological capstone, by highlighting that year’s cyclical relation to the year of Christ’s Resurrection (12 + 2 × 532 = 1076).7

4 For





the details of this argument, see C. P. E. Nothaft, ‘An Eleventh-Century Chronologer at Work: Marianus Scottus and the Quest for the Missing Twenty-Two Years’, Speculum 88 (2013), 457–82. 5 A digital reproduction is available at https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/ bav_pal_lat_830 (accessed 5 April 2020). 6 For more on these glosses, see B. Güterbock, ‘Aus irischen Handschriften in Turin und Rom’, Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der indogermanischen Sprachen 33 (1895), 86–105 (pp. 89–100); B. Ó Cuív, ‘The Irish Marginalia in the Codex Palatino-Vaticanus No. 830’, Éigse 24 (1990), 45–67; M. Clarke, ‘Merger and Contrast between Latin and Medieval Irish’, in Code-Switching in Medieval Ireland and England: Proceedings of a Workshop on Code-Switching in the Medieval Classroom, Utrecht 29th May, 2015, Münchner Forschungen zur historischen Sprachwissenschaft 18, ed. M. Ó Flaithearta, assisted by L. B. Nooij (Bremen, 2018), pp. 1–32. 7 See V, fol. 165v, and the edition of bk. III by G. Waitz, in MGH SS 5 (Hanover, 1844), p. 560. Marianus’s preface uses AD 1076 as annus praesens, whereas ch. 8 of bk. I was apparently written in 1072. There, the current year is identified as the 14th year of the indictional cycle and the 13th year of the nineteen-year lunar cycle. The indictional number points to 1072, but this should have been the ninth year of the nineteen-year cycle. Since the year of the nineteen-year cycle (xiiio) was written on top of an erasure, it is likely that the passage was corrected ex post to match the year 1076 mentioned in the preface. See V, fols. 27v and 36v, and the edition of the preface and bk. I.8 in von den Brincken, ‘Marianus Scottus’ [1961], pp. 215, 230. For further discussion, see Baran-Kozłowski, ‘Chronicon’, pp. 332–5; Baran-Kozłowski, Kronika świata, pp. 57–62.

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Worcester and the English Reception of Marianus Scotus

From Mainz to Worcester The circumstances under which Marianus Scotus’s Chronicon first arrived in England are known thanks to William of Malmesbury, who credits this arrival to the computistical interests of Robert, bishop of Hereford from 29 December 1079 to his death on 26 June 1095. The relevant passage in William’s Gesta Pontificum Anglorum is worth quoting in full: Soon afterwards the see [of Hereford] was taken over by Robert of Lorraine. He built in Hereford a church rounded in form, modelled, so far as he could, on the basilica at Aachen. He was highly skilled in all the liberal arts, and in particular had gone into the abacus, the reckoning of time by the moon, and the course of the stars in the sky. At that time there was at Mainz an enclosed monk called Marinianus [sic]. In his long seclusion he had had the leisure to study the chronographers, and he was the first or only man to notice the discrepancy of the cycles of Dionysius Exiguus as compared with the gospel truth. He therefore went over the years from the beginning of the era, one by one, and added in the twenty-two years lacking in the Dionysian cycles; he then proceeded to compose a long and wordy chronicle. Robert admired this book beyond all others, marvellously rivalled it, and had it brought to England. In the end, captivated by Marinianus’s genius, he produced a compendium of what he had written on such a large scale, so finely that the abbreviation is counted more valuable than the original gigantic tome.8

William refers to Robert of Hereford as Rotbertus Lotharingus and, in doing so, drops a hint as to his continental origins.9 One question his account leaves unanswered, however, is how Robert’s admiration for Marianus’s achievement first developed. If he had seen the text while still on the continent, this must have happened during the relatively short time window between 8 WM,



GP iv.164.1–2 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom with Thomson, I, 459). For the Latin text, see ibid., I, 458: ‘Non multo post accepit sedem illam Rotbertus Lotharingus, qui ibi aecclesiam tereti edificauit scemate, Aquensem basilicam pro modo imitatus suo. Omnium liberalium artium peritissimus, abacum precipue et lunarem compotum et caelestium cursum astrorum rimatus. Erat tunc temporis Marinianus monachus apud Magontiam inclusus, qui longo solitudinis otio chronographos scrutatus, dissonantiam ciclorum Dionisii Exigui contra euangelicam ueritatem uel primus uel solus animaduertit. Itaque, ab initio seculi annos singulos recensens, uiginti duos annos, qui circulis predictis deerant, superaddidit, magnam et diffusissimam cronicam facere adortus. Eum librum Rotbertus miratus unice, emulatus mirifice, Angliae inuehendum curavit. Denique captus Marimani ingenio, quicquid ille largius dixerat in artum contrahens, deflorauit adeo splendide ut magis ualere uideatur defloratio quam ingentis illius uoluminis diffusio.’ 9 See English Episcopal Acta 7: Hereford 1079–1234, ed. J. Barrow (Oxford, 1993), p. xxxiii; J. Barrow, ‘A Lotharingian in Hereford: Bishop Robert’s Reorganisation of the Church of Hereford 1079–1095’, in Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology at Hereford, ed. D. Whitehead, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 15 (Leeds, 1995), pp. 29–49 (p. 31).

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C. Philipp E. Nothaft the Chronicon’s first completion c.1073 and Robert’s arrival in England at an unknown date before 29 December 1079. Perhaps one should not exclude that Robert’s decision to have the Chronicon brought across the Channel was based only on hearsay, without him having seen an actual copy of Marianus’s work. Another open question concerns the relationship between the codex that was transferred from the continent at the bishop’s initiative and the copy of Marianus’s Chronicon in London, BL, Cotton MS Nero C. v, fols. 3r–161v (= N), which appears to date from the late eleventh century.10 Its terminus post quem follows from the continuations to the Chronicon proper in V. The first of these runs to AD 1082 and was evidently still added by Marianus’s own hand. A version of this continuation is also present in N, which starts to diverge from V only from 1083 onwards. Its entries for the years 1083–7 (fols. 158vb–159ra) cover the Domesday Survey (1086) and the death of William I (1087), which suggests that they were added to the manuscript in England. Other parts of the Chronicon may well have been copied south of the Channel, especially considering that all of the hands involved, including the one responsible for the second continuation, display continental features. Scholars have yet to reach unanimity on the question of N’s origins and early history. The view that this codex was produced in Marianus’s vicinity, at the monastery of St Alban in Mainz, has been defended most forcefully by Wojciech Baran-Kozłowski, who assigns to it a date between 1082 and 1086. He argues that the continuation for 1083–7 was added to N after its transfer from the continent to Hereford, quite possibly by none other than Bishop Robert himself.11 A more complex position was taken in 2001 by Michael Gullick, according to whom the continuation on fols. 158vb–159ra is due to the same scribe who also copied the preliminary material on fols. 5r–26v.12 Having spotted the same handwriting on the dorse of a Hereford charter dated 1085,13 Gullick constructed a scenario according to which it was this particular scribe who went to the continent in 1086 and subsequently returned with manuscript N to Hereford, where he added the entries for 1086

10 A

digital reproduction (with bibliography) is available at http://www.bl.uk/ manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?index=0&ref=Cotton_MS_Nero_C_V (accessed 5 April 2020). See the description in JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, lxiv–lxv). 11 Baran-Kozłowski, ‘Chronicon’, pp. 325–7; Baran-Kozłowski, Kronika świata, pp. 71–9. See also H. Gneuss and M. Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (Toronto and Buffalo, 2014), p. 268. 12 M. Gullick, ‘The English-Owned Manuscripts of the Collectio Lanfranci (s. xi/ xii)’, in The Legacy of M. R. James: Papers from the 1995 Cambridge Symposium, ed. L. Dennison (Donington, 2001), pp. 99–117 (p. 104). In this he agrees with JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, lxv). 13 This charter is no. 2 in English Episcopal Acta 7, ed. Barrow, p. 1. Note, however, that Barrow dates the endorsement to the first half of the twelfth century.

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Worcester and the English Reception of Marianus Scotus and 1087.14 More recently, Gleb Schmidt has read Gullick’s evidence in quite a different way, arguing that the entirety of N was copied in Hereford from a continental exemplar.15 Besides its connection with Hereford, there are clear signs that N was at some later stage kept at Worcester priory. These include chronographic additions to the Easter tables on fols. 19v–26r that mention Bishop Wulfstan’s ordination for AD 1062 (fol. 26r) and his obit for AD 1095 (fol. 19v).16 Wulfstan is known to have been a close friend of Robert of Hereford, which may be enough to explain how Marianus’s Chronicon was first introduced into Worcester.17 That a copy had already entered the library prior to Wulfstan’s death in 1095 is strongly suggested by the testimony of Orderic Vitalis, who tells us that the bishop put a monk named John in charge of writing a continuation of Marianus’s work.18 Our most important witness to this continuation survives as OCCC MS 157 (= C), which was created in several phases by a whole team of scribes.19 It contains the preface and first two 14 Gullick,

‘The English-Owned Manuscripts’, pp. 104–5. Schmidt, ‘Le récit sur le recensement de 1086 et la tradition manuscrite de l’Excerptio Roberti de Chronica Mariani’, in Le sens du temps, ed. Bourgain and Tilliette, pp. 221–34 (pp. 226–8). 16 E. A. McIntyre, ‘Early-Twelfth-Century Worcester Cathedral Priory, with Special Reference to the Manuscripts there’ (unpublished D.Phil thesis, University of Oxford, 1978), pp. 181, 212. An earlier hypothesis, according to which the whole manuscript was written in Worcester in the twelfth century, can no longer be maintained. For this older view, see for example A. G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c.700–1600 in The Department of Manuscripts, The British Library, 2 vols. (London, 1979), I, 103–4. 17 On the friendship between Robert and Wulfstan, see WM, GP iv.148.4, 165 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom with Thomson, I, 438–9, 458–61); WM, VW iii.21.1–2, iii.23.1–3, iii.24.1 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 140–1, 144–7); and the entry for AD 1095 in JW, Chron. s.a. 1095 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 74–5). 18 OV, HE iii.2.159–60 (ed. and trans. Chibnall, II, 186–9). 19 A. G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c.435–1600 in Oxford Libraries, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1984), I, 128–9; J. J. G. Alexander and E. Temple, Illuminated Manuscripts in Oxford College Libraries, the University Archives, and the Taylor Institution (Oxford, 1985), pp. 5–6; R. M. Thomson, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts of Corpus Christi College Oxford (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 82–3. The text from AD 450 has been critically edited by Darlington and McGurk. For additional information, see H. H. Howorth, ‘The Chronicle of John of Worcester, Previously Assigned to Florence of Worcester’, Archaeological Journal 73 (1916), 1–170; A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England c.550 to c.1307 (London, 1974), pp. 143–8; A. Gransden, ‘Cultural Transition at Worcester in the Anglo-Norman Period’, in Medieval Art and Architecture at Worcester Cathedral, ed. G. Popper, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 1 (Leeds, 1978), pp. 1–15 (pp. 6–8); McIntyre, ‘Early-Twelfth-Century Worcester’, pp. 173–93; M. Brett, ‘John of Worcester and his Contemporaries’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern, ed. R. H. C. Davis and J. M. WallaceHadrill (Oxford, 1981), pp. 101–26; M. Brett, ‘The Use of the Universal Chronicle at Worcester’, in L’Historiographie médiévale en Europe: actes du colloque organisé par la 15 G.

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C. Philipp E. Nothaft books of the Chronicon in basically the same form as found in N, which is likely to have been C’s exemplar.20 The same is true to a lesser degree of the chronological lists and Easter tables that precede the chronicle proper, which in C are augmented by a copious variety of further material: a history of Worcester priory, lists of Hebrew judges, kings and priests, episcopal lists for each English diocese, genealogies for the kings of Anglo-Saxon England, and so on.21 For the Chronicon’s third book, the Worcester continuation follows Marianus faithfully up to the year AD 450. After this point, the narrative is enriched with material from other sources, which turn the chronicle into a work focused on English rather than continental or world history. The resulting CC was clearly a work in progress and subject to repeated revision. Its entries for 1128 to 1131 were at some stage erased and replaced with a new extension, which reached its conclusion no earlier than August 1140, where the manuscript now ends. The scribe responsible for this update has been identified as John of Worcester, the monk mentioned by Orderic Vitalis. From the occurrences of his hand in C and other Worcester manuscripts it is possible to infer a period of activity between the mid-1120s and c.1140.22 This is not irreconcilable with the idea that John’s time in Worcester overlapped with Wulfstan’s episcopacy, especially if we take into account Orderic’s testimony that John entered the priory when he was still a boy.23 However, an obit note in C for the year 1118 seems to attribute the work to a certain

Fondation Européenne de la Science au Centre de Recherches Historiques et Juridiques de l’Université Paris I du 29 mars au 1er avril 1989, ed. J.-P. Genet (Paris, 1991), pp. 277–85; R. R. Darlington and P. McGurk, ‘The “Chronicon ex Chronicis” of “Florence” of Worcester and its Use of Sources for English History before 1066’, ANS 5 (1983), 185–96; The Winchcombe and Coventry Chronicles: Hitherto Unnoticed Witnesses to the Work of John of Worcester, ed. and trans. P. A. Hayward, 2 vols. (Tempe, AZ, 2010), I, 63–98; J. Collard, ‘Henry I’s Dream in John of Worcester’s Chronicle (Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 157) and the Illustration of Twelfth-Century English Chronicles’, Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010), 105–25; R. A. Maxwell, ‘Visual Argument and the Interpretation of Dreams in the Chronicle of John of Worcester’, The Medieval Chronicle 8 (2014), 233–69; L. Cleaver, ‘Autograph History Books in the Twelfth Century’, in Writing History in the Anglo-Norman World: Manuscripts, Makers and Readers, c.1066–1250, ed. L. Cleaver and A. Worm, Writing History in the Middle Ages 6 (York, 2018), pp. 93–112 (pp. 100–2); L. Cleaver, Illuminated History Books in the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1272 (Oxford, 2018), pp. 34–35, 58–70, 159–162. 20 That N could have been the basis for C was denied by V. I. J. Flint, ‘The Date of the Chronicle of “Florence” of Worcester’, Revue Bénédictine 86 (1976), 115–19 (p. 116), but her arguments are weak and partly rested on the incorrect assumption that N only originated in Worcester in the twelfth century. 21 JW, Chron. (ed. McGurk, III, lxv–lxvii); A. E. Lawrence-Mathers, ‘John of Worcester and the Science of History’, Journal of Medieval History 39 (2013), 255–74 (at pp. 261–4). 22 Flint, ‘The Date’, p. 117. On John’s hand, see also McIntyre, ‘Early-Twelfth-Century Worcester’, pp. 45–9. 23 OV, HE iii.2.159 (ed. and trans. Chibnall, II, 186–7).

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Worcester and the English Reception of Marianus Scotus Florence of Worcester, stating that ‘His meticulous learning and scholarly labours have made this chronicle of chronicles outstanding among all others’ (‘Huius subtili scientia et studiosi laboris industria preeminent cunctis hec chronicarum chronica’).24 One conceivable solution to this conundrum would be to say that Florence had been in charge of the project before John was old enough to take over.25 Alternatively, it may be that the whole chronicle ‘was written by John using material collected by the assiduous Florence’.26 The magnificently illuminated manuscript C may be viewed as emblematic of the strong degree of acceptance that Marianus’s chronological system enjoyed at Worcester during the first four decades of the twelfth century. A striking example of this system being put to full usage is the CC’s entry for the death of Bishop Wulfstan in AD 1095, which juxtaposes a whole range of different eras and cycles: The revered and admirable Wulfstan … died on the night of the seventh day of the week, 18 January, about the middle of the seventh hour, in the 5299th year from the day of Creation, following the undoubted calculation of holy scripture, the 529th year of the ninth great cycle, the 476th year of the ninth cycle from the beginning of the world, the 1084th year from the Passion of Our Lord on the Gospel reckoning, the 1066th year according to Bede’s chronicle, the 1061st year according to Dionysius, the 745th year from the coming of the English, the 498th year from the coming of St Augustine, the 103rd year from the death of Archbishop Oswald, the 32nd year of the eleventh great paschal cycle, the 510th year of the tenth cycle since the beginning of the world, the fourth year of the second solar cycle, the third year of the bissextile cycle, the thirteenth year of the second decennovenal cycle, the tenth year of the second lunar cycle, the fifth of the hendecad, the third indiction, the eighteenth lustre of his life, the third year of the seventh lustre of his pontificate.27 24 JW,

Chron. s.a. 1118 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 142–3). The name chronica chronicarum derives from a note at the beginning of N, fol. 4v: ‘Meum nomen ut dignum cronica cronicarum cum pre illis servo verba evangelistarum. Nulla enim cronica conservat diem mensis solaris resurrectionis Christi iuxta historiam evangelii nisi ista sola’ (‘My name is “chronicle of chronicles”, as is appropriate, since I guard the words of the evangelists before these [other ones]. For this one here is the only chronicle to preserve the day of the solar month [on which occurred] the resurrection of Christ according to the Gospel account.’). 25 For the possibility that the Durham Historia de regibus Anglorum et Dacorum relied on a version of the CC to 1118, see D. Rollason, ‘Symeon of Durham’s Historia de Regibus Anglorum et Dacorum as a Product of Twelfth-Century Historical Workshops’, in The Long Twelfth-Century View of the Anglo-Saxon Past, ed. M. Brett and D. A. Woodman (London, 2015), pp. 95–111 (pp. 101, 108–9). 26 Gransden, ‘Cultural Transition’, p. 7. 27 JW, Chron. s.a. 1095 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 75). For the Latin text, see ibid., p. 74: ‘Vir uenerabilis et ualde admirabilis uite, Wlstanus … die mensis Ianuarii octauo decimo noctis septimi Sabbati, hora mediante septima, migrauit e seculo, anno a primo seculi die, certa scripture ratione diuine, .v. milia .ccxcix., noni

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C. Philipp E. Nothaft The ‘undoubted calculation of holy scripture’ (‘certa scripture ratione diuine’) for the years since the beginning of the world is the same as that proposed in the first book of Marianus Scotus’s Chronicon, where it is shown that the interval between Creation and Christ’s incarnation must have been 230 years larger than admitted by Bede.28 The incarnation in Marianus’s system accordingly takes place in the 4183rd year of the world, which is in turn equivalent to 22 BC. It follows that the year of the world of Wulfstan’s death must be calculated as 1095 + 22 + 4182 = 5299, as correctly stated in the CC. In the then-current 532-year Easter cycle, which began in AD 1064, this was the 32nd year, but the text here also takes into account that Marianus’s year of Creation, 5299 – 1095 = 4204 BC, would have been the 54th year of this cycle. If the cycle’s beginning is re-calibrated to align with the year of Creation, the year of Wulfstan’s death comes to coincide with the 511th year of its tenth iteration since the beginning of the world. The text instead gives the 510th year, no doubt because the author forgot to reckon inclusively: the Easter cycle from Creation starts fifty-three years later than the conventional Easter cycle, so the correct subtraction is 32 + 532 – 53 = 511. There is clear evidence to suggest that the CC was an important conduit for the dissemination of Marianus Scotus’s chronological ideas to other monastic centres in twelfth-century England. Four copies that all derive, directly or indirectly, from C bear witness to its spread to Abingdon (CCCC MS 92; London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 42), Bury St Edmunds (Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Bodley 297), Coventry (TCD MS 502) and Peterborough (CCCC MS 92).29 That the work was also available at Gloucester Abbey has been inferred from the existence of TCD MS 503, fols. 37r–113v, which contains a related but much briefer text known as the Chronicula. The entries up to 1123 were written by the same hand that is also responsible for the final extension in C, suggesting that this part of the Dublin manuscript is John of Worcester’s autograph. A different hand wrote the continuation for 1123–41, which contains material apparently derived from Gloucester sources. Since

magni anni quingentesimo uigesimo nono, noni uero magni anni ab initio seculi quadringentesimo septuagesimo sexto, a passione Domini secundum euangelium millesimo octogesimo quarto, iuxta chronicam Bede millesimo sexagesimo sexto, secundum Dionisium millesimo sexagesimo primo, ab adventu Anglorum in Brytanniam septingentesimo quadragesimo quinto, ab aduentu sancti Augustini quadringentesimo nonagesimo octauo, a transitu sancti Oswaldi archipresulis centesimo tertio, undecimi magni paschalis cycli tricesimo secundo, decimi uero a capite mundi quingentesimo decimo, secundi solaris cycli quarto, bissextilis cycli tertio, secundi decennouenalis cycli tertio decimo, secundi lunaris cycli decimo, endecadis quinto, indictionalis cycli tertio, lustro sue etatis octauo decimo, sui uero pontificatus septimi lustri anno tertio.’ 28 See the summary in Verbist, ‘Reconstructing the Past’, pp. 291–7. 29 On these manuscripts, see Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, pp. 106–8; JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xxxvi–lix).

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Worcester and the English Reception of Marianus Scotus this continuation depends in part on the corresponding entries in C, the hypothesis of a manuscript transfer from Worcester to Gloucester would entail that Gloucester Abbey also received a copy of the larger chronicle.30 Another effort to condense the contents of the CC is attested by two chronicles produced at the abbeys of Winchcombe (London, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius E. iv, fols. 1r–27v; s. XII2/4) and Coventry (London, BL, MS Harley 3775, fols. 34r–67v; s. XII2/2). For their narrative from the beginning of the world to 1122, they depend on a lost version of C’s third book, which abbreviated certain passages while augmenting others with new material. In common with C, this version of the Worcester chronicle counted years in two parallel columns, one for Marianus’s system (called the verior assertio or ‘truer statement’ of the years) and one for Dionysius Exiguus’s well-entrenched incarnation era.31 In the Winchcombe manuscript, the influence of the Irish monk and his Worcester continuators is also reflected more broadly, for instance by its inclusion of elaborate chronological tables on fols. 30vb–31v. They compare, for the start of each nineteen-year cycle from AD 1064 to 1595, the tallies of four different eras from the creation of the world and no fewer than six different eras from Christ’s incarnation, which are supposed to represent the Hebrew and Greek versions of the Old Testament and the diverging opinions of Eusebius, Bede and Dionysius. In each case, the era in question goes back to some conclusions Marianus Scotus established in bk. I.7 of his Chronicon.32 The comparative tables copied into the Winchcombe manuscript share a common ancestor with those placed ahead of the CC in C (on pp. 70–1; see Figs. 1 and 2) and the manuscript from Bury St Edmunds (Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Bodley 297, pp. 64–5), which follow the same basic layout and display the same numerical content. In all three cases, they precede a computistical table displaying the concurrents (a parameter for finding the day of the week in the Julian calendar) for a full 532-year cycle starting in AD 1064.33 Rather than using Dionysius’s era, the years at the beginning of each nineteen-year cycle are here designated according to separate year counts from the world’s beginning ‘as proved by reason’ (‘anni ab origine mundi rationabiliter probati’) and from the Lord’s incarnation ‘according to the Gospel’ (‘anni ab incarnatione Domini nostri secundum evangelium’), which correspond to the eras advocated by Marianus and his followers. The template for this table can be spotted in an addendum to the Chronicon in N (fol. 160v), where 30 Brett,

‘John of Worcester’, pp. 110, 123–4; Darlington and McGurk, ‘The “Chronicon ex Chronicis”’, p. 195; JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, lix–lxiv); and ibid. (ed. McGurk, III, lx–l); Cleaver, ‘Autograph History Books’, pp. 102–4; Winchcombe and Coventry, ed. Hayward, I, 73–6. 31 Winchcombe and Coventry, ed. Hayward, I, 3–9, 76–98, 169–82. 32 von den Brincken, ‘Marianus Scottus’ [1961], pp. 226–9; Verbist, ‘Reconstructing the Past’, pp. 291–5. 33 C, p. 71; London, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius E. iv, fol. 32r; Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Bodley 297, p. 65.

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Fig. 1: OCCC MS 157, p. 70. By permission of the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Fig. 2: OCCC MS 157, p. 71. By permission of the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

C. Philipp E. Nothaft the leftmost and rightmost columns use the numerical values of the Greek alphabet to display the Dionysiac Annus Domini and Bedan year ab origine mundi (AD + 3952) for the start of each line of the table. Greek letters were also employed in assigning to each of the 532 years one of thirty-five different symbols or key-letters, which could be used to enter a table on the facing page (fol. 161r).34 This contratabula made it possible to look up the configuration of the liturgical year associated with each key-letter, showing the dates of important mobile feast days and their intervals relative to immobile ones.35 For some reason, the work of adding to each concurrent in the main table its corresponding key-letter was left incomplete in N. As a reaction to this problem, the Winchcombe rendition omits the key-letters altogether and instead subjoins a separate key-letter table with facing contratabula, which uses a different layout and the Latin instead of the Greek alphabet (fols. 32v–33r). In C (Fig. 2) and the Bury manuscript, the table of concurrents appears in a stripped-down version that omits accompanying instructions and lists of parameters (epacts, paschal termini and regulars), while the following tables are completely absent. It is nonetheless very likely that all of the tabular material copied at Winchcombe originated in nearby Worcester, where manuscript N was kept. Numerous other works of chronography and history written in England drew on the CC and, by extension, on the Chronicon of Marianus Scotus without thereby also adapting their unusual chronological apparatus. Mention should here be made of the Cronica de Anglia, which covers the history of England from AD 162 to 1125. Extant only in London, BL, Cotton MS Vitellius C. viii, fols. 6v–21v (Rievaulx Abbey, s. XII4/4), this relatively brief text uses the conventional Dionysiac system of counting the years of Christ, but nevertheless exhibits many parallels with the CC and the smaller Chronicula. One of its distinguishing characteristics is the way it focuses on the founding dates of England’s dioceses and monasteries, perhaps with the intention of providing a guide to age disputes. According to recent research carried out by Hayward, the Cronica de Anglia was composed in Worcester between 1125 and 1137 and is indeed very likely to be another product of John of Worcester’s chronographic workshop.36 At Durham priory, some version of the CC was used as a source in compiling the Historia de regibus Anglorum et Dacorum completed c.1129,

34 A

later descendant of the tables in N, fols. 160v–161r appears on a fold-out page in Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.7.41, fol. 23r, which was copied in the middle of the twelfth century, presumably in Colchester. 35 On the principle of the key-letter and contratabula, see Robert Grosseteste’s Compotus, ed. A. Lohr and C. P. E. Nothaft (Oxford, 2019), pp. 242–7. 36 See P. A. Hayward, ‘The Cronica de Anglia in London, British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius C.VIII, fols. 6v–21v: Another Product of John of Worcester’s Historical Workshop’, Traditio 70 (2015), 159–236, which contains an edition of the text.

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Worcester and the English Reception of Marianus Scotus which again follows the conventional Dionysiac year count. The same is true of the annals added to the margins of an Easter table in Glasgow, University Library, MS Hunter 85 (known as Annales Lindisfarnenses et Dunhelmenses),37 even though many of its entries stem from an Easter table that originally prefaced Marianus’s Chronicon (V, fols. 18r–24v). These tables represent a complete Easter cycle of 532 years, but instead of numbering years continuously according to Dionysius Exiguus’s Anni Domini, Marianus restarted the count for each of the twenty-eight individual nineteen-year lunar cycles. Headings placed at the start of each page informed readers of the years of Dionysius’s era corresponding to the topmost line according to three different iterations of the 532-year cycle: the first from 1 BC to AD 531, the second from 532 to 1063, and the current and third from 1064 to 1595. Marianus’s modus operandi was guided by his intention of including in the margins of his table historical events for more than one iteration. The year to which an annalistic entry belonged could be inferred from its position on the page: the events from 1 BC to AD 531 were placed in the left margin, those for the following cycle from 532 to 1063 were found in the right one. The creators of N expanded this principle by adding in the right margin of the first page (fol. 19v) two entries for the accessions of Pope Gregory VII (Hiltdebrand) in 1073 and antipope Clement III (Wilbertus) in 1084. These are distinguished from the surrounding entries by the accompanying letter Γ (for ‘three’), which assigns them to the third iteration of the great cycle. The same principle is on display in C (pp. 56–69; see Fig. 3), where the right margin of Marianus’s Easter table sports several new entries, many of them relating to local and English history.38 Further instances of this creative copying of Marianus’s ‘paschal chronicle’ in twelfth-century England can be encountered in the following manuscripts: 1 H Durham, Cathedral Library, MS Hunter 100, fols. 27v–41r (Durham; s. XII1/4) 2 K Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk. 5. 32, fols. 61r–72v (s. XII1/4) 3 M Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Auct. F. 3. 14, fols. 120Br–132v (Malmesbury; s. XII1/4) 4 T Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O. 7. 41, fols. 9r–22v (Colchester[?]; s. XIImed) 5 V London, BL, Cotton MS Vespasian D. xix, fols. 71r–82r (s. XII)

37 W.

Levison, ‘Die “Annales Lindisfarnenses et Dunelmenses” kritisch untersucht und neu herausgegeben’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 17 (1961), 447–506 (pp. 458–506). On the Historia de regibus, see Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, pp. 119–22; Rollason, ‘Symeon of Durham’s Historia’. 38 C’s version of the tables was copied faithfully into Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Bodley 297, pp. 50–63, which contains the Bury recension of the CC.

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Fig. 3: OCCC MS 157, p. 56. By permission of the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Worcester and the English Reception of Marianus Scotus In the case of the Durham manuscript (H), it is possible to infer an approximate date from the headings to individual pages, where the switch from past to future tense indicates that the copy was made before 1121.39 As with the manuscript from Malmesbury (M), this could well mean that H is too early to have descended from C. The entries marked with Γ on fols. 27v–28r appear to confirm this, as they constitute an independent continuation with a focus on Durham priory rather than Worcester.40 It is also worth noting that M (fol. 120Av) and H (fol. 22r–v) both feature a series of computistical algorithms (argumenta) modified to match Marianus Scotus’s incarnation era, which can be found as an appendix to the Chronicon in N (fol. 161v).41 If, as seems likely, N was the archetype for the transmission of the text of these algorithms within England, this adds weight to the hypothesis that Marianus’s paschal chronicle became known in Durham and Malmesbury through contacts with Worcester cathedral. In the case of William of Malmesbury, who not only used M, but was personally involved in its production,42 such contacts are indeed well attested: he paid at least two separate visits to Worcester, wrote his Vita Wulfstani at the priory’s request,43 and even appears to have exchanged historical information with John of Worcester, Marianus’s continuator.44

Bishop Robert’s ‘Excerptio’ According to the cited passage in William’s Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, Robert of Hereford not only imported the first copy of Marianus Scotus’s great work into England, but also sat down to write an abridged version that was soon

39 Levison,

‘Die “Annales Lindisfarnenses et Dunelmenses”’, pp. 454–6. p. 456. 41 The algorithms also appear in St Petersburg, National Library of Russia, MS Lat. O. v. IV.1, fols. 72v–73v, a manuscript closely related to M. See G. Schmidt, ‘A Saint Petersburg Manuscript of the Excerptio Roberti Herefordensis de Chronica Mariani Scotti’, in Writing History in the Anglo-Norman World, ed. Cleaver and Worm, pp. 69–92 (pp. 73, 88–90). 42 For more on manuscript M, see W. H. Stevenson, ‘A Contemporary Description of the Domesday Survey’, EHR 22 (1907), 72–84 (pp. 78–84); R. M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury, rev. edn (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 83–5; P. A. Hayward, ‘William of Malmesbury as a Cantor-Historian’, in Medieval Cantors and their Craft: Music, Liturgy and the Shaping of History, 800–1500, ed. K. A.-M. Bugyis, A. B. Kraebel and M. E. Fassler, Writing History in the Middle Ages 3 (York, 2017), pp. 222–39 (pp. 223–5); A. Lawrence-Mathers, ‘William of Malmesbury and the Chronological Controversy’, in Discovering William of Malmesbury, ed. R. M. Thomson, E. Dolmans and E. A. Winkler (Woodbridge, 2017), pp. 93–105 (pp. 98–105); Schmidt, ‘A Saint Petersburg Manuscript’, pp. 81–90. 43 Thomson, William of Malmesbury, pp. 18, 37–8, 46, 73. 44 Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, pp. 113–17. 40 Ibid.,

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C. Philipp E. Nothaft ‘counted more valuable than the original gigantic tome’,45 presumably on account of its concision and clarity. William was not being hyperbolic. Partial or complete copies of Robert’s abridgement, known as Excerptio de Chronica Mariani, do indeed survive in no fewer than twelve manuscripts, all but one of them copied in England. Their list includes three of the codices already mentioned above – H (fols. 17r–22v), M (fols. 133r–148v) and T (fols. 23v, 37v–54v) – , as well as the following:46 1 D Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Digby 56, fols. 194v–195r (excerpts from ch. 5–7, 11; s. XII3/4) 2 E London, BL, MS Egerton 3088, fols. 85v–99r (Dore Abbey, s. XIII2/4) 3 G Glasgow, University Library, MS Hunter 85, fols. 98v–113v (Durham, s. XII2/4) 4 J Cambridge, St John’s College, MS I. 15, pp. 338b–341 (ch. 24; s. XII1/2) 5 L London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius E. iv, fols. 162ra–176ra (Winchcombe, s. XII1/2) 6 O Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Auct. F. 5. 19, fols. 1r–22v (s. XII1/2) 7 S St Petersburg, National Library of Russia, MS Lat. O. v. IV. 1, fols. 74r–102v (Northern France[?], s. XII1/2) 8 U Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff. 1. 27, pp. 118–19 (ch. 23; Durham; s. XIIex.) 9 W Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Auct. F. 1 .9, fols. 2v–12v (Worcester, c.1126–40) Contrary to what some modern scholars have written or implied,47 Excerptio is an accurate descriptor for Robert’s work, as he derived the vast majority of its passages from Marianus’s Chronicon, with only occasional additions

45 See

n. 8 above. the manuscripts preserving the Excerptio, see also Baran-Kozłowski, Kronika świata, pp. 359–65; Schmidt, ‘A Saint Petersburg Manuscript’; Schmidt, ‘Le récit’. On its contents, see A. Cordoliani, ‘L’activité computistique de Robert, évêque de Hereford’, in Mélanges offerts à Réné Crozet à l’occasion de son soixante-dixième anniversaire, ed. P. Gallais and Y.-J. Riou, 2 vols. (Poitiers, 1966), I, 333–40. The stand-alone copy of ch. 23 in U has previously been identified as excerpts from bk. 1 of Marianus’s Chronicon in H. Appleton, ‘“Æðele geferes”: Northern Saints in a Durham Manuscript’, in Saints of North-East England, 600–1500, ed. M. Coombe, A. Mouron and C. Whitehead (Turnhout, 2017), pp. 153–76 (p. 171). It has not been mentioned in the previous literature on Robert of Hereford’s Excerptio. 47 See, e.g., JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xix (n. 6)), who assert that ‘the treatise is not (as is sometimes implied) an excerpt of his chronicle or of his chronological arguments’; J. E. Story, ‘Symeon as Annalist’, in Symeon of Durham: Historian of Durham and the North, ed. D. Rollason (Stamford, 1998), pp. 202–13 (p. 208, n. 24): ‘This text … is neither an excerpt from Marianus’s world chronicle nor a summary of his chronological arguments’. Barrow, ‘A Lotharingian in Hereford’, p. 29, calls it ‘a commentary on the computational methods’ of Marianus. 46 On

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Worcester and the English Reception of Marianus Scotus of new content. Of the twenty-four chapters contained in its most widely attested version, only chapters 7 and 24 are devoid of material taken straight from Marianus’s work. The first of these two chapters is of some significance for having come down to us in two different versions, one of which appends a paragraph describing the Domesday Survey of AD 1086. In four of the surviving witnesses, which include one from Worcester (W), the paragraph goes as follows: This is the twentieth year of William, king of England, at whose command in this year was compiled a description of the whole of England, of the lands in each of the counties; of the possessions of each of the magnates, their lands, their manors, their men, both bond and free, both those living merely in cottages and those possessing houses and lands; of ploughs, horses and other animals; of the services and payments due from all the men in the whole land. Other investigators followed the first and were sent to counties that they did not know, and where they themselves were unknown, to check the first description and to denounce any wrongdoers to the king. And the land was vexed with much violence arising from the collection of the royal revenues.48

It has already been noted that the Domesday Survey also makes an appearance in N’s continuation of Marianus’s Chronicon. Although this account is much briefer than that found in some copies of the Excerptio, the wording in both seems to be related.49 Stevenson, who was the first to draw attention to the similarity between these sources, argued that the entry in N was inspired by the Excerptio, which would make sense considering that the continuation in N was probably only added in 1087. A different conclusion, according to which the addition to chapter 7 in the Excerptio was the result of a later interpolation, was recently defended by Schmidt, who points to Worcester as a probable

48 Stevenson,

‘A Contemporary Description’, p. 74: ‘Hic est annus XXmus Uuillelmi, Regis Anglorum, quo iubente hoc anno totius Anglie facta est descriptio in agris singularum provinciarum, in possessionibus singulorum procerum, in agris eorum, in mansionibus, in hominibus, tam servis quam liberis, tam in tuguria tantum habitantibus, quam in domos et agros possidentibus, in carrucis, in equis, et ceteris animalibus, in servitio et censu totius terre omnium. Alii inquisitores post alios, et ignoti ad ignotas mittebantur provincias, ut alii aliorum descriptionem reprehenderent et regi reos constituerent. Et vexata est terra multis cladibus ex congregatione regalis pecuniae procedentibus.’ Stevenson’s transcription was based on witnesses M and O. The same passage appears in S and W (with minor variants), whereas in T and D it is heavily truncated. I have adapted the English translation in D. Roffe, Decoding Domesday (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 6–7. 49 N, fol. 158v: ‘Wilelmus, rex Anglorum, fecit describi omnes totius Angliae possessiones in agris, in hominibus, in animalibus omnibus, in omnibus mansionibus a maiori usque ad minimam, et in omni censu, qui ex omnium terris possit reddi, et vexata est terra multis cladibus inde procedentibus.’

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C. Philipp E. Nothaft place of origin.50 Schmidt’s hypothesis might explain why W is unique among the surviving witnesses for containing both the complete Domesday passage and an extension of chapter 24 that consists of two tables and some instructions on how to find the current year and iteration of the 532-year cycle based on concurrents and indictions. Other manuscripts to feature this extension are E, G and L, none of which makes any mention of the Domesday Survey. It can also be found in T (fol. 23v), however, where chapter 24 appears separately from the rest of the Excerptio, on the verso side of an inserted fold-out leaf that also contains the computistical tables known from N (fols. 160v–161r).51 The Domesday passage is here represented only by its opening words: ‘Hic est annus XXmus Wilhelmi regis Anglorum’ (T, fol. 42r). While the presence of interpolations as well as omissions by homeoarchy in W means that this manuscript cannot be the archetype for the Excerptio’s extant transmission,52 it is still possible that W was itself derived from this archetype. If this manuscript only contained the Domesday note as a marginal annotation, it may explain its absence from some of the manuscripts. Besides offering the fullest preserved version of the Excerptio, the copy in W is also noteworthy for having been written by the same hand as those parts of C attributed to John of Worcester.53 It appears near the beginning of the codex, which mostly contains texts of a mathematical, computistical and astronomical nature.54 The two latest works in this scientific anthology are Walcher of Malvern’s De Dracone, datable to c.1120, and Adelard of Bath’s translation of the zīj (astronomical tables) of al-Khwārizmī, which in W contains a dating clause for 1126 (fol. 159rb). When John worked on extending the CC to 1140, he drew on both of the texts just mentioned.55 If he knew them from W, as seems likely given his involvement in its production, this firmly places the codex before 1140. Further light on Worcester’s role in disseminating Robert of Hereford’s Excerptio de Chronica Mariani is shed by the transmission of Walcher of Malvern’s De lunationibus, a treatise on lunar computation completed no later than 1112.56 Of the five manuscripts that contain at least the first two chapters

50 Schmidt,

‘A Saint Petersburg Manuscript’, pp. 78–81; Schmidt, ‘Le récit’, pp. 229–34. fold-out leaf is ignored by Schmidt, ‘A Saint Petersburg Manuscript’, p. 76; Schmidt, ‘Le récit’, p. 223. 52 Schmidt, ‘A Saint Petersburg Manuscript’, pp. 76–8. 53 According to JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xxix). 54 C. Burnett, ‘The Introduction of Arabic Learning into British Schools’, in The Introduction of Arabic Philosophy into Europe, ed. C. E. Butterworth and B. A. Kessel (Leiden, 1994), pp. 40–57 (pp. 44–5); Burnett, ‘Mathematics and Astronomy in Hereford and its Region in the Twelfth Century’, in Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology at Hereford, ed. Whitehead, pp. 50–9 (pp. 50–1). 55 See JW Chron. s.a. 1133 and 1138 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 210–11, 258–61). 56 For further information, see Walcher of Malvern: De Lunationibus and De Dracone; Study, Edition, Translation, and Commentary, ed. C. P. E. Nothaft (Turnhout, 2017). 51 This

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Worcester and the English Reception of Marianus Scotus of this work, no fewer than four place these chapters immediately after their respective copy of the Excerptio. This is true for G, J, L and T, although in the case of J the Excerptio encompasses no more than the long version of its twenty-fourth and final chapter. It is different in W, where the Excerptio and the work by Walcher of Malvern are in no such close contact. Given the geographic proximity between the priories of Great Malvern and Worcester, it nevertheless seems plausible that the striking pairing of the Excerptio and De lunationibus in the other four manuscripts goes back to a shared Worcester archetype. The copy in H (fols. 17r–22v) features a unique version of the text, in which the argument is condensed down to just thirteen chapters, the last of which consists of the computistical algorithms from N mentioned earlier. What is especially intriguing about this recension is that it contains material not found in the twenty-four-chapter version. A telling example occurs in chapter 9, where the text of the corresponding chapter in the longer version is enriched with a passage taken from bk. II.27 in Marianus’s Chronicon. Chapter 10 does something similar, by adding a sentence from bk. II.8 to its fusion of two chapters found in the longer version (ch. 10–11). Independent borrowings of this sort are also encountered in chapters 11 and 12, leaving little room for doubt that the recension of Robert’s Excerptio in H originated in an environment where a full copy of Marianus’s Chronicon was available.57 Worcester was one such environment. Whether Durham was one as well is less clear, as the known traces of Marianus’s influence on Durham chronography could have been due to abridgments of the CC.58

Worcester and the waning of Marianus Scotus The overall picture that emerges with regard to the English reception of Marianus Scotus’s Chronicon is that the success of its carefully elaborated chronological system, although by no means negligible, was on the whole relatively short-lived. Perhaps the clearest indication of this is that the majority of English manuscripts preserving traces of this system were written before the year 1150, with only very few witnesses dating from later centuries.59 This is not to say that the new chronology disappeared completely. It still 57 For

a more detailed discussion, see C. P. E. Nothaft, ‘Marianus Scottus, Robert of Hereford, and the Excerptio de Chronica Mariani in MS Hunter 100’, in Time, Nature, and the Body: A Monastic Album of Science of the Early Twelfth Century, ed. G. Gasper and F. Wallis (forthcoming). 58 On the possibility that the source underlying the Historia de regibus was ‘not simply a very early state of C’, see Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, p. 122, n. 1. 59 In the case of Robert of Hereford’s Excerptio, for example, only one of the twelve known witnesses dates from the thirteenth century: E, which was copied from the manuscript also containing the Winchcombe Chronicle (L).

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C. Philipp E. Nothaft featured very prominently, for instance, in the Crowland Chronicle, which, according to Cristian Ispir, was composed in the first quarter of the thirteenth century (1210 × 1225) by a monk called Roger. His work descends from a lost version of the CC that extended to 1154, incorporating text from Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum.60 As late as 1294, a Franciscan author named Robert of Leicester wrote a detailed treatise on the Jewish calendar and its application to chronological problems in which he came down in favour of Marianus Scotus’s crucifixion date of 25 March AD 12.61 There is also the curious case of a quodlibetal disputation held in Oxford in c.1303, in which the Dominican Nicholas Trevet endorsed Marianus’s critique of the Dionysiac era, but without thereby also calling for its abandonment.62 More generally speaking, it seems fair to say that, despite being heavily promoted by Worcester’s chroniclers and scribes, Marianus’s innovations were met with a good deal of scepticism and even resistance. William of Malmesbury confirms this impression when admitting, in c.1124, that Marianus Scotus has found few or none to follow his argument. This often makes me wonder why the learned of our own day should be infected with this misfortune, that in such a great number of students, pale and melancholy as they are with their researches, scarcely one wins a reputation for complete knowledge of his subject. Such is our devotion to the familiar and habitual; so true is it that almost no one accords to new discoveries, however plausible, the unimpassioned acceptance they deserve. With all our efforts we go plodding along after the opinions of the Ancients, and everything new is undervalued; and thus, since public credit is wit’s only nursing-mother, where credit is slow in coming, sleep reigns supreme.63

60 C.

N. Ispir, ‘A Critical Edition of the Crowland Chronicle’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, King’s College London, 2015). 61 See the edition, translation and introduction to Robert’s treatise in Medieval Latin Christian Texts on the Jewish Calendar: A Study with Five Editions and Translations, ed. C. P. E. Nothaft (Leiden, 2014), pp. 184–8, 201–3, 262–5, 278–83, 328–9, 332–3. 62 C. P. E. Nothaft, ‘Nicholas Trevet and the Chronology of the Crucifixion’, The Mediaeval Journal 2 (2012), 55–76. For further remarks on Marianus’s English and continental reception, see F. Rühl, Chronologie des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (Berlin, 1897), pp. 202–3; von den Brincken, ‘Marianus Scottus’ [1982], pp. 1007–9; Verbist, ‘Reconstructing the Past’, pp. 331–4; Verbist, Duelling, pp. 143–6; Baran-Kozłowski, Kronika świata, pp. 341–89. 63 WM, GR iii.292 (ed. and trans. Mynors, Thomson and Winterbottom, I, 527). For the Latin text, see ibid., 526: ‘Itaque, ab initio seculi annos singulos recensens, uiginti duos annos qui circulis predictis deerant superaddidit, sed paucos aut nullos sententiae suae sectatores habuit. Quare saepe mirari soleo cur nostri temporis doctos hoc respergat infortunium, ut in tanto numero discentium, in tam tristi pallore lucubrantium, uix aliquis plenam scientie laudem referat: adeo inueteratus usus placet, adeo fere nullus nouis, licet probabiliter inuentis, serenitatem assensus pro merito indulget. Totis conatibus in sententiam ueterum reptatur, omne recens sordet; ita, quia solus fauor alit ingenia, cessante fauore obtorpuerunt omnia.’

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Worcester and the English Reception of Marianus Scotus While William would have been happy for the revised reckoning to find greater acceptance, a much less appreciative view was expressed at the end of the same century by Gervase of Canterbury, whose chronicle continued the Chronica Mariani in its expanded Worcester version, concluding with the death of Richard I in 1199. Gervase’s preface identifies the main sources of ‘error and dissension’ in contemporary chronographic writing, which in his estimation included Marianus’s postulated twenty-two-year gap between the Dionysiac era and the Gospel truth. Its use by some chroniclers, but not by others, contributed to a situation in which ‘the reckoning of years, on which the whole written account of things should rest, is on many occasions found to lack truth’.64 As an antidote to this sort of chronological chaos, Gervase proposed simply to stick to the count of years according to Dionysius Exiguus, regardless of historical accuracy. Those who still insisted on following Marianus Scotus’s revision secundum Evangelium were invited to add twenty-two to any year they found recorded in his chronicle.65 Gervase’s remarks suggest that a preference for uniformity and a distaste for too much complexity were among the factors that drove chroniclers to reject the system proposed to them by Marianus and his Worcester acolytes.66 That twelfth-century writers also had good technical reasons for being wary of this system becomes clear from a closer look at its astronomical underpinnings, which were provided first and foremost by the nineteen-year lunar cycle inherent in the 532-year Easter table. Far from predicting the age of the moon without fail, the lists of new and full moons one could derive from this cycle had repeatedly been contradicted by simple observation, for instance, of eclipses or the appearance of the new moon crescent. One such occasion is even commemorated in Marianus Scotus’s continuation to his own Chronicon,

64 Gervase

of Canterbury, Cronica, ed. W. Stubbs, RS 73, 2 vols. (London, 1879–80), I, 88–9: ‘Est et alius inter compotistas et cronicarum scriptores error et dissonantia: nam inter supputationem Dionisii et illam quae secundum Evangelium esse dicitur, anni reperiuntur xxii. Diversis enim diversa scribentibus, omnibus autem et singulis ad ipsum veritatis sacrarium recto calle venire studentibus, multae falsitates de factis regum et dictis principium conscripta sunt. Annorum etiam computatio, cui tota rerum conscriptio inniti deberet, ex supradictis causis multotiens veritate carere probatur.’ 65 Gervase of Canterbury, Cronica, ed. Stubbs, I, 89: ‘Si quis autem annos Domini qui secundum Evangelium dicuntur esse conscripti nosse desiderat, supputationi Dionisii quem imitamur viginti duos annos apponat. Haec est enim de annis Domini inter Evangelium et praefatum Dionisium dissonantia, sicut in suis cronicis testatur Marianus Scotus, spatium scilicet annorum viginti duorum.’ 66 On resistance to Marianus’s dating system in the early twelfth century, see most recently A. Lawrence-Mathers, ‘Computus and Chronology in Anglo-Norman England’, in Writing History in the Anglo-Norman World, ed. Cleaver and Worm, pp. 53–68 (pp. 61–8), who overstates the degree to which Worcester was isolated in its support.

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C. Philipp E. Nothaft which notes that the paschal new moon of 1082 appeared visible to the ‘whole world’ (toto orbi) on 2 April rather than on 4 April, as predicted by the tables.67 That this failure was due to an overestimation of the length of the mean lunation implicit in the nineteen-year cycle is a point that became increasingly apparent to Latin writers as the scientific translations of the so-called TwelfthCentury Renaissance exposed them to mathematical astronomy from Arabic, Greek and Hebrew sources. In the case of England, the new knowledge found one of its earliest strongholds in Worcestershire, as evidenced by the activities of Walcher of Malvern and the contents of manuscript W.68 Aided by works like the astronomical tables of al-Khwārizmī (W, fols. 99v–159v), Christian computists could now begin to compare their traditional tools with the parameters and cycles known to Islamic astronomers and, as a result, expose the flaws that caused their own predictions to miss the mark.69 The Jewish calendar, too, entered the consciousness of Christian writers as an independent entity and raised further questions about the validity of Marianus’s attempt to investigate the dates of Christ’s life using nothing but the Easter computus.70 A significant breakthrough in this regard is marked by a Compotus written in 1175 by a certain Master Cunestabulus, whose work was available at Christ Church, Canterbury. As Cunestabulus explained in the final chapter of his work, the calendar that served first-century Jews in determining the date of Passover must have been rather different from the nineteen-year cycle known to computists, which implied that Marianus and others had worked from false premises when using this cycle to find the age of the moon at the crucifixion. Once a proper astronomical investigation was attempted, it became clear that Marianus had been mistaken about the year of Christ’s Passion, whereas the Church had been right all along in following the era of Dionysius Exiguus.71 In 1185, a monk at Christ Church named Salomon was so impressed by this 67 See

V, fol. 166r; N, fol. 158v; and p. 562 in MGH SS 5. Marianus’s note may have been influenced by the scenario described in Beda Venerabilis, De temporum ratione xliii, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 123B (Turnhout, 1977), pp. 412–18, which applies to the final year of each nineteen-year cycle (e.g., AD 1082), but the dates also agree with the astronomical and computistical situation in 1082. 68 Nothaft, Walcher of Malvern, pp. 46–55, 61–71. 69 See on this point especially C. P. E. Nothaft, ‘Roman vs. Arabic Computistics in Twelfth-Century England: A Newly Discovered Source (Collatio Compoti Romani et Arabici)’, Early Science and Medicine 20 (2015), 187–208; C. P. E. Nothaft, Scandalous Error: Calendar Reform and Calendrical Astronomy in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 2018), pp. 64–115. 70 Nothaft, Medieval Latin Christian Texts, pp. 43–68; Nothaft, ‘Nicholas Trevet’, pp. 62–4. 71 Cunestabulus, Computus xxxix, in Opera de computo saeculi duodecimi, ed. A. Lohr, CCCM 272 (Turnhout, 2015), pp. 114–24. Cunestabulus’s discussion was influenced by c. 65 in the Computus Petri of 1171. See Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS 3642, fols. 41vb–42va. For more on Cunestabulus’s work, see C. P. E. Nothaft, ‘A Reluctant

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Worcester and the English Reception of Marianus Scotus demonstration that he not only made a condensed excerpt of the relevant chapter, but concluded it with three distichs from his own pen, in which he encouraged others to ‘seek out the writings of Cunestabulus and read them’. After all, this expert on the computus had managed to expose the errors of Marianus Scotus and, by computing the actual state of the heavens at the time of Christ, had proven that Christ’s ‘bride’, the Church, still ‘preserves the truth about the groom’.72 It is perhaps more than a bit ironic that the scriptorium at Worcester, by giving early support to astronomical learning from Islamic sources, played no small part in dismantling the chronological system it had been labouring to promote since the days of Bishop Wulfstan.

Innovator: Graeco-Arabic Astronomy in the Computus of Magister Cunestabulus (1175)’, Early Science and Medicine 22 (2017), 24–54. 72 London, BL, MS Egerton 3314, fol. 8r: ‘Pono modum calamo. Si quis sitit ulteriora, | scripta Cunestabuli querat et illa legat. | Hic Bede tenebras elucidat, hic Lotharingi [gloss: Gerlandi] | arguit errores ac, Mariane, tuos. | Astrorumque vocans motus in tempora Christi | de sponso sponsam vera tenere probat’ (‘I [now] let the pen rest. If anyone thirsts for more, he should seek out the writings of Cunestabulus and read them. There he brings light to Bede’s darkness, there he discloses the errors committed by the Lotharingian [gloss: Gerland], and also yours, o Marianus. And by calling the motion of the stars back to the times of Christ, he proves that the bride preserves the truth about the groom.’). See P. J. Willets, ‘A Reconstructed Astronomical Manuscript from Christ Church Library Canterbury’, British Museum Quarterly 30 (1965), 22–30.

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7 History Books at Worcester, c.1050–1150, and the Making of the Worcester Chronicle Laura Cleaver

According to Orderic Vitalis, the creation of the now famous Worcester Chronica Chronicarum (hereafter CC) was begun on the instructions of Bishop Wulfstan II (1062–95).1 Orderic, a monk of Saint-Évroult in Normandy, presumably obtained this information on a visit to Worcester. There he met John, the monk whose name appears in a rubric at the chronicle’s entry for 1138 in the copy of the chronicle created by and apparently for the Benedictine community at Worcester cathedral (now OCCC MS 157).2 That manuscript was produced, reworked and extended by multiple scribes over at least a quarter century. The manuscript is now incomplete, breaking off in the entry for 1140. The first phase of work on the manuscript seems to have been completed in the second decade of the twelfth century (on the basis of changes to the bishop lists, which end c.1114), but it is conceivable that it was produced using materials that were compiled earlier.3 In that context it is plausible that the monk Florence, whose death is recorded in the entry for 1118, with the claim that his ‘scholarly labours have made this chronicle of chronicles outstanding among all others’, played a part in preparatory work for the history.4 The size (32.9 by 25 cm, 201 fols.) of the manuscript, together

1 ‘Quem



prosecutus Iohannes acta fere centum annorum contexuit, iussuque uenerabilis Wlfstani pontificis et monachi supradictis cronicis inseruit’ (‘After him John, at the command of the venerable Wulfstan bishop and monk, added to these chronicles events of about a hundred years’); OV, HE ii.159–60 (ed. and trans. Chibnall, II, 186–7). 2 Ibid., ii.161 (ed. and trans. Chibnall, II, 188–9). 3 JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xxxiv–xxxv). 4 ‘obiit Domnus Florentius Wigornensis monachus. Huius subtili scientia et studiosi laboris industria preeminet cunctis hec chronicarum chronica’ (‘the Worcester monk Florence died. His meticulous learning and scholarly labours have made this chronicle of chronicles outstanding among all others’); JW, Chron. s.a. 1118 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 142–3); see also H. H. Howorth, ‘The Chronicle of John of Worcester, Previously Assigned to Florence of Worcester’, Archaeological Journal 73 (1916), 1–170 (p. 10).

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History Books at Worcester, c.1050–1150 with its decoration, suggest a level of ambition for the project in keeping with an association with Wulfstan, who was being promoted as a saint in the early twelfth century.5 However, the manuscript underwent significant alterations in the following decades as the community received different accounts of the recent past. Important work on the chronicle’s sources and phases of creation has been done by Martin Brett and the most recent editors of the chronicle: Patrick McGurk and R. R. Darlington.6 This essay stands on the shoulders of those scholarly giants to re-examine the evidence provided by OCCC MS 157, surviving copies of some of its potential sources, and the copies of the CC made in the twelfth century. The aim is to reflect on what these manuscripts reveal about the ambitions of those involved in the Worcester project and the clues they provide about the movement of manuscripts containing material concerning English history in the twelfth century. Although the Worcester manuscript was probably designed as a volume to enhance the community’s prestige, its creation was only possible because of their connections with other monastic houses and the circulation of material in a range of formats. Orderic Vitalis’s Historia ecclesiastica is the only explicit evidence for the involvement of Wulfstan in the Worcester chronicle project, although Hemming’s Cartulary also invokes the bishop’s interest in history and encouragement to the community to record past events to document their rights and property.7 In addition to the connection with Wulfstan, Orderic notes that the CC was a continuation of a chronicle produced by Marianus Scotus at Mainz.8 The relevant section of Orderic’s text is difficult. In it, Orderic also refers to having seen Sigebert of Gembloux’s chronicle at Cambrai, but he mistakes Sigebert’s name, referring to him as ‘Englebert’. In addition, he suggests that at Worcester John added a hundred years of material to Marianus’s chronicle, exaggerating the extent of the continuation.9 Orderic justifies his reference to these two chronicles on the grounds that ‘would-be readers may seek the 5 See









A. Orchard, ‘Parallel Lives: Wulfstan, William, Coleman and Christ’, in St Wulfstan and his World, ed. J. S. Barrow and N. P. Brooks (Aldershot, 2005), pp. 39–57; J. Crook, ‘The Physical Setting of the Cult of St Wulfstan’, ibid., pp. 201–2. 6 M. Brett, ‘John of Worcester and his Contemporaries’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern, ed. R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford, 1981), pp. 101–26; and both volumes of JW, Chron. 7 See also Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, p. 102; F. Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię commendaretur: Memory and Cartularies in Eleventh-Century Worcester’, in Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald, ed. S. Baxter, C. Karkov, J. L. Nelson and D. Pelteret (Farnham, 2009), pp. 475–97; and Tinti and Woodman’s chapter, above. 8 ‘Ioannes Wigornensis a puero monachus, natione Anglicus, moribus et eruditione uenerandus, in his quae Mariani Scotti cronicis adiecit’ (‘John, an Englishman by birth who entered the monastery of Worcester as a boy and won great repute for his learning and piety, continued the chronicle of Marianus Scotus’); OV, HE iii.159 (ed. and trans. Chibnall, II, 186–7). 9 Ibid., iii.159–60 (ed. and trans. Chibnall, II, 186–9).; Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, pp. 102–3.

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Laura Cleaver manuscripts out for themselves, for they are the fruits of great learning, and are hard to come by. They have been written by men of this age, and are not yet widely circulated.’10 Despite the final claim, Orderic’s text testifies to the movement of both those engaged in writing history and books in the early twelfth century, although, frustratingly, it is impossible to pin down the date of Orderic’s visit to Worcester.11 This interest in existing texts on the part of those involved in writing history was probably an important factor in the creation of new copies. Yet although Orderic thought John’s name, the association with Wulfstan, the debt to Marianus and the scope of the CC were worth recording, he does not seem to have made much use of the CC in producing his own history, suggesting that it was not made available to him for copying.12 The idea of Wulfstan as the initiator of the CC project may have lodged with Orderic because it was a trope that he himself employed in writing history. Orderic claimed that his Historia ecclesiastica was begun on the orders of his abbot, Roger, before the latter’s retirement in 1123.13 However, Orderic’s manuscripts are very different to OCCC MS 157. The CC is a large volume, while Orderic’s work survives as an incomplete set of three much smaller manuscripts from Saint-Évroult, each measuring about 24 by 15 cm (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MSS Lat. 5506 A and B; Lat. 10913; see Fig. 1).14 In these manuscripts, most of Orderic’s text was written by one hand, which has been plausibly identified as Orderic’s own.15 In contrast,

10 ‘ut

istos codices auidi lectores inquirant sibi, quia magnum sapientiae fructum ferunt, et uix inueniri possunt. A modernis enim editi sunt et adhuc passim per orbem diffusi non sunt’; OV, HE iii.160–1 (ed. and trans. Chibnall, II, 188–9). 11 OV, HE (ed. and trans. Chibnall, I, 25); see also R. M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 8, 72–3. 12 OV, HE (ed. and trans. Chibnall, I, 61). 13 A. Gransden, ‘Prologues in the Historiography of Twelfth-Century England’, in England in the Twelfth Century, ed. D. Williams (Woodbridge, 1990), pp. 55–81, reprinted in Gransden’s Legends, Traditions and History in Medieval England (London, 1992), pp. 125–51 (pp. 131–2); OV, HE prologue (ed. and trans. Chibnall, I, 130–3; VI, 320–9). 14 See OV, HE (ed. Chibnall, I, 118). 15 See L. Delisle, ‘Les manuscrits autographes d’Orderic Vital’, in Matériaux pour l’édition de Guillaume de Jumièges, ed. J. Lair (Nogent-le-Rotrou, 1910), pp. 7–27; D. Escudier, ‘Orderic Vital et le scriptorium de Saint-Évroult’, in Manuscrits et enluminures dans le monde normand (Xe–XVe siècles), ed. P. Bouet and M. Dosdat (Caen, 1999), pp. 17–28; M.-C. Garand, ‘Auteurs latins et autographes des XIe et XIIe siècles’, Scrittura e Civiltà 5 (1981), 77–104 (p. 88); J. Weston and C. C. Rozier, ‘Descriptive Catalogue of Manuscripts Featuring the Hand of Orderic Vitalis’, in Orderic Vitalis: Life, Works and Interpretations, ed. C. C. Rozier, D. Roach, G. E. M. Gasper and E. van Houts (Woodbridge, 2016), pp. 385–98; L. Cleaver, ‘Autograph History Books in the Twelfth Century’, in Writing History in the Anglo-Norman World: Manuscripts, Makers and Readers, c.1066–1250, ed. L. Cleaver and A. Worm, Writing History in the Middle Ages 6 (York, 2018), pp. 93–112.

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History Books at Worcester, c.1050–1150 the CC was worked on by at least six scribes (albeit at different times, and with the first stage, to page 363 (mid-1101), completed by one hand), which, together with the references to Florence and John, suggests a greater degree of community involvement.16 In addition, the first phase of the Worcester manuscript included two painted initials (at the start of the chronicle text (p. 77c) and Book 1 (p. 89)), and probably the famous image of the crucifixion on p. 77b, which was completed by a skilled artist, as well as an image of the cross on p. 189 (see Figs. 2–3 below).17 Orderic’s work also has large initials at the beginning of his prologue and Book 1 (BnF MS Lat. 5506 A, fols. 6, 7), but these are drawn in ink (despite the use of pigments for rubrics and simpler initials elsewhere in the text), and are crude when compared with the Worcester manuscript’s crucifixion. Overall, therefore, Orderic’s project seems to have been created with a much more limited investment of resources by the Saint-Évroult community. However, this does not mean that no expense was spared in creating the CC. Indeed, the parchment quality is variable, with holes and irregular edges in many leaves providing evidence of efforts to make the most of the available skins. The limited resources made available to Orderic may have been linked to the untested value of his text as a new account of the past. In this it finds parallels in other original histories produced in the first quarter of the twelfth century, notably the works of William of Malmesbury and Eadmer of Canterbury, both of whom also visited Worcester. The smaller size of the earliest surviving copies of these works (for example, William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Pontificum, Oxford, Magdalen College, MS 172, at 18 by 12.5 cm, or Eadmer’s Historia Novorum, CCCC MS 452, at 17.5 by 12 cm after trimming) would have made them easier to transport, and so may also have been choices made with a view to the dissemination of the texts (Fig. 1). However, part of the argument for the autograph status of both manuscripts rests on their preservation at Malmesbury and Canterbury.18 In this context, the size and appearance of the Worcester manuscript may be explained by its

16 JW,

Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xxix). M. Kauffmann, Romanesque Manuscripts 1066–1190 (London, 1975), p. 88. 18 On William of Malmesbury see: Willelmi Malmesbiriensis Monachi: de Gestis Pontificum Anglorum, ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton (London, 1870), pp. xi–xvii; N. R. Ker, ‘William of Malmesbury’s Handwriting’, EHR 59 (1944), 371–6; Thomson, William of Malmesbury, pp. 76–7; WM, GP (ed. Winterbottom with Thomson, I, xi–xii). On Eadmer see: R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm and His Biographer: A Study of Monastic Life and Thought, 1059–c.1130 (Cambridge, 1966), p. 372; M. Brett, ‘A Note on the Historia Novorum of Eadmer’, Scriptorium 33 (1979), 56–8; T. Webber, ‘Script and Manuscript Production at Christ Church, Canterbury, after the Norman Conquest’, in Canterbury and the Norman Conquest: Churches, Saints and Scholars, 1066–1109, ed. R. Eales and R. Sharpe (London and Rio Grande, 1995), pp. 145–58 (pp. 148–52); M. Gullick, ‘The Scribal Work of Eadmer of Canterbury to 1109’, Archaeologia Cantiana 118 (1998), 173–89; Cleaver, ‘Autograph History Books’. 17 C.

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Fig. 1: The relative size (approximate) of various manuscripts.

Fig. 2: OCCC MS 157, p. 77b. By permission of the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Fig. 3: OCCC MS 157, p. 77c. By permission of the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

History Books at Worcester, c.1050–1150 close association with Worcester and an intended function as something to be displayed at the cathedral. It is not dissimilar in size to other manuscripts being made at the cathedral in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, notably copies of the works of the Church Fathers and collections of homilies, but also Hemming’s Cartulary (London, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii, fols. 119–200, now damaged by fire but originally about 32 by 25 cm, Fig. 1).19 Moreover, the CC’s large, multi-coloured initials find parallels in some of the patristic texts (for example, London, BL, MS Royal 5 B. iii, Fig. 4), although the inclusion of figurative imagery such as the crucifixion in the CC seems to have been very rare in Worcester manuscripts. Unlike the smaller contemporary histories, therefore, the CC would not have looked out of place among patristic works of well-established value in the monastic library, and its exceptional decoration suggests that it was of particular significance to the community. A later parallel for a high-quality history, made on the orders of the ruler of a community in part as a symbol of its prestige, is found in the copy of the chronicle developed at Bec from Sigebert of Gembloux’s work, made for Mont-Saint-Michel shortly after the appointment of Robert of Torigni as abbot in 1154. This manuscript survives as Avranches, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 159, which measures 30 by 21 cm and was decorated with eight historiated initials.20 The treatment of the Avranches manuscript may have been inspired by earlier copies of Sigebert’s chronicle, as some copies of this work also include historiated initials.21 In the same way, the appearance of the CC was probably informed by some of the source texts used by its makers, notably copies of Marianus Scotus’s chronicle and the ASC. The textual and manuscript evidence for the latter is considerably more complicated than that for the former. The makers of the CC had access to one or more manuscripts containing a version of the ASC. Moreover, they used the ASC up to at least 1131 (as represented by Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Laud Misc. 636), indicating

19 E.

A. McIntyre, ‘Early-Twelfth-Century Worcester Cathedral Priory, with Special Reference to the Manuscripts there’ (unpublished D.Phil thesis, University of Oxford, 1978), p. 34; C. M. Kauffmann, ‘Manuscript Illumination at Worcester in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, in Medieval Art and Architecture at Worcester Cathedral, ed. G. Popper, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 1 (Leeds, 1978), pp. 43–50; R. Gameson, ‘St Wulfstan, the Library of Worcester and the Spirituality of the Medieval Book’, in St Wulfstan and his World, ed. Barrow and Brooks, pp. 59–104 (pp. 67–9, 74). 20 F. Avril, ‘La decoration des manuscrits au Mont Saint-Michel (XIe-XIIe siècles)’, in Millénaire monastique du Mont Saint-Michel, ed. R. Foreville, 6 vols. (Paris, 1966–71), II, 203–38; W. Cahn, Romanesque Manuscripts: The Twelfth Century, 2 vols. (London, 1996), II, 32–3. 21 L. Cleaver, Illuminated History Books in the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1272 (Oxford, 2018), pp. 49–50.

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Fig. 4: BL MS Royal 5 B. iii, fol. 30r © The British Library Board.

History Books at Worcester, c.1050–1150 that they received additional material for that chronicle during the time of the Latin chronicle’s production.22 It has been argued that a copy of the ASC was maintained at Worcester in the eleventh century, on the basis of entries in the version that survives as London, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius B. iv.23 In addition, the earliest recorded provenance of this manuscript places it at Worcester in the sixteenth century, though its place of manufacture has been the subject of much debate, not least because of its relationship to Worcester’s CC.24 As Henry Howorth and subsequently Patrick McGurk have shown, although the CC includes information apparently taken from the version of the chronicle now represented by Tiberius B. iv, it also uses information found in other versions of the chronicle, and Tiberius B. iv ends in 1079.25 Howorth therefore concluded that the Latin translation was not directly made from that manuscript, believing both the CC and Tiberius B. iv to have been derived from an ‘official copy’ of the ASC written at the cathedral and no longer extant.26 In this context, it is striking that Durham’s library list from the middle of the twelfth century contains two chronicles in English, raising the possibility that major houses might have had more than one copy of what, as Pauline Stafford has observed, scholarship has tended to reduce to a monolithic concept of an ASC.27 Indeed, Worcester’s contacts with Durham might help to explain the interest in northern and Scottish affairs in Tiberius B. iv.28 Although the exact form of the manuscript of the ASC (or chronicles) at Worcester must remain speculation, Tiberius B. iv nevertheless shares some suggestive parallels with the CC, notably its size, as, despite fire damage, it measures about 30 by 21.5 cm. If (and it is a big if) it was at Worcester in the late eleventh century, it could therefore have helped to inspire the creation of a Latin chronicle in the time of Bishop Wulfstan.29 Another manuscript of the ASC may shed light on the movement and development of the CC’s contents. London, BL, Cotton MS Domitian A. viii, fols. 30–70 is smaller than Tiberius B. iv, at 21 by 15 cm (after trimming), and although the opening folios are generously spaced, with twenty-one lines of 22 See

JW, Chron. (ed. McGurk, III, xxii–xxvi). Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, Volume 6 MS D, ed. G. P. Cubbin (Cambridge, 1996), pp. lxxiv, lxxviii–lxxix; C. Hart, ‘Some Recent Editions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles’, Medium Ævum 66 (1997), 293–301 (p. 297); P. Stafford, ‘The Making of Chronicles and the Making of England: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles after Alfred’, TRHS 27 (2017), 65–86 (p. 75). 24 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Cubbin, pp. ix, lvi–lxxix. 25 Howorth, ‘Chronicle of John of Worcester’, 1–170; JW, Chron. (ed. McGurk, III, xxii). 26 Howorth, ‘Chronicle of John of Worcester’, p. 168. 27 Stafford, ‘The Making of Chronicles’, pp. 66, 71; C. C. Rozier, ‘Durham Cathedral Priory and its Library of History, c.1090–c.1150’, in Writing History in the AngloNorman World, ed. Cleaver and Worm, pp. 133–48 (p. 136). 28 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Cubbin, pp. lvi–lxiii, cli; Stafford, ‘The Making of Chronicles’, pp. 76–7. 29 See also Gameson, ‘St Wulfstan’, p. 62. 23 The

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Laura Cleaver text, the layout changes as the work progresses, and the text becomes more densely written with twice as many lines on some pages. Moreover, additions to the text were made between lines and in the margins and some passages were erased and rewritten. This raises the possibility that the manuscript travelled and was altered when it arrived at a site where additional information was available. Moreover, some of the added passages are in Latin.30 The manuscript has been associated with Canterbury, but its contents seem to have been available for the making of the Worcester Chronicula in the 1130s or 1140s.31 More concrete evidence for the creation of large, high-quality copies of earlier histories at Worcester in the late eleventh century is provided by another history in English, a translation of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, now preserved as Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk. 3. 18. This manuscript was worked on by a scribe who wrote other manuscripts and a charter for Worcester.32 It is of similar size to Worcester’s CC, measuring 32 by 22.5 cm, and, although less decorated, it has coloured initials and widely spaced text, making it a visually impressive volume. Larger still is another manuscript used by the makers of the chronicle, now divided into two: CCCC MS 9 and London, BL, Cotton MS Nero E. i. The manuscript, known as the Worcester Legendary, was probably originally made in the third quarter of the eleventh century, and was presumably divided into two volumes on account of its large size (at over 400 folios).33 Additions were made in the late eleventh century, including the only surviving copy of Byrhtferth of Ramsey’s Life of St Oswald: Cotton MS Nero E. i, fols. 3–23v (Fig. 5). Both this and Felix’s Life of Guthlac (Cotton MS Nero E. i, fols. 185–96), which formed part of the original manuscript, have been identified as sources used by the Worcester chronicler.34 The manuscript’s presence at Worcester in the twelfth century is further assured by more additions, this time made by the hand associated with John of Worcester.35 The very large scale of these manuscripts, at 40 by 26.5 cm, emphasises the importance of their contents (the sacred history of the lives of the saints). The well-spaced lines and double columns may have been planned to aid public reading, but also help to make the volume visually impressive; they were also features adopted for much of the CC. Yet the appearance of the CC owes its greatest debt to Marianus Scotus’s work. This chronicle, with its famous alternative chronology, survives in just 30 See

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, Volume 8 MS F, ed. P. S. Baker (Cambridge, 2000). 31 Ibid., p. x; Cleaver, ‘Autograph History Books’, p. 103. 32 See N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957), pp. 36–7; Gameson, ‘St Wulfstan’, p. 101. 33 Byrhtferth of Ramsey, The Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine, ed. and trans. M. Lapidge, OMT (Oxford, 2009), p. xciv; Gameson, ‘St Wulfstan’, pp. 101–2. 34 JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xx). 35 Ibid., p. xxxiv.

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Fig. 5: BL Cotton MS Nero E. i, fol. 3r © The British Library Board.

Laura Cleaver two medieval manuscripts. The first, an eleventh-century manuscript with a late medieval ex libris from Mainz, is now in the Vatican Library (MS Pal. Lat. 830). The place and date of production of the second (London, BL, Cotton MS Nero C. v) have been much disputed, but added references to the deaths of Wulfstan II (of Worcester) and Robert, bishop of Hereford in 1095 (fol. 17v), suggest that it came to the west of England.36 These additions align with William of Malmesbury’s claim that Robert had Marianus’s work brought to England, and, according to the CC, Wulfstan both ordained Robert and called for him on his deathbed, indicating that the two were close friends.37 Robert produced an abbreviated study of Marianus’s chronology, but, as Brett noted, the chronicle in its entirety appears not to have been widely copied.38 Valerie Flint argued that the Cotton manuscript could not be the source of the material used in the CC principally on the basis of ‘lacunae’ in OCCC MS 157 and reordering of parts of the text.39 As Darlington and McGurk observed, the reworking of text is largely a result of the editing process for the CC, and although there are minor differences in spelling and differences of layout for parts of the text, it is not impossible that Cotton MS Nero C. v or something very like it was used to make the CC.40 Moreover, by ‘lacunae’ Flint seems to mean passages written in a different hand over erasures. While this raises questions about the production of the manuscript, it does not mean that Cotton MS Nero C. v was not the source of the Marianus material. Nevertheless, the CC’s decoration does provide evidence that its makers had access to another copy of Marianus’s work. In Cotton MS Nero C. v an area has been left blank on fol. 98 for an image of the cross, which was completed in the Worcester version (p. 189) (Figs. 6–7). Filling in a blank space could have been done without access to an exemplar, but intriguingly both the CC and the Vatican copy of Marianus’s chronicle contain images of the

36 See,

amongst others: McIntyre, ‘Early-Twelfth-Century Worcester’, p. 212; JW, Chron. (ed. McGurk, III, lxv); The Winchcombe and Coventry Chronicles: Hitherto Unnoticed Witnesses to the Work of John of Worcester, ed. and trans. P. A. Hayward, 2 vols. (Tempe, AZ, 2010), I, 67. 37 Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, pp. 110–11; JW, Chron. s.a. 1079 and 1095 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 32–3, 74–5); WM, GP iv.165 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom with Thomson, I, 458–9). See also Nothaft in this volume. 38 M. Brett, ‘The Use of Universal Chronicle at Worcester’, in L’Historiographie médiévale en Europe: actes du colloque organisé par la Fondation Européenne de la Science au Centre de Recherches Historiques et Juridiques de l’Université Paris I du 29 mars au 1er avril 1989, ed. J-P. Genet (Paris, 1991), pp. 277–85 (p. 277); G. Schmidt, ‘A Saint Petersburg Manuscript of the Excerptio Roberti Herefordensis de Chronica Mariani Scotti’, in Writing History in the Anglo-Norman World, ed. Cleaver and Worm, pp. 69–92. See also Nothaft in this volume. 39 V. I. J. Flint, ‘The Date of the Chronicle of “Florence” of Worcester’, Revue Bénédictine 86 (1976), 115–19; see also Brett, ‘The Use of Universal Chronicle’, p. 278. 40 JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, lxiv, n. 29); Winchcombe and Coventry, ed. Hayward, I, 67, n. 20.

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History Books at Worcester, c.1050–1150

Fig. 6: BL Cotton MS Nero C. v, fol. 98r © The British Library Board.

crucifixion while Cotton MS Nero C. v does not. There are significant differences between the two images. That in the Vatican manuscript is combined with a scene of Christ’s deposition (fol. 103) and located facing the entry for Christ’s crucifixion in the text. The Worcester version famously adapts the usual iconography of the cross flanked by the Virgin and St John, replacing them with enigmatic figures possibly inspired by the typological decoration

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Fig. 7: OCCC MS 157, p. 189. By permission of the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

History Books at Worcester, c.1050–1150 found in Worcester’s chapter house (Fig. 2).41 In the CC the image also faces the start of the text. Another variation occurs in the treatment of text about Christ. In the Vatican manuscript the entry for Christ’s death is emphasised with larger script (fol. 102v). In the CC the entry for Christ’s birth is elaborated instead (p. 203) and after this leaves have been removed, raising the possibility that the manuscript once had additional imagery. Intriguingly, neither entry receives special attention in Cotton MS Nero C. v. Overall, therefore, it seems likely that another manuscript, brought from the continent and derived from the volume now in the Vatican (or something like it), served as the basis for both Cotton MS Nero C. v and the CC. The similarity in size between the two manuscripts (Cotton MS Nero C. v measures 31.5 by 23 cm) makes it likely that the exemplar would have been of a similar size, which would have particularly aided the copying of the tables at the start of the chronicle. If the hypothesis about a manuscript of Marianus Scotus’s chronicle that closely resembled Cotton MS Nero C. v being imported from the continent is correct, it would be an example of the movement of a history book of significant size. This is not without parallel, nor would it be particularly difficult, though the manuscript would presumably have had to be packed into a substantial piece of baggage rather than transported in a satchel as smaller volumes might be. Such a scenario again suggests a distinction between large, high-quality, ‘finished’ manuscripts that present an authoritative account of the past through both their text and design, and histories that were still in progress. Robert of Torigni’s work once again provides a suggestive, though later, comparison. The copy of Bec’s chronicle made for Mont-Saint-Michel (Avranches MS 159) was updated, piecemeal, at Mont-Saint-Michel until Robert’s death in 1186. Bec’s chronicle was updated independently, until the abbot of Bec apparently wrote to Robert to request his version of events. The response is preserved in a libellus now bound as part of London, BL, Cotton MS Domitian A. viii, fols. 71–94 (the same volume compiled by Sir Robert Cotton that contains the heavily reworked copy of the ASC), and includes material for the years 1153 to 1179 (although the prefatory letter suggests the end may be missing and that the history should have continued to 1182).42 This booklet of twenty-four folios measures 21.2 by 15 cm (after trimming) 41 See

A. E. Lawrence-Mathers, ‘John of Worcester and the Science of History’, Journal of Medieval History 39 (2013), 255–74 (at pp. 263–6); A. Henry, The Eton Roundels: Eton College MS 177 ‘Figurae Bibliorum’: A Colour Facsimile with Transcription, Translation and Commentary (Aldershot, 1990), p. 32; T. A. Heslop, ‘Worcester Cathedral Chapterhouse and the Harmony of the Testaments’, in New Offerings, Ancient Treasures: Studies in Medieval Art for George Henderson, ed. P. Binski and W. Noel (Stroud, 2001), pp. 280–311 (pp. 280, 296). 42 See B. Pohl, ‘The Date and Context of Robert of Torigni’s Chronica in London, British Library, Cotton MS. Domitian A. VIII’, electronic British Library Journal (2016), https://www.bl.uk/eblj/2016articles/pdf/ebljarticle12016.pdf. For a new edition, see The Chronography of Robert of Torigni: I, The Chronicle, AD 1100–1186, ed. and

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Laura Cleaver and is for the most part densely written with about thirty-seven lines to a page, although the ruling is irregular. Libelli that were much used and unbound are less likely to have survived, skewing our overall picture of the form in which history was available, but could have been passed between monastic houses for use in the creation of more durable histories.43 The change of scribe in the CC at p. 364, with a new hand completing the entry for 1101 before another possibly takes over in the middle of the entry for 1102, coincides with the use of additional source materials.44 It may, therefore, mark a pause in production, perhaps associated with a change in direction following the death of Florence in 1118, if the work on OCCC MS 157 had only reached 1102 by the time of Florence’s demise.45 Unusually, the first change happens at the page break, mid-sentence, suggesting that the manuscript was being copied from something. The scribe who completed the end of p. 364 continued the text, writing most of the content to 1131 (a relatively short section to p. 379), and made revisions to the existing work, including the addition of passages in the margins and the erasure and rewriting of sections.46 The bishop lists were also extended to c.1130, suggesting that there was a second campaign of activity around that time.47 The new source materials used in this second phase include Eadmer of Canterbury’s Historia Novorum and William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Pontificum.48 The two texts were probably obtained at different times, as entries from the latter continue to appear in the margins after Eadmer’s work is incorporated into the main text block. William of Malmesbury’s work was begun before 1118 and completed around 1125.49 Its appearance in the margins of the Worcester manuscript suggests that it was only available at Worcester towards the end of the second campaign of work on OCCC MS 157, in the late 1120s or 1130s. It probably came via William himself, as he was employed writing a life of Wulfstan II (based on the English life) in this period.50 Eadmer had also visited Worcester, trans. T. N. Bisson, OMT (Oxford, 2020); II, Related Historical Texts, ed. and trans. T. N. Bisson, OMT (Oxford, 2020). 43 For libelli see K. Gerry, ‘Extended Shelf-Life: Manuscript Consolidation in an English Monastic Library’, in Illuminating the Middle Ages: Tributes to Prof. John Lowden from his Students, Friends and Colleagues, ed. L. Cleaver, A. Bovey and L. Donkin (Leiden, 2020), pp. 207–23. 44 See JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xxix). There seem to be changes of hand at both the beginning of p. 364 and about fourteen lines from the end of the page. I am very grateful to Prof. Richard Gameson for discussion of this evidence. 45 See also Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, pp. 109, 119–21. 46 JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xxix). 47 Ibid., pp. xxiii–xxvi, xxxv. 48 McIntyre, ‘Early-Twelfth-Century Worcester’, p. 73; JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, lxxiii–lxxiv); ibid. (ed. McGurk, III, xxvi–xxvii). 49 WM, GP (ed. Winterbottom with Thomson, I, xii). 50 See Orchard, ‘Parallel Lives’; Thomson, William of Malmesbury, p. 73; see also Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, pp. 114, 118.

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History Books at Worcester, c.1050–1150 exchanged letters with the monks there, and written a life of another of the community’s saints: Oswald, whose life had earlier been celebrated in the Worcester Legendary.51 (In his life of Oswald, Eadmer evokes the potential of objects associated with saints to inspire audiences, claiming that when he held Oswald’s chasuble he was ‘overwhelmed and greatly struck with awe by the miracles of God and the praiseworthy merits of blessed Oswald, the friend of God’.)52 Richard Southern argued that the first four books of Eadmer’s work were completed c.1109–15, with the remaining books finished after 1122.53 The completed stages of these texts provide terminus post quem dates for the second phase of work on the CC, though when they arrived at Worcester is unclear. As noted above, the earliest surviving manuscripts of both Eadmer and William of Malmesbury’s histories are very different in form to the CC. Eadmer’s Historia Novorum survives in just two known manuscripts: CCCC MS 452 (which has been identified as his autograph) and London, BL, Cotton MS Titus A. ix, as well as a leaf of a third copy: CCCC MS 341.54 The two manuscripts are small, measuring 17.5 by 12 cm (after trimming) and 20.5 by 14.5 cm respectively. However, unlike the libellus with the extension of Robert of Torigni’s chronicle, the text is generously spaced with twenty-four and thirty-four lines to a page in the two manuscripts, and embellished with multi-coloured initials. William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Pontificum survives in at least eight manuscripts made in the twelfth century.55 These vary in size, with some of the later copies preserved in large manuscripts with coloured initials (for example, London, BL, MS Harley 3642, 34.5 by 21.5 cm or Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R. 5. 36, 28 by 21 cm); however, the earliest manuscript, which may be William’s autograph (Oxford, Magdalen College, MS 172), measures just 18 by 12.5 cm, and shows signs of significant alterations. The number of lines on a page in this volume varies between twenty-nine and fifty-six. The manuscript seems to have been begun as a high-quality, clean copy, and transformed into a working one, but like the copies of Eadmer’s work it represents a relatively modest investment of resources. The incorporation of these materials into the CC therefore provides

51 Southern,

Saint Anselm, p. 283; Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, p. 113; Eadmer of Canterbury, Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan and Oswald, ed. and trans. A. J. Turner and B. J. Muir, OMT (Oxford, 2006), pp. 306–7. 52 Eadmer of Canterbury, Lives and Miracles, ed. and trans. Turner and Muir, pp. 306–7. 53 Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, p. 111; Southern, Saint Anselm, pp. 298–309, 368–9; D. Rollason, ‘Symeon of Durham’s Historia de Regibus Anglorum et Dacorum as a Product of Twelfth-Century Historical Workshops’, in The Long Twelfth-Century View of the Anglo-Saxon Past, ed. M. Brett and D. A. Woodman (Farnham, 2015), pp. 95–111 (p. 106). 54 Cleaver, ‘Autograph History Books’, pp. 105–6. 55 WM, GP (ed. Winterbottom with Thomson, I, xi–xiii).

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Laura Cleaver early evidence of the acceptance of these new texts, and their adaptation to a more impressive format, even when placed in the margins. As David Rollason has shown, the use of Eadmer’s work at Worcester is complicated by the evidence of Symeon of Durham’s historical writing.56 The monks of Worcester had long-standing ties with Durham and exchanged texts with them, either as bound manuscripts or as libelli.57 Intriguingly, Marianus’s consular tables appear in a manuscript made at Durham in the early twelfth century, now Durham, Cathedral Library, MS Hunter 100, fols. 27v–41 (17 by 12 cm), though without references to Worcester and with added references to Durham.58 In addition, Symeon had access to a version of the CC, with the content taken from Eadmer that extended to at least 1118.59 From the entry for 1119 Symeon made use of Eadmer’s text in its full form, which may indicate that he did not have it before this date.60 The problem here lies in the choices made by Symeon, which could have involved ignoring one text in favour of another.61 Yet, Symeon seems to have died in 1129, leaving his Historia de regibus Anglorum et Dacorum unfinished with the entry for that year.62 The work now only survives in a later manuscript (CCCC MS 139), but assuming that the text was not subsequently substantially reworked, a version of the CC (and its related materials) was probably available to Symeon for copying before the Worcester manuscript was completed to 1131. The evidence provided by Symeon of Durham is intriguing because the surviving copies of the CC were all made after the completion of the second phase of work, ending in 1131. In one case, now Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Bodley 297, the maker followed the Worcester manuscript particularly closely, replicating the text on each page from page 5 of OCCC MS 157 until page 29 (where the list of popes has been erased and rewritten). The list of disciples (p. 36 in OCCC MS 157) begins a new page in the Bodleian manuscript (p. 31) and the rest of the content is adjusted to bring it almost back into line with the Worcester volume. By the end of the following page the Bodleian copy matches the Worcester one, and the precise page-by-page copying continues until page 56 Rollason,

‘Symeon of Durham’s Historia’. ‘John of Worcester’, p. 119; see also S. Mereminskiy, ‘William of Malmesbury and Durham: The Circulation of Historical Knowledge in Early Twelfth-Century England’, in Discovering William of Malmesbury, ed. R. M. Thomson, E. Dolmans and E. A. Winkler (Woodbridge, 2017), pp. 107–16; D. A. Woodman, ‘Annals 848 to 1118 in the Historia Regum’, in The Battle of Carham: A Thousand Years on, ed. N. McGuigan and A. Woolf (Edinburgh, 2018), pp. 202–30. 58 Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, p. 119, n. 2. I am grateful to Charlie Rozier for discussion of these manuscripts and other material from Durham. See C. C. Rozier, ‘Compiling Chronicles in Anglo-Norman Durham c.1100–1130’, ANS 42 (2020), 119–34. 59 Rollason, ‘Symeon of Durham’s Historia’, p. 106. 60 Ibid., pp. 108–9. 61 See Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, p. 121. 62 Gullick, ‘The Hand of Symeon of Durham’, in Symeon of Durham: Historian of Durham and the North, ed. D. Rollason (Stamford, 1998), pp. 14–31 (pp. 21–2). 57 Brett,

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History Books at Worcester, c.1050–1150 77 of OCCC MS 157 (p. 66 of the Bodleian manuscript), where further adjustments are made for the sections revised in OCCC MS 157. Later pages also contain matching content, as part of the attempt to copy the complex layout of some sections, before the two manuscripts finally diverge at p. 151 of OCCC MS 157 and p. 145 of the Bodleian volume.63 The Bodleian copy is larger than the Worcester volume, at 37.8 by 28.4 cm (Fig. 1), and is the only surviving copy in which an attempt was made to reproduce the image of the crucifixion (p. 71), although this was left unfinished (as was the cross on p. 187). The close debt of the Bodleian manuscript to the Worcester exemplar raises important questions about the circumstances in which the work on the Bodleian copy was done. On the basis of additions in both the margins and the body of the text, the manuscript has been associated with Bury St Edmunds.64 The manuscript was worked on by two scribes, apparently simultaneously.65 There are, therefore, three possibilities. Either the Worcester manuscript was taken to Bury, or a scribe (or scribes) spent an extended period at Worcester (presumably financed by Bury), or an intermediate copy, very like the Worcester manuscript, once existed and was circulated for copying. Brett inclined towards the first option, and the manuscript’s absence and subsequent return could provide a partial explanation for its further reworking in the 1140s.66 The involvement of two scribes, at least one of whom was capable of adding details pertaining to Bury, presumably from a source kept at that house, makes this scenario the most likely, though it is not completely impossible that a Bury scribe was sent to Worcester with a manuscript or manuscripts containing information about Bury’s history. The existence of additional, now lost copies of the CC would help to explain the proliferation of copies associated with Benedictine houses in central England in the second half of the twelfth century. The survival of a single leaf, now in Evesham Almonry Museum, provides evidence for at least one more copy.67 This volume was even larger than the Worcester manuscript (and similar in size to the Bury copy) at 37.5 by 28 cm. Unfortunately, the surviving leaf only contains the entries for 531–2, so it is unclear how far this copy of the chronicle extended. Brett has argued for a lost manuscript, made after 1131 but before any alterations to the text were made in the campaign associated with John of Worcester, which became the basis for TCD MS 502 (probably, on the basis of added lists of bishops, made at Coventry in 63 See

McIntyre, ‘Early-Twelfth-Century Worcester’, p. 64; Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, p. 107. 64 JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, lii); see also Memorials of St Edmund’s Abbey I, ed. T. Arnold (London, 1890), pp. 340–56; Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, p. 107. 65 JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, lii); see also McIntyre, ‘Early-TwelfthCentury Worcester’, p. 64. 66 Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, p. 107. 67 N. R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1969–2002), II, 799; JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xxxv–xxxvi).

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Laura Cleaver the mid-twelfth century) and Lambeth Palace MS 42 (made at Abingdon, c.1162–70).68 However, this manuscript cannot have been the source of the Bury manuscript, which includes most (though not all) of the alterations and additions made to the Worcester manuscript by multiple hands, including that identified with John of Worcester, presumably done in the 1130s or early 1140s. A final manuscript, CCCC MS 92, seems to have been made c.1174–84 using material from Abingdon.69 The existence of an intermediate copy would remove the need for a lengthy stay at Worcester by a Bury scribe, but would require the now lost copy to have closely resembled the Worcester manuscript in form as well as content. In the context of the movement of scribes and manuscripts, John of Worcester’s references to his visit (or visits) to Winchcombe are particularly intriguing, because Paul Hayward has demonstrated that a chronicle produced at that house owes a significant debt to the CC. He has argued that both this chronicle, preserved as London, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius E. iv, fols. 1–27, and a later volume possibly produced at Coventry, now London, BL, MS Harley 3775, were created from a version of the CC that extended to 1122, with the Harley manuscript also making use of material for the years to 1139.70 (Although one of the surviving copies of the CC (TCD MS 502) has been associated with Coventry, this cannot be the source of the Harley manuscript, as it ends before 1139.) Cotton MS Tiberius E. iv was damaged in the Cotton fire, but was once a large, carefully executed volume, measuring approximately 36.5 by 27 cm. Winchcombe was much closer to Worcester than Bury (at about 25 miles distance), with Evesham on a route between the two. Whether a scribe from Winchcombe went to Worcester, or a version of the CC was circulating in the area, this evidence, like that provided by Symeon of Durham, suggests that more versions of the CC once existed. Whether OCCC MS 157 left Worcester in the 1130s or not, changing attitudes to the volume are indicated by its final reworking in the 1140s. At this point the annals for 1128–31 were erased and rewritten, with the text continued to at least 1140 (where the work now breaks off, incomplete). This final section contains the name of John of Worcester in the entry for 1138 where in a rubric the reader is instructed to ‘here correct John if he errs’.71 The final phase of production also included more imagery: a diagram of sunspots and the famous images of Henry I’s dreams and Channel crossing.72 The

68 Brett,

‘John of Worcester’, p. 106; JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xxxvi–xlv). 69 JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, lviii–lix). 70 Winchcombe and Coventry, ed. Hayward, I, 63, 150. 71 ‘Corrigat ista legens offendit siqua Iohannes’; JW, Chron. s.a. 1138 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 244–5). 72 Lawrence-Mathers, ‘John of Worcester’, pp. 255–74; J. Collard, ‘Henry I’s Dream in John of Worcester’s Chronicle (Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 157) and the

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History Books at Worcester, c.1050–1150 manuscript seems therefore to have continued to be considered a high-status object worthy of decoration in the 1140s, despite the many alterations, though it may also have become a ‘working’ manuscript, from which it was expected that better copies might be made. If so, however, no copy of the extended version is known to survive. One final manuscript must fit somewhere into this complex picture of high-quality chronicles, copies and drafts. The manuscript known as the Worcester Chronicula (or ‘little chronicle’, TCD MS 503), measures just 12 by 9 cm. It is associated with Worcester because its annals up to the year 1123 appear to have been written by the hand identified with John of Worcester, and parts of the text seem to have been derived from the CC, though this was not the Chronicula’s only source, as it also contains material that was not included in the larger chronicle.73 For example, the Chronicula includes both text and a small image of a cross that appeared around the moon that were part of the entry (in Latin) for 806 in the version of the ASC from Canterbury (now London, BL, Cotton MS Domitian A. viii, fol. 51), but not the CC.74 Indeed, it is only when another scribe takes over that the entries for 1123 to 1141 closely follow the CC, albeit with some additional material pertaining to Gloucester.75 The intimate scale of this manuscript indicates that it was a very different project to the large chronicle, and might have been initiated by John as part of his interest in expanding the larger history. Strikingly, however, the manuscript is a clean copy, rather than notes, with a well-laid-out text and rubrics. In this context, references to John’s travels raise the possibility that the small manuscript was intended to be portable, perhaps brought back to Worcester after John’s travels, where it was then expanded as John worked on revising the larger history.76 The proliferation of manuscripts supposed by modern scholarship to fill the gaps between surviving material associated with the CC raises questions about the status and ownership of volumes sent out for copying or compiled in the preparation of a grander volume. Medieval library lists provide few clues, and indeed the lack of medieval library catalogues from Worcester cathedral has long been lamented.77 The earliest substantial lists of

Illustration of Twelfth-Century English Chronicles’, Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010), 105–25. 73 JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xxxiv, lix–lxv); Cleaver, ‘Autograph History Books’, pp. 102–3. 74 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Baker, p. 59. 75 JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, lix–lxiv); Winchcombe and Coventry, ed. Hayward, I, 74–5. 76 See Winchcombe and Coventry, ed. Hayward, I, 74–5, for a slightly different interpretation. 77 Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Wigorniensis made in 1622–1623 by Patrick Young Librarian to King James I, ed. I. Atkins and N. R. Ker (Cambridge, 1944), p. 1.

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Laura Cleaver manuscripts that are explicitly stated to be held at Worcester cathedral date to the seventeenth century.78 In c.1622 Patrick Young visited the cathedral and produced a list of 343 manuscripts then to be found there.79 That list includes a copy of Eusebius’s Historia ecclesiastica described as ‘vetus’ (‘old’), which has been identified with a tenth-century manuscript still at Worcester (MS Q. 28).80 However, by this date the manuscripts of the well-known histories associated with Worcester had already gone. The copy of the ASC recorded at Worcester in the sixteenth century, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius B. iv, was probably in the hands of Sir Robert Cotton.81 The Old English Bede (Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk. 3. 18) was given to Cambridge University by Matthew Parker in 1574.82 According to a note at the top of p. 1, the CC (OCCC MS 157) was given to the Oxford college in 1618.83 Another note, on the flyleaf, records that it went to the priory of Great Malvern (in the diocese of Worcester, but a cell of Westminster Abbey) in 1480. Similarly, by the late sixteenth century the Worcester Chronicula was in private hands.84 Two short lists of books have been tentatively associated with Worcester on the basis of their appearance in medieval manuscripts that have a later Worcester provenance. In the middle of the eleventh century, a very short list of books was written at the top of a page before an account of a vision of Earl Leofric.85 Both texts are written in Old English, and ten of the twelve listed volumes are explicitly identified as English, but none of the works is a history. A second, longer, list of books has proved more controversial.86 A

78 See

Catalogus Librorum, ed. Atkins and Ker. p. 3. 80 Ibid., p. 39; R. M. Thomson, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts in Worcester Cathedral Library (Cambridge, 2001), p. 135. 81 C. G. C. Tite, The Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton’s Library: Formation, Cataloguing, Use (London, 2003), pp. 106–7. 82 Ker, Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon, p. 37; T. Graham, ‘Robert Talbot’s “Old Saxonice Bede”: Cambridge University Library, MS Kk.3.18 and the “Alphabetum Norwagicum” of British Library, Cotton MSS, Domitian A. IX’, in Books and Collectors 1200–1700. Essays Presented to Andrew Watson, ed. J. P. Carley and C. G. C. Tite (London, 1997), pp. 295–316 (p. 303). 83 See JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xxviii); R. M. Thomson, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts of Corpus Christi College Oxford (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 82–3. 84 JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, lxii). 85 CCCC MS 367, fol. 101v; see M. Lapidge, ‘Surviving Booklists from Anglo-Saxon England’, in Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies Presented to Peter Clemoes on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. M. Lapidge and H. Gneuss (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 33–89 (pp. 62–4); R. Sharpe, J. P. Carley, R. M. Thomson and A. G. Watson, ed., English Benedictine Libraries: The Shorter Catalogues, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 4 (London, 1996), pp. 653–4; Gameson, ‘St Wulfstan’, p. 63. 86 Oxford, Bodl. Lib., Tanner MS 3, fol. 189v; H. M. Bannister, ‘Bishop Roger of Worcester and the Church of Keynsham, with a List of Vestments and Books 79 Ibid.,

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History Books at Worcester, c.1050–1150 copy of Gregory’s Dialogues (Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Tanner 3) is associated with Worcester on the basis of a letter from Pope Alexander III to Bishop Roger copied into it during or shortly after Roger’s term of office at Worcester (1164–79). The manuscript also contains a list of sixty books, added at the end of the volume in c.1100. Atkins and Ker expressed scepticism that the list related to books at Worcester, but Rodney Thomson has suggested that the fact that none of the contents can now be securely identified with surviving Worcester books could be the result of losses due to heavy usage.87 In this, he followed Michael Lapidge in identifying the contents of the list as being ‘for use in the schoolroom’, although Lapidge also noted that the list ends with liturgical books.88 The list cannot be an inventory of all the books available at a monastic site, not least because it does not contain a Bible. Exactly what the list represents is unclear, but given the alienation of books from Worcester in the sixteenth century, it is not impossible that the list was drawn up at the cathedral, and its contents are therefore worth considering in the light of the evidence provided by the chronicle, which was in progress at the time. Among the titles listed in the Tanner manuscript are two books described as Historiae Anglorum, which are probably copies of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, and an Aeclesiastica istoria, probably the Historia ecclesiastica of Eusebius.89 The CC made extensive use of Bede’s work, and a tenth-century copy of Eusebius’s work is still at Worcester (MS Q. 28).90 These texts were widely available by the twelfth century. Both appear in a twelfthcentury library list from Orderic’s monastery of Saint-Évroult in Normandy.91 Similarly, Durham cathedral had a copy of Bede’s history by 1096, and a Historia ecclesiastica appears in a Durham booklist created before 1149, which also includes a history of England and two chronicles in English.92 Some of the other histories listed in MS Tanner 3 were also widely available, and are a reminder of the diversity of material about the past. These include an Possibly Belonging to Worcester’, EHR 32 (1917), 387–93; Catalogus Librorum, ed. Atkins and Ker, p. 1, n. 1; McIntyre, ‘Early-Twelfth-Century Worcester’, pp. 87–8; Lapidge, ‘Surviving Booklists’, pp. 69–73; Sharpe et al., English Benedictine Libraries, pp. 654–9; Thomson, Medieval Manuscripts in Worcester, p. xxiii. 87 Catalogus Librorum, ed. Atkins and Ker, p. 1 n. 1; Thomson, Medieval Manuscripts in Worcester, p. xxiii. 88 Lapidge, ‘Surviving Booklists’, p. 69; Thomson, Medieval Manuscripts in Worcester, p. xxiii. 89 See Lapidge, ‘Surviving Booklists’, pp. 69–73; Sharpe et al., English Benedictine Libraries, pp. 654–9. 90 R. R. Darlington and P. McGurk, ‘The “Chronicon ex Chronicis” of “Florence” of Worcester and its Use of Sources for English History before 1066’, ANS 5 (1982), 185–96 (p. 186); Thomson, Medieval Manuscripts in Worcester, p. 135. 91 Paris, BnF, MS Lat. 10062, fol. 80v; G. Nortier, Les bibliothèques médiévales des abbayes bénédictines de Normandie, 2nd edn (Paris, 1971). 92 Durham, Cathedral Library, MS B. iv. 24; Rozier, ‘Durham Cathedral Priory and its Library’.

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Laura Cleaver ‘Orosius’ (Orosius’s fifth-century Historia adversus paganos, also available at both Saint-Évroult and Durham in the twelfth century, and used by Marianus Scotus), ‘Arator’ (Arator’s history of the Apostles, which appears twice in the list), ‘Apollonius’ (the Historia Apollonii regis Tyri) and lives of saints Wilfrid and Ciaran.93 Yet while this list provides an insight into histories that might plausibly have been at Worcester c.1100, if the list was made at Worcester, the evidence of the CC indicates that there are some remarkable absences, including the ASC and that of Marianus Scotus. This does not mean that the list was not made at Worcester, but it is a reminder of the limitations of lists, particularly when the context of production and intended function remain unknown.94 At the same time, these lists serve as circumstantial evidence for the probable presence at Worcester of other histories, beyond those identified as immediate sources for the chronicle.

The CC, as it survives in OCCC MS 157, appears to have been begun in the early twelfth century. As a large, high-quality manuscript that drew upon many sources, it was probably copied from earlier drafts or notes, plausibly in the context of a project initiated in the time of Bishop Wulfstan. A carefully executed manuscript, its size and decoration were in keeping with copies of the works of the Church Fathers being made for the Benedictine community, but the inclusion of the image of the crucifixion was an unusual foray into figurative imagery in Worcester’s manuscripts. This was probably inspired by the copy of Marianus Scotus’s chronicle that was available at Worcester, but that it was a deliberate choice is underlined by the lack of decoration in the only known copy of Marianus’s text from the region (BL, Cotton MS Nero C. v). The CC was therefore an ambitious project on many levels, combining material from multiple sources to create a Latin parallel to the ASC, reconciling the chronologies of those sources and producing a visually impressive monument that came to be associated with Wulfstan. At the same time, as the work developed, use was made of content for the more recent past that was circulating in much smaller manuscripts, and potentially as unbound libelli. Material from the Worcester project seems also to have been made available, from at least the 1120s, for copying elsewhere. The exact form that this took remains elusive, but it is possible that drafts used for the preparation of the great manuscript might have been recycled, or that copies were made for circulation. The Worcester manuscript therefore appears as a fixed point within a complex (and frustratingly incomplete) web of connections that included Mainz (via Hereford), Canterbury, Malmesbury, Durham, Evesham, 93 Sharpe

et al., English Benedictine Libraries, pp. 654–9. also L. Cleaver, ‘The Monastic Library at Le Bec’, in A Companion to the Abbey of Le Bec in the Central Middle Ages (11th–13th Centuries), ed. B. Pohl and L. Gathagan (Leiden, 2018), pp. 171–205 (p. 178).

94 See

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History Books at Worcester, c.1050–1150 Winchcombe, Abingdon, Coventry, Peterborough, Gloucester and Bury St Edmunds, amongst others. A linking feature is the Benedictine monastic network, but the places also underline the importance of both local ties and connections to wealthy and powerful houses further afield. The manuscript may have left Worcester in the 1130s to travel across England to Bury. This would help to explain the subsequent reworking associated with John of Worcester, which added both more text and imagery. The final phase of production has been of most interest in recent scholarship, as evidence for the work of an individual (John) and the writing of history in the twelfth century. However, the manuscript as a whole provides important evidence of a project that spanned half a century, from the time of Bishop Wulfstan to the political and social instability of the 1140s, of contact with many people, and of attempts to use the whole of Christian history to make sense of and serve the needs of the community of Worcester in the present.

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8 Poetry in the Worcester Chronicula (TCD MS 503) D. A. Woodman

The Worcester Chronica Chronicarum (hereafter CC) was compiled in a number of stages with new layers of text from a range of sources being added at each stage, and with emendations of the main text and marginal and interlinear additions made throughout.1 As noted elsewhere in this volume, comparison of OCCC MS 157, the archetype of CC, with other extant manuscript copies of the same text, allows for these different stages to be identified with a degree of precision; and some of the stages can be closely dated. In its current form, the CC in OCCC MS 157 extends to 1140.2 It represents one branch of a major historical enterprise (alongside the production of various cartularies) undertaken by members of the Worcester religious community in the early to mid-twelfth century.3 The CC uses the universal chronicle of Marianus Scotus (an Irishman based on the continent at Mainz) as its template, and onto that template were added various passages (some of them unique) about British history. An important source for domestic events was a version (or versions) of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (hereafter ASC).4 In one annal of the CC a monk named Florence is given a degree of credit for CC’s creation, but it is clear that

1 The





writing of this chapter was facilitated by two visiting academic positions, one held in Trinity College, Dublin, and the other in Harvard University. I am most grateful to Dr Laura Cleaver, then of TCD, and to Professor Thomas N. Bisson and Dr Sean Gilsdorf of Harvard for their help in enabling my positions in both places (and for their support of my research). I am also grateful to Dr Martin Brett, Professor Tom Licence, Professor Thomas O’Donnell and Professor Elizabeth Tyler for reading and offering advice about this chapter. Any errors that remain are my responsibility. 2 For the different stages in the CC’s production, see M. Brett, ‘John of Worcester and his Contemporaries’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern, ed. R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford, 1981), pp. 101–26 and JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, lxvii–lxxiii). 3 See further the chapters by Tinti and Woodman, and by O’Donnell. 4 R. R. Darlington and P. McGurk, ‘The “Chronicon ex Chronicis” of “Florence” of Worcester and its Use of Sources for English History before 1066’, ANS 5 (1983), 185–96.

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Poetry in the Worcester Chronicula another monk, John, also had a role in its authorship and indeed John’s own hand has been identified as writing and rewriting parts of the CC and making additions in its margins.5 Although the CC is mainly a prose account of historical events arranged annalistically, it also contains small insertions of poetry, for instance in annals 1113, 1118, 1124, 1136 and 1138. None of these examples of poetry is significant in length or content. In the context of the CC, these particular poems mark the deaths of Worcester monks (Prior Thomas and Coleman in 1113, Florence in 1118 and Prior Nicholas in 1124) and the death of a king, Henry I.6 The poem inserted in annal 1138, consisting of two and a third hexameter lines, reads: Hoc tamen oro: Quisquis Christicola sub summa pace quiescat, Corrigat ista legens offendit siqua Iohannes. This however I do entreat: May every Christian rest in total bliss! Let the reader here correct John if he errs!7

This entry expresses a more generalised desire about the fate of Christians who have died, while its last line, a kind of sphragis (σφραγίς) or ‘seal’, is cited by scholars for its suggestion that the monk John had an authorial role in the composition of the CC itself, and therefore in these few lines of poetry as well.8 John’s hand can also be found in a manuscript belonging to TCD: he has been identified as the principal scribe responsible for the production of TCD MS 503, a manuscript which is the unique copy of a text known as the Chronicula.9 As its name suggests, the Chronicula, physically small in size, is an abridged and shortened version of the CC. Its purpose is somewhat

5 JW,







Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xxix–xxxv). For the issues raised by ‘autograph’ manuscripts, including the CC, see L. Cleaver, ‘Autograph History Books in the Twelfth Century’, in Writing History in the Anglo-Norman World: Manuscripts, Makers and Readers, c.1066–1250, ed. L. Cleaver and A. Worm (York, 2018), pp. 93–112. 6 Henry died in 1135; the poem about him in the CC occurs in its 1136 annal which describes the burial of the king: JW, Chron. s.a. 1136 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 216–17). 7 JW, Chron. s.a. 1138 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 244–5). The second line of this poem contains a prosodic error with the word ‘Christicola’, where the last syllable is short but, in the context of this line of verse, it should be long. With the line ‘Let the reader here correct John if he errs!’, could John have been aware that some of his verse may have been prosodically incorrect? 8 See, for example, JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xviii). 9 Ibid., pp. lix–lxiv and Darlington and McGurk, ‘The “Chronicon ex chronicis”’, pp. 195–6.

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D. A. Woodman obscure: while some of its annals offer straightforward summaries of corresponding annals in the CC, others deviate in various details and sometimes add new information on the basis of sources not exploited in the same way in the CC.10 Various passages in the Chronicula itself suggest that that text as a whole was written roughly contemporaneously, and at least after the initial stages of the writing of the CC. On fol. 71v we find reference in the Chronicula to the existence of the CC and at the same time some recognition of the function of the Chronicula when compared with the CC: ‘Horum omnium acta pessima qui nosse uoluerit, seriatim pleniusque reperiet scripta in cronicarum chronica. Huic uero libello dumtaxat utiliora studuimis inserere’ (‘Anyone wanting to know the worst of all these deeds, will find [them] written in order and more fully in the chronicle of chronicles. In this booklet, however, we have concentrated on inserting only the more useful items’).11 The Chronicula includes material from some of the later stages of the CC, and a date of the late 1130s for its composition has recently been suggested.12 At various points in the Chronicula, lines of verse are inserted which (most often) commemorate the deaths of various figures. Three poems stand out both because of their length and content, and because they do not appear in corresponding parts of the CC. These poems are inserted in annals relating to the deaths of King Edward the Confessor (d. 1066), King Harold, son of Godwine (d. 1066) and Bishop Wulfstan II of Worcester (d. 1095).13 The texts and translations of these poems (referred to in this chapter as Edward, Harold and Wulfstan respectively) are printed in the sections that follow. Each line of the poems consists of two sets of six syllables; each line has internal rhyme 10 Other

abbreviated versions of the CC composed at Worcester have been identified; see above, Tinti and Woodman’s chapter, pp. 24–5. 11 Similar sentiments can be found on fol. 75r: ‘Hec seriatim omnia scire uolentibus patefaciet chronicarum chronica. Huic uero libello hec minime inseruimus breuitatis causa’ (‘The chronicle of chronicles will disclose all these things in chronological order to those wanting to know. But in this little book, on account of brevity, we have inserted these things on a very small scale’) and again on fol. 76r in almost identical form, where readers are referred to the CC if they wish to find more detail and where for reasons of ‘brevity’ the Chronicula is described as not containing this detail. Note also the comment on fol. 111v following notice of the death of Florence: ‘Huius subtili scientia et studiosi laboris industria preeminent cunctis chronicarum chronica, hec etiam de ipsa maiori collecta chronicula’ (‘Because of his meticulous learning and the hard work of his scholarly toil, the chronicle of chronicles excels them all, as does this chronicula, assembled from the actual larger one’). 12 Darlington and McGurk, ‘The “Chronicon ex chronicis”’, p. 195, suggest that John may have written the Chronicula before he finished revising the principal copy of the CC. The Winchcombe and Coventry Chronicles: Hitherto Unnoticed Witnesses to the Work of John of Worcester, ed. and trans. P. A. Hayward, 2 vols. (Tempe, AZ, 2010), I, 74, provides the date of the late 1130s. 13 The texts of these poems have previously been printed: M. Colker, ‘Latin Verses Lamenting the Death of Saint Wulfstan of Worcester’, Analecta Bollandiana 89 (1971), 319–22 and D. Howlett, British Books in Biblical Style (Dublin, 1997), pp. 246–53.

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Poetry in the Worcester Chronicula between the two sets, and the accent of the final word of each line falls on the penultimate syllable (i.e. paroxytonic).14 Who was the author of these poems? Although it is difficult to be sure, various aspects of the CC, the poems and of the poetry scattered throughout the Chronicula might suggest that John himself should be considered the author. Firstly, John’s connection in particular with the poem inserted into annal 1138 of the CC (quoted above) makes it clear that he was sometimes the author of poetry. Secondly, the occasional lines of verse (in addition to these three poems) which can be found inserted in various parts of the Chronicula, a manuscript written in the hand of John and so closely connected to him, are more often than not unique to that text and cannot be found in the corresponding parts of the CC (or in the preliminary matter inserted in OCCC MS 157 before the CC).15 This may suggest that John himself had a tendency to insert verse while working on the Chronicula. Thirdly, there is a phrase in line 2 of Edward and in line 10 of Wulfstan – De medio factus (‘snatched from our midst’) – which is relatively distinctive. A search of the Brepols ‘Cross Database Searchtool’ indicates that it occurs elsewhere in the work of Sigebert of Gembloux, Hariulf de Saint-Riquier and Bernard of Clairvaux. The same phrase is used in annal 1134 of the CC, in a section that was certainly written by John,16 who describes his own involvement in the writing of this particular annal: ‘I heard this account, when I was once exiled at Winchcombe, from the most learned abbot of St Valéry, and took care to insert it in our chronicle’.17 Could it have been an expression favoured by John, used both in an annal of the CC and in these poems in the Chronicula? Further questions remain which are almost impossible to answer with certainty. If the suggested date of composition for the Chronicula of the late 1130s can be accepted, do the poems also belong to that period, or did they have a prior existence before being copied into the Chronicula? Were the poems composed de novo or were they based very closely on other sources that are now lost? The highly derivative nature of the annalistic material in the CC and the Chronicula makes this an important consideration. Even if satisfactory answers to these questions are not immediately forthcoming, possible models for the insertion of poetry into annals of the CC and the Chronicula can be suggested. Perhaps most obviously, various verses can be found in annals of the ASC which commemorate the deaths of different kings.18 In particular, manuscript copies C and D of the ASC have in their 14 I

am very grateful to Dr Neil Wright for his help with the metre and form of the poems. 15 The exceptions are the poems in honour of Thomas, Coleman and Florence, all of which appear in both the Chronicula and the CC. 16 JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xxix–xxxiv). 17 ‘Hec olim exulans Wincelcumbe, ab ore doctissimi uiri abbatis de Sancto Walarico audiui, et huic chronice nostre inserere curaui’; ibid. s.a. 1134 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 214–15). 18 For discussion of the poems in the ASC see, for example, J. Thormann, ‘The

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D. A. Woodman entries for 1065 a poem – known as the Death of Edward – of just over thirty lines’ length, which marks Edward’s death and the succession of Harold.19 The Death of Edward attempts firstly to describe Edward as a traditional lord and king and then also to legitimise the succession of Harold. In very broad terms, Edward mimics the principal messages of this earlier ASC poem. In its second line (see below), Edward describes how the king was ‘removed from the world’ (‘mundoque subtractus’), and, in line three, how he ‘left the sceptres of the kingdom to Earl Harold’ (‘Haroldo comiti sceptra liquit regni’). The Death of Edward is not dissimilar in describing how ‘Death in his bitterness, bearing so dear a lord from the Earth’ (‘deað se bitera, and swa deore genam æþelne of eorðan’), and then describing how the kingdom was left to Harold ‘a man of high rank’ (‘heahþungenum menn’). It is also notable that the form of John’s Latin poems, with two sets of six syllables linked by internal rhyme, is not unlike that of Old English poetry found in the ASC: for example, that which commemorates the death of Alfred the ætheling in 1036, also in copies C and D, is striking for its sustained deployment of half lines linked by end rhyme.20 Verses from the ASC may well have constituted a significant exemplar for the insertion of poetry into the CC and the Chronicula. Evidence of the Worcester community’s engagement with Latin poetry in the late eleventh century is provided by a group of poems attributed to Patrick, bishop of Dublin from 1074 to 1084.21 In those that begin with the words ‘Perge carina’ and ‘Mentis in excessu’, Aldwin, a monk of Worcester, is

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Poems and the Making of the English Nation’, in AngloSaxonism and the Construction of Social Identity, ed. A. J. Frantzen and J. D. Niles (Gainesville, 1997), pp. 60–85; M. Townend, ‘Pre-Cnut Praise-Poetry in Viking Age England’, Review of English Studies 51 (2000), 349–70; J. Carroll, ‘Engla Waldend, Rex Admirabilis: Poetic Representations of King Edgar’, Review of English Studies 58 (2007), 113–32 and S. T. Smith, ‘The Edgar Poems and the Poetics of Failure in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, ASE 39 (2011), 105–37. 19 A convenient text of this poem can be found in E. V. K. Dobbie, ed., The AngloSaxon Minor Poems (London, 1942), pp. 25–6; the C and D versions have been edited in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Volume 5: MS C, ed. K. O’Brien O’Keeffe (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 118–19 and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Volume 6: MS D, ed. G. P. Cubbin (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 78–9. It is discussed by K. O’Brien O’Keeffe, ‘Deaths and Transformations: Thinking through the “End” of Old English Verse’, in New Directions in Oral Theory, ed. M. C. Amodio (Tempe, AZ, 2005), pp. 149–78. 20 See Dobbie, Minor Poems, pp. 24–5; The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, pp. 106–7 and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Cubbin, pp. 65–6. The Death of Edward does not use half lines that are linked by their end rhyme. For discussion of rhyme in Old English, see E. G. Stanley, ‘Rhymes in English Medieval Verse: From Old English to Middle English’, in Medieval English Studies presented to George Kane, ed. E. D. Kennedy, R. Waldrom and J. S. Wittig (Woodbridge, 1988), pp. 19–54 (at pp. 28–9 for the verse in the 1036 annal of the ASC). 21 For these poems, see The Writings of Bishop Patrick, 1074–1084, ed. and trans. A. Gwynn, Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 1 (Dublin, 1955).

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Poetry in the Worcester Chronicula named as the intended recipient and it is possible that the poem ‘De caduca vita’ was also meant for him. In ‘Perge carina’ the poet describes how his work is to make its way over the sea to England ‘to visit the dear home of Bishop Wulfstan’, where the name ‘Wulfstan’ is identified by means of a gloss to the text.22 These poems raise many interesting questions, not least about Patrick’s purported authorship.23 For our present purposes, they indicate that there were those at Worcester in the late eleventh century who were engaging in literary exchanges with a poet from Dublin, demonstrative of Worcester’s extensive and varied intellectual connections. Baudri, abbot of Bourgueil from 1080 until about 1107, and afterwards archbishop of Dol, was a prolific author of poetry and some hundred or so of his extant poems take the form of epitaphs and laments for those who have died.24 As Bond notes, these works ‘form the major sub-group of the titulus, or inscription poem, a classical genre widely cultivated in the eleventh century and in many ways characteristic of its approach to language and ornament. The sepulchral tituli, or epitaphs, are … written as poetic inscriptions for inclusion in the death-rolls (rotuli) which were circulated among religious establishments’.25 Bond judged these poems to be of limited interest, given that they are ‘devoid of personal experience, stylistically restricted to a handful of rhetorical devices, and formally limited to a few traditional meters … When separated from the ceremony which had linked structure and occasion, Baudri’s epitaphs, like all such ritual discourse, lose both interest and significance’.26 As we will see, these Worcester poems offer more interest in terms of their content than Bond affords those by Baudri. We know that Baudri visited Worcester at some point after 1107, possibly, Abrahams suggests, between 1120 and 1130.27 If these dates can be accepted, Baudri would have arrived at Worcester just when members of the religious community were fully engaged with their various literary enterprises. As a result of his visit, Baudri was inspired to produce at least a few short poems, one of which has the organ of the Worcester church as its subject. Written predominantly in hexameters, the poem employs rhyme and alliteration and also the repetition of various important words in order to stress its key themes

22 The

Writings, ed. and trans. Gwynn, pp. 102–3. Brett, ‘Canterbury’s Perspective on Church Reform and Ireland, 1070–1115’, in Ireland and Europe in the Twelfth Century: Reform and Renewal, ed. D. Bracken and D. Ó Riain-Raedel (Dublin, 2006), pp. 13–35 (pp. 33–5). 24 Baudri’s poems have most recently been edited in Baudri de Bourgueil, Carmina, ed. J.-Y. Tilliette, 2 vols. (Paris, 1998–2002). 25 G. A. Bond, ‘Iocus Amoris: The Poetry of Baudri of Bourgueil and the Formation of the Ovidian Subculture’, Traditio 42 (1986), 143–93 (pp. 150–1). 26 Ibid., p. 151. 27 Les Œuvres Poétiques de Baudri de Bourgueil (1046–1130), ed. P. Abrahams (Paris, 1926), p. 360 (see the note there under the ‘date’ for poem CCLI). 23 M.

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D. A. Woodman of unity and harmony.28 The Worcester poems are quite different in metrical form from this example of Baudri’s, but it is not impossible that Baudri had discussed with those at Worcester (including John) the genre of poetry that clearly fascinated him, the composition of laments and epitaphs for those who have died. Baudri’s poetical works, and his visit to Worcester, serve as a useful reminder of the wider network of scholarship to which the Worcester monks were connected and from which they could draw inspiration.29 That John himself was interested in epitaphs is conclusively demonstrated by a manuscript of the 1130s: Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk. 4. 6. As Thomson has shown, this manuscript contains a copy of the Liber Pontificalis, made from a compilation originally put together by William of Malmesbury.30 The hand of the principal scribe of this copy of the Liber Pontificalis can be identified as a Worcester scribe, who worked on other contemporary Worcester manuscripts, in particular our main witness of the CC, OCCC MS 157. And the annotating hand of John can also be found alongside this Worcester scribe. The Cambridge manuscript is especially important for its set of papal inscriptions and epitaphs that have been added to the copy of the Liber Pontificalis and which again exhibit John’s corrections and authorial suggestions.31 Mortuary rolls may also have provided inspiration for Worcester’s use of verse to commemorate the deaths of certain individuals. When a person of note died, the information could be recorded on a roll, which was then itself transported between different ecclesiastical institutions (perhaps especially among those that were joined by bonds of confraternity) whereupon lines of verse were inserted by members of the different communities to commemorate the death of the individual.32 Various mortuary rolls are known to have been in use in France and in England in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, including that of 1122 in honour of Abbot Vitalis of Savigny, which, in one of its entries, shows contact with the Worcester community.33 28 Ibid.

29 For

Worcester’s connections to other centres of learning, see Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, and the chapters by Nothaft, Cleaver and O’Donnell in this volume. 30 R. Thomson, ‘William of Malmesbury’s Edition of the Liber Pontificalis’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 16 (1978), 93–112 (= his William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, 1987; rev. edn, 2003), pp. 119–36). 31 Ibid., pp. 100–1 (= pp. 125–6). 32 See Rouleaux des morts du IXe au XVe siècle recueillis et publiés par la Société de l’Histoire de France, ed. L. Delisle (Paris, 1866). 33 Rouleaux des morts, ed. Delisle, p. 313. I am grateful to Professor Tyler for pointing out the importance of mortuary rolls and their verses in connection with the Worcester poems. For further discussion of mortuary rolls and contributions to them by English religious houses, see P. R. Robinson, ‘A Twelfth-Century Scriptrix from Nunnaminster’, in Of the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, their Scribes and Readers: Essays Presented to M. B. Parkes, ed. P. R. Robinson and R. Zim (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 73–93; J. Stevenson, ‘Anglo-Latin Women Poets’, in Latin

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Poetry in the Worcester Chronicula The remainder of this chapter is divided into two principal sections. The first concerns the two shorter poems about kings, Edward and Harold. Following the text and translation of the poems, detail is given about their content and possible literary sources. Edward and Harold offer (perhaps surprising) information about how these last two Anglo-Saxon kings could still be remembered towards the mid-twelfth century at Worcester, information which is similar to that found in the CC. Harold is further interesting for the degree of anti-Norman sentiment it articulates. In an important contribution elsewhere in this volume, Thomas O’Donnell demonstrates the dangers in over-simplifying attitudes about ethnicity on the basis of individual textual readings and points simultaneously to the mix of ethnicities of those at Worcester in the early to mid-twelfth century. It is important to bear in mind this wider and mixed view when considering these anti-Norman sentiments, and to resist any suggestion that this applied to the entire Worcester community. But this antipathetic voice is nevertheless striking. Edward and Harold were written (or copied) during a period of serious political disturbance in the reign of King Stephen.34 Their references to Harold’s merits – a king held by Normans to have been a usurper – and their biblical allusions to a leader of rebellion (Judas Machabeus), perhaps provide, as will be seen, a contemporary monastic perspective about the Anarchy of Stephen’s reign. The second section below concentrates on the poem about one of Worcester’s most celebrated bishops, Wulfstan II, the man who bridged the AngloSaxon and Anglo-Norman periods and who was instrumental in driving the programme of literary production witnessed at Worcester.35 Text and translation of Wulfstan is provided, before its relationship to other sources, particularly the Vita Wulfstani by William of Malmesbury, is considered. Wulfstan offers an opportunity to see how John himself (if he can be accepted as the author) felt about this important Worcester figure and how the memory of the bishop was preserved for posterity.

Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, ed. K. O’Brien O’Keeffe and A. Orchard, 2 vols. (Toronto, 2005), I, 86–107; and S. Hollis, ‘Barking’s Monastic School, Late Seventh to Twelfth Century: History, Saint-Making and Literary Culture’, in Barking Abbey and Medieval Literary Culture: Authorship and Authority in a Female Community, ed. J. N. Brown and D. A. Bussell (York, 2012), pp. 33–55. 34 For an overview of the disturbances of Stephen’s reign, see D. Carpenter, The Struggle for Mastery: The Penguin History of Britain 1066–1284 (London, 2004), pp. 206–26. 35 Above, Tinti and Woodman.

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Edward and Harold On fol. 95r of the Chronicula, this poem about the death of Edward the Confessor can be found: Hic rex Eadward pius,   flos regni totius, de medio factus   mundoque subtractus, Haroldo comiti   sceptra liquit regni. Vir hic bellicosus,   strenuus, decorus, Alter Machabeus,   statura procerus, Et, si uellet Deus,   rex summus ac uerus, Pre ceteris dignus – quia uir benignus – diu sullimari   solio regali. Habuit hic carum   presulem Wlstanum.1 1

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Wlstanum rubricated

This devout King Edward, flower of the whole kingdom, Snatched from our midst, and removed from the world, left the sceptres of the kingdom to Earl Harold. This man [Harold], warlike, active and comely, another Machabeus, tall in stature, and, if God had so wished, an outstanding and true king, worthy before all others – because he was a good man – to be elevated for a long time to the royal throne. This man treated Bishop Wulfstan as dear to him.

On the verso of this same folio (i.e. fol. 95v), another poem is written following an entry about the Battle of Hastings and the death of Harold, son of Godwine: Cadit Machabeus  Harold rex dolendus ordinat ut Deus;  triumphat Willelmus. Victor predicatur  rex et consecratur. Sic regnat Normannus;  uictus dolet Anglus: Spoliatur rebus  singulis diebus. At qui nescit finem  his malis det finem rexque pietatis  clemens assit Anglis. The much (to be) lamented Maccabaean King Harold falls, just as God ordains; William triumphs. The victor is proclaimed King and is consecrated.

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Poetry in the Worcester Chronicula Thus the Norman rules; the conquered Englishman grieves: he is despoiled of his wealth/property every single day. But may He who knows no end put an end to these evils, and may the gentle King of Mercy support the English.

These verses about the last two Anglo-Saxon kings, although short, contain important details, some parts of which, as we will see, could be deemed controversial for the time at which the Chronicula was written. In Edward, the majority of the poem is, despite being inserted into the Chronicula to commemorate Edward’s death, about Harold rather than his predecessor. The most substantive material about Edward occurs in the first two lines where he is described in positive terms as ‘pius’ and the ‘flos regni totius’. The use of the word ‘pius’ is interesting, since it was at about this time that Edward’s reputation as a holy and saint-like king was receiving added impetus, particularly at Westminster (where Edward had re-founded the abbey). It was there, in 1138, that Osbert of Clare, partly using the earlier Vita Ædwardi regis, transformed that text into a saint’s life in order to boost the reputation of Edward and generate interest in his cult.36 Osbert later travelled to Rome in order to make a case for Edward to be beatified and, although he was unsuccessful on this occasion, this ambition was later realised in 1161.37 Given Osbert’s own links with Worcester,38 Edward here provides further indication of the saintly way in which Edward was being remembered towards the middle of the twelfth century at different places in the country. Taken individually, the description of Edward as the ‘flower of the whole kingdom’ (‘flos regni totius’), and of Harold being ‘warlike, active and comely, another Machabeus, tall in stature’ (‘bellicosus, strenuus, decorus, Alter Machabeus, statura procerus’), may not appear particularly distinctive. The metaphorical use of ‘flos’ is common and can be traced back to classical antiquity. In the annal for 975 in the CC itself, King Edgar is described as being ‘the flower and glory of preceding kings’ (‘flos et

36 M.

Bloch, ‘La vie de S. Édouard le Confesseur par Osbert de Clare’, Analecta Bollandiana 41 (1923), 5–131. And for the cult of Edward see in general, F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor, 2nd edn (New Haven and London, 1997), pp. 256–85 (pp. 264–70 and 272–5 for Osbert’s and Westminster’s actions with regard to the fostering of Edward’s cult and the reasons why this was done). For the way in which Osbert used the earlier Life, see Vita Ædwardi regis qui apud Westmonasterium requiescit: The Life of King Edward who Rests at Westminster, ed. and trans. F. Barlow, 2nd edn, OMT (Oxford, 1992), pp. xxv and xxxiii–xxxiv. 37 F. Barlow, ‘Clare, Osbert of (d. in or after 1158)’, ODNB; and B. W. Scholz, ‘The Canonization of Edward the Confessor’, Speculum 36 (1961), 38–60. 38 Barlow, ‘Clare, Osbert of’, describes the ‘readings and prayers’ composed by Osbert for the Worcester church.

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D. A. Woodman decus antecessorum regum’).39 The description of Harold as being ‘active … another Machabeus, tall in stature’ (‘strenuus … Alter Machabeus, statura procerus’) again appears to be rather generic. The adjective strenuus occurs relatively frequently in the early part of the CC,40 and the reference to Machabeus, and to Harold being ‘tall in stature’ (‘statura procerus’), may be straightforward biblical allusions.41 But it is striking that these features of Edward, when considered together, can also both be found in the Vita Ædwardi regis. At the opening of book 1 of that text, the author, having referred to the period of Scandinavian rule in the country, offers a distinctive image in which God favours the kingdom being given to Edward, who is likened to a flower: Regnante supradicto Cnuto rege, floruit hic in eius aula primus inter summos regni proceres et agente equitatis ratione, quod scribebat, scriptum, quod delebat, omnes censebant delendum. Et in huius potentatus solio potenter viguit, donec et hunc regem et eius totam stirpem, Ille qui regna pro libitu suo transfert, succidit. Succidit, inquam; quia in eius semine reseruauit, cui Anglici regni annueret uirgam. Sed uelut pater, flagellatis filiis iam pacatus, donaria quae abstraxerat pie repraesentat, et ad se aduocatis blandiens prestat, sic Dei pietas Anglis post grauem sue correptionis pressuram parcens, de antiquorum regum stirpe seruatum florem ostendit, utque hinc et regno et saluti suce peterent, et uires praestitit, et animos accendit.42 In the reign of this King Cnut Godwin flourished in the royal palace, having the first place among the highest nobles of the kingdom; and, as was just, what he wrote all decreed should be written, and what he erased, erased. And he throve mightily in the seat of authority until He who taketh away kingdoms according to His will cut down both this king and his whole stock. Cut down, I say, because He preserved among his seed the one to whom He had thought to give the sceptre of the English kingdom. But just as a father, after chastising his children, is at peace with them again, and in his goodness gives back the gifts he had taken away, and, calling them to him, shows himself a soothing comforter, so God’s loving kindness, sparing the English after the heavy weight of his rebuke,

39 JW, Chron., s.a. 975 (ed. Darlington and McGurk, trans. Bray and McGurk, II, 424–5). 40 C.

Hart, ‘The Early Section of the Worcester Chronicle’, Journal of Medieval History 9 (1983), 251–315 (at p. 260). 41 See the comments in M. Lapidge, ‘Byrhtferth and Oswald’, in St Oswald of Worcester: Life and Influence, ed. N. Brooks and C. Cubitt (London, 1996), pp. 64–83 (p. 74). 42 Vita Ædwardi regis i.1 (ed. and trans. Barlow, pp. 12–13). For discussion about the purpose of this imagery, see E. M. Tyler, England in Europe: English Royal Women and Literary Patronage, c.1000–c.1150 (Toronto, 2017), p. 149. For the Vita, see further T. Licence, ‘The Date and Authorship of the Vita Ædwardi regis’, ASE 44 (2015), 259–85.

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Poetry in the Worcester Chronicula showed them a flower preserved from the root of their ancient kings, and both gave them the strength and fired their minds to seek this flower for the kingdom as well as for their salvation.

The Latin words highlighted in bold are all, in one sense or another, related to flowers or to plants. ‘Uirga’, which Barlow translates as ‘sceptre’, means a ‘shoot/twig’; ‘flagellatis’ is translated correctly as ‘after chastising’ but the cognate noun ‘flagellum’, in addition to meaning ‘a whip’, can also mean ‘the shoot of a plant’, so this, too, supports the image. Such a sustained metaphor would have provided a reader with an important portrayal of Edward. The description of Harold being ‘active’ (‘strenuus’) in Edward mimics the same use of this adjective at numerous points in the Vita Ædwardi regis, even if it is applied to different people.43 Likewise, the description in Edward of Harold as being ‘Another Machabeus, tall in stature’ (‘Alter Machabeus, statura procerus’) again recalls the Vita where Harold is explicitly likened to a ‘second Judas Maccabeus’ (‘alter Iudas Machabeus’).44 Some lines later in the same passage, the author of the Vita compares Harold with his brother, Tostig, and, in describing their physical characteristics, Harold is said to be the ‘taller’, using words – ‘procerior statura’ – which almost exactly match those found in Edward. It is impossible to state definitively that these phrases in Edward were drawn from or inspired by the Vita Ædwardi regis, but their appearance in the Vita is striking. And a further connection between Worcester texts and the Vita Ædwardi regis can be made. Oxford, Bodl. Lib., Bodley 297 (known by the siglum ‘B’ in the edition of the CC), comprises (among other things) a copy of the CC, into which are inserted various additions that are not present in the CC archetype. Because these additions have a Bury St Edmunds focus, it has been suggested that the manuscript had its origins there, at some point between 1133 and 1143.45 It is clear that the scribes of this Bury manuscript were trying to recreate the exact layout of the Worcester exemplar they were using (i.e. the principal copy of the CC, OCCC MS 157, known by the siglum ‘C’). And, because the main scribe of the Bury manuscript is also the scribe responsible for many of the additions, Brett argued that C itself had been 43 See,

for example, Vita Ædwardi regis i.1 (ed. and trans. Barlow, pp. 8–9), where Godwine, Harold’s father, is described as being ‘strenuissimus in bellicis rebus’ (‘the most active in war’), which not only uses the same adjective, ‘strenuus’, as found in Edward, but also echoes the description in Edward of Harold being ‘bellicosus’. Godwine is again described as ‘strenuus’ in, for example, Vita Ædwardi regis i.4 (ed. and trans. Barlow, pp. 40–1). 44 Vita Ædwardi regis i.5 (ed. and trans. Barlow, pp. 48–9). For the role of Judas in the Maccabean Revolt and his nickname ‘Maccabee’ (‘the Hammer’), see P. Schäfer, The History of the Jews in the Greco-Roman World (London and New York, 2003), pp. 44–51 (p. 46). 45 JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, xlvi–liii (at pp. lii–liii)).

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D. A. Woodman taken to Bury for copying there.46 It is therefore important to note that, at the beginning of its annal for 1066 on p. 373, B has added, as part of its main text, an interpolation taken from a version of the Vita Ædwardi regis,47 showing that the Vita was probably available at Bury at the same time that a copy of the CC, C, was being made there. Is it possible that John, if he was the author of these poems, could have taken C to Bury for copying and, when there, taken inspiration from the Vita Ædwardi regis for his verse commemoration of Edward the Confessor?48 Following the description of Harold as ‘Alter Machabeus, statura procerus’, Edward proceeds first by describing some of Harold’s merits and then by relating his elevation to the throne. It ends with a sentence saying that Harold thought highly of Bishop Wulfstan and treated him accordingly.49 Of course, in the context of a Worcester text, it is to be expected that a political figure is depicted as respecting Wulfstan, one of the Worcester community’s greatest heroes. And this is certainly the impression gained from reading the CC. William of Malmesbury, in compiling his Vita Wulfstani for the Worcester community,50 includes passages of text which give the impression of a close relationship between Harold and Wulfstan. Such was Wulfstan’s fame and importance, William tells us, that noblemen sought him out in order to gain his friendship and favour, one being Harold himself, ‘who thirsted for greater power on account of his wealth and was already showing by his lordly behaviour his designs on the throne’.51 It is difficult to be certain how

46 Brett,

‘John of Worcester’, pp. 107–8, cited also in JW, Chron. (ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, lii). 47 For this addition to the Bury manuscript of the CC, and the possible version of the Vita Ædwardi regis used, see F. Barlow, ‘The Vita Ædwardi (Book II); the Seven Sleepers: Some Further Evidence and Reflections’, Speculum 40 (1965), 385–97 and Vita Ædwardi regis (ed. Barlow, pp. xxxiii–xliv (pp. xli–xliii)). 48 For the view that Herman of Bury used a copy of the Vita Ædwardi (presumably at Bury) in about 1070, see Licence, ‘The Date and Authorship’, pp. 284–5. I am grateful to Professor Licence for drawing this reference to my attention. The second quarter of the twelfth century saw an increase in the copying and creation of texts at Bury. See R. M. Thomson, ‘The Library of Bury St Edmunds Abbey in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, Speculum 47 (1972), 617–45 and E. P. McLachlan, ‘The Scriptorium of Bury St Edmunds in the Third and Fourth Decades of the Twelfth Century: Books in Three Related Hands and their Decoration’, Mediaeval Studies 40 (1978), 328–48 (p. 334 for the Bury copy of the CC). 49 ‘Habuit hic carum presulem Wlstanum’ (‘This man treated Bishop Wulfstan as dear to him’). 50 See WM, VW. For the relationship of William of Malmesbury’s Vita Wulfstani to an Old English Life of that saint written by Coleman, see ibid., pp. xv–xvii, and below, pp. 219–20. See also Tinti’s chapter in this volume. 51 ‘et maiorem potentiam conscientia opum spirans et iam tunc regnum magnani­ mitate morum affectans’; WM, VW i.7.3 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 34–5). For further discussion, see E. Mason, St Wulfstan of Worcester, c.1008–1095 (Oxford and Cambridge, MA, 1990), pp. 65–6.

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Poetry in the Worcester Chronicula far such claims should be accepted. But in this last line of Edward, we see the desire – still being articulated in the late 1130s – to establish a link between Wulfstan and Harold, and this holds important implications for the Worcester community’s position and outlook at that stage.52 In its style, structure and content, Edward offers a positive depiction of these two Anglo-Saxon kings, and suggests that the bequeathing of the throne to Harold was correct and that Harold had the characteristics worthy of a king.53 A positive view of Edward and of Harold can also be found in the annals of the CC that cover their reigns. One major source for the relevant entries in the CC is of course the ASC. But a comparison between the annals of these two texts, in relation to their treatment of Edward and Harold, reveals a more positive depiction of these two Anglo-Saxon kings in parts of the CC than in the corresponding annals of the ASC. This is not the place for a detailed comparison of these two texts. But a few characteristic differences might be noted: Edward is on occasion introduced into the CC’s narrative when he cannot be found in the equivalent ASC annal;54 added text in the CC makes Edward appear a more authoritative figure, someone who is in charge of proceedings and acting as a king in issuing orders, in ways that are not apparent in extant versions of the ASC;55 and Harold in various ways is also depicted in a more positive light in the CC than the ASC, most notably in the entry for 1066 which includes a eulogy of Harold’s rule following his consecration as king, which stands in contrast to the ASC’s laconic and pessimistic statement that ‘Earl Harold was now consecrated king and he met little quiet in it as long as he ruled the realm’.56 The importance of these 52 See

below, pp. 215–16 and 225–6. making such assertions, Edward recalls the Death of Edward in the ASC. 54 See CC’s 1036 annal which describes the capture, blinding and killing of the ætheling Alfred and which has Edward accompanying Alfred in a way that neither the ASC nor the other principal source for this event, the Encomium Emmae Reginae, do: JW, Chron. s.a. 1036 (ed. Darlington and McGurk, trans. Bray and McGurk, ii, 522–5); cf. Encomium Emmae Reginae iii.6, ed. and trans. A. Campbell, with supplementary introduction by S. Keynes, Camden Classics Reprints 4 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 44–7. 55 Numerous examples could be cited, for example, those occasions where the CC adds a phrase, not found in the ASC, which makes it explicit that a certain event or action only took place because of Edward’s command: see its 1049 annal which, in describing the period after Emperor Henry and Baldwin had made peace, says that Earls Godwine and Beorn sailed to Pevensey ‘with the king’s permission’ (‘regis licentia’): JW, Chron. s.a. 1049 (ed. Darlington and McGurk, trans. Bray and McGurk, II, 548–51). CC’s 1057 annal, in describing the return of Edward the Exile to England, makes it clear (in a way not found in the ASC) that the ætheling was returning because of Edward (the Confessor’s) orders and because ‘the king had decided that he should be established as his heir and successor to the realm’ (‘decreuerat enim rex illum post se regni heredem constituere’); ibid., s.a. 1057 (ed. Darlington and McGurk, trans. Bray and McGurk, II, 582–3). 56 ASC CD, s.a. 1065. And cf. JW, Chron. s.a. 1066 (ed. and trans. Darlington and 53 In

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D. A. Woodman differences between the CC’s treatment of Edward and Harold, and that of the ASC, depends in part upon one’s understanding of where this material in the CC was coming from.57 It may have been authorial and therefore inserted by those involved in the composition of CC, thus making deliberate changes to their ultimate source, the ASC (perhaps to make the narrative of the CC as clear as possible, rather than to create a more positive depiction of these two kings). It may, however, depend on a source no longer extant and therefore suggest more about that source than about the intentions of the CC author(s). Whatever is the case, the positive image of Edward and Harold in the Chronicula poems is also found in the annals of the CC, which themselves are more positive than their corresponding ASC annals. The characterisations of Edward and Harold in the Chronicula’s poems offer another point of interest. Harold is arguably even more remarkable for its statements about Norman rule and English suffering. Having described the death of the ‘Maccabaean King Harold’, William the Conqueror is made king and consecrated in this role.58 But the reader is then told, Sic regnat Normannus;  uictus dolet Anglus: Spoliatur rebus  singulis diebus. At qui nescit finem  his malis det finem rexque pietatis  clemens assit Anglis.

McGurk, II, 600–1): ‘Qui mox ut regni gubernacula susceperat, leges iniquas destruere, equas cepit condere, ecclesiarum ac monasteriorum patronus fieri, episcopos, abbates monachos, clericos colere simul ac uenerati, pium, humilem, affabilemque se bonis omnibus exhibere, malefactores exosos habere, nam ducibus, satrapis, uicecomitibus et suis in commune precepit ministris fures, raptores, regni disturbatores comprehendere, et pro patria defensione ipsemet terra marique desudare.’ (‘He soon, when he had undertaken the government of the realm, destroyed iniquitous laws, and set about establishing just ones; becoming patron of churches and monasteries, cultivating and venerating at the same time bishops, abbots, monks, and clerks; showing himself pious, humble and affable to all good men; detesting malefactors, for he ordered the earls, ealdormen, sheriffs, and his own officers generally to seize thieves, robbers, and disturbers of the realm, and to exert themselves by land and sea for the defence of their country.’) 57 These changes have been discussed by E. A. Winkler, Royal Responsibility in AngloNorman Historical Writing (Oxford, 2017), who notes that, in the CC, Edward is depicted in a more positive light than in the ASC and who also notes (at p. 165) that the most substantial change between the ASC and the CC is that the latter text no longer suggests that the Norman Conquest was the natural result of the sin and moral laxity of the English people, instead looking to the actions of individuals. For Winkler, the ‘new emphases on causation and intention suggest a more finely tuned perception of responsibility and its implications for historical explanation. There was a conscious effort to redeem the English past’ (at p. 173). 58 William was consecrated by Ealdred, who had previously held the Worcester see: ASC DE, s.a. 1066.

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Poetry in the Worcester Chronicula Thus the Norman rules; the conquered Englishman grieves: he is despoiled of his wealth/property every single day. But may He who knows no end put an end to these evils, and may the gentle King of Mercy support the English.

Such anti-Norman and pro-English sentiments are striking, particularly given that they occur in a poem that was written (or copied) at Worcester in the late 1130s, that is, some seventy years after William’s initial military victory. Given the influence of the ASC on the CC, it is worth noting that manuscript E of the ASC, in its annal for 1087, contains a poem about the death of William the Conqueror, which describes William as oppressing poor men and being desirous of wealth, characterisations which are not dissimilar to those found in these lines of Harold.59 Was the poem in E ASC the inspiration for these lines in Harold? How far can these anti-Norman opinions be credited to their Worcester author/copyist in the late 1130s, rather than to a literary source of inspiration? As noted above, these are important questions to pose, even if they cannot be answered with certainty. In the wake of the Norman Conquest, various authors explored issues of ethnicity and identity, to the extent that a complex picture emerges of what it meant to be ‘English’ or ‘Norman’ at any given moment. In the early Anglo-Norman period, pro-Norman authors sometimes offered particularly negative stereotypes of the ‘English’ as being drunken, rustic or somehow uncouth, while pro-English authors offered their own appreciations of their Norman conquerors. But such images were not one-dimensional and authors could vary both in how they perceived the ‘English’ and the ‘Normans’ and in how these terms were applied to people. William of Malmesbury, for example, could express both sympathy for and appreciation of the English and yet acknowledge the rightful claims of the Normans and write about their civilising influence over the English.60 Thomas, in his study of ethnicity and identity in the Anglo-Norman period, makes a case for the broad assimilation of English and Norman by 59 ASC

E, s.a. 1087. For the complex relationship of the annals in the CC after 1067 to the ASC, and to the E version of that text, see JW, Chron. (ed. McGurk, III, xx–xxvi). Professor Licence has also drawn my attention to the similarity of the last two lines of Harold both to the end of the annal for 1066 in the D version of ASC and to this phrase in Vita Ædwardi regis ii.11 (ed. and trans. Barlow, pp. 120–2): ‘que uel quando tantorum malorum sperari poterit remissio’ (‘what remission of these great ills can be hoped for, and when?’). 60 For extended treatment of this large subject, see H. M. Thomas, The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation, and Identity 1066–c.1220 (Oxford, 2003), at pp. 253–4 for some of William of Malmesbury’s views. And cf. R. M. Thomson, ‘William of Malmesbury’s Diatribe against the Normans’, in The Long TwelfthCentury View of the Anglo-Saxon Past, ed. M. Brett and D. A. Woodman (Farnham, 2015), pp. 113–22.

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D. A. Woodman the reign of Henry II (1154–89), even if there were expressions of dissatisfaction here and there.61 The late 1130s therefore become a crucial time of transition and it is striking to find one Worcester author, even if he was prompted by a similar poem in the E ASC, expressing such views about ethnicity, so long after the events of 1066. The very fact that the Chronicula could include a poem in celebration of Harold, the person effectively written out of history by the Normans for his perceived usurpation of the throne, is a strong indication of its author’s views at that moment.62 But this was just one assessment from Worcester, and we must remember O’Donnell’s cautionary words that we should not ‘propose a monastic identity that was altogether homogeneous (still less homogeneously “English”)’ and that actually the ‘scribes of Worcester’s literary culture brought texts together whose contents emphasised the diverse origins and experiences of the individuals within the community’.63

Wulfstan On fol. 102v of the Chronicula, the following poem is preserved in an entry about the death of Bishop Wulfstan II in 1095: Quam ingens luctus de morte illius omnibus extiterit Obitu pro cuius  ingens erat luctus. Aderant 1abbates  presulem plangentes1 singultusque dantes  Wigornenses fratres pastorem deflebant,  patrem conplangebant. Astabat et clerus  totus corde mestus. Miles tristem multum  pretendebat uultum defunctum dilectum  ut conspexit herum. Cordis ob merorem  pauper dat clamorem: 61 Thomas,

5

The English and the Normans, esp. p. 241 onwards. See also J. Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National Identity and Political Values (Woodbridge, 2008) and idem, ‘Civilizing the English? The English Histories of William of Malmesbury and David Hume’, Historical Research 74 (2001), 17–43. 62 Because Norman authors wished to project the image of William as the rightful heir to Edward, there was often a programme of damnatio memoriae where Harold was concerned, the most famous example being Domesday Book, which makes a formal, legal distinction between the time of King Edward and that of King William, thus ignoring Harold’s time as king. See, for example, G. Garnett, Conquered England: Kingship, Succession, and Tenure 1066–1166 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 18–24 and L. Ashe, The Oxford English Literary History, Volume I, 1000–1350: Conquest and Transformation (Oxford, 2017), pp. 80–4. 63 Above, p. 32.

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Poetry in the Worcester Chronicula ‘Ecce’, inquit, ‘meum  decidit solamen! De medio factus  hic presul beatus mihi dedit uictum,  concessit amictum. Iam carebo pane  et peribo fame.’ In merorem tota  uersa est Wigorna.2 Christi3 sacerdotis,  iustitie doctoris, corpus uenerandum,  corpus uere castum, tunc exanimatum,  defertur lauandum. Post sacerdotali  induitur ueste; lotum et indutum  defertur ad templum – ad templum Marie4  Dei matris pie, ab illo inceptum,  ab illo erectum, toto clero flente,  dolendo psallente plebe prosequente  gemebunda mente. Mox defuncti caro  modo ammirando et insueto more  nitescit candore. Apparebat uultus  ut nix dealbatus. Saturni abscessit,  lux solis successit, qua terre tradenda  erat caro terra. Pro defuncto patre  in supplici laude Missa celebratur.  Clerus lacrimatur; plebs coadunata  celitus compuncta 5pias ac deuotas5  fert oblationes, in fletu finita  pro anima missa. Non sine dolore,  non sine merore, emortua caro  clauditur sepulchro, et cum illa tota  letitia nostra. Alleluia clauso  respondente facto, nanque die illa  clausimus Alleluia. At presul eterna  solutus a pena in celesti aula  canat Alleluia.

10

15

20

25

30

35

1…1

abbates presulem plangentes over erasur  2 Wigorna rubricated  3 initial X in Xpi omitted  4 Marie rubricated  5…5 initial ‘p’ altered and …ias ac deuotas over erasure

These lines may be translated as follows: How great was the grief of everyone concerning his death On account of his death there was great grief.

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D. A. Woodman Abbots were present, bewailing this bishop, and, uttering sobs, the Worcester brethren lamented their shepherd and together bewailed their father. The whole clergy were in attendance too, sad at heart. His retinue bore a very sorrowful countenance as they looked on their beloved lord, dead. From the sadness of his heart a poor man utters a cry: ‘Look!’, he says, ‘My comfort has gone. Snatched from our midst, this blessed bishop Gave me sustenance and granted me clothing. Now I shall lack bread and will perish of starvation.’ The whole of Worcester has been transformed into sadness. The venerable body of the priest of Christ, of the teacher of Justice – a body truly chaste then lifeless – is carried off to be washed. Afterwards it is vested in episcopal robes. Washed and dressed, it is carried off to the church – to the church of Mary, the devoted Mother of God, begun by him erected by him, with the whole clergy weeping chanting in pain, the people following [or ‘escorting’] with woeful mind. Next the flesh of the deceased, in a wonderful way and unusual manner, shines with brightness; his countenance appeared as white as snow. Saturday had passed and Sunday replaced it, on which day the earth that was his flesh was to be committed to the earth. On behalf of the deceased father, in suppliant praise, the Mass is celebrated; the clergy weeps; the assembled people, struck with compunction by heaven, bear devoted and dedicated offerings. The mass for his soul ends in weeping, Not without pain, not without sadness. His dead flesh is enclosed in the tomb, and, with it, all our joy, and the suspension of the ‘Alleluia’ corresponded to the reality. For it was on that day that we suspended the ‘Alleluia’; but may the bishop in the heavenly hall, released from eternal punishment, sing ‘Alleluia’.

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Poetry in the Worcester Chronicula The poem commemorating Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester from 1062 until 1095, is the longest of the three being discussed here. This is unsurprising, given Wulfstan’s role at Worcester and the veneration for him found in other Worcester texts, including the CC, Hemming’s Cartulary and particularly the vitae that were written in his honour: that by William of Malmesbury (the Vita Wulfstani, hereafter VW), was completed at some point in the period 1126–c.1142 having been commissioned by Prior Warin (c.1124–c.1142);64 it was based on a now lost Old English Life written by Coleman, a Worcester monk who died in 1113.65 The significance of Wulfstan is indicated by the text that immediately precedes it in the Chronicula, which takes the form of an elaborate dating clause, providing many different ways in which the exact date of the bishop’s death can be reckoned. As in the classical world, extended dating-clauses of this sort were used in order to draw attention to events that were of particular significance to an author,66 and Philipp Nothaft, in this volume, shows the ways in which those working at Worcester were able to construct them.67 A near-identical dating clause appears in the corresponding annal (1095) of the CC. The dating clause in the Chronicula is followed by a passage entitled ‘Concerning the ring’ (‘De anulo’), which states that God did not allow anyone to remove the episcopal ring from Wulfstan’s finger. The very same passage can again be found in annal 1095 in the CC, with minor variations.68 Many of the themes and details in Wulfstan, as will be seen, can also be found in William of Malmesbury’s VW. One difficulty here is in knowing whether details/themes found in Wulfstan were taken directly from William of Malmesbury’s VW. The possible date by which the VW was completed

64 WM,

VW (ed. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. xiv–xv). pp. xv–xvii. The beginning of William’s Latin text implies that his work is almost a translation of Coleman’s earlier Life: see WM, VW Ep. 3–4 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 8–11). For various Old English additions bearing the name ‘Coleman’ to manuscripts of eleventh-century date, see N. R. Ker, ‘Old English Notes Signed “Coleman”’, Medium Ævum 18 (1949), 29–31. The corpus of Coleman’s annotations has been augmented since Ker’s publication: see A. Orchard, ‘Parallel Lives: Wulfstan, William, Coleman and Christ’, in St Wulfstan and his World, ed. J. S. Barrow and N. P. Brooks (Aldershot, 2005), pp. 39–57, and D. Johnson and W. Rudolf, ‘More Notes by Coleman’, Medium Ævum 79 (2010), 1–13. For Coleman’s work, see also Tinti in this volume. 66 See, for example, K.-U. Jäschke, ‘Remarks on Datings in the Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius hoc est Dunhelmensis ecclesie’, in Symeon of Durham: Historian of Durham and the North, ed. D. Rollason (Stamford, 1998), pp. 46–60. 67 Above, pp. 157–8. 68 JW, Chron. s.a. 1095 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 74–5). Note that the text of the passage ‘De anulo’ in the Chronicula follows the principal copy of CC (i.e. C) in writing ‘ipsa sui’, rather than the earlier version (‘ipso die’) found in copies HL of the CC. 65 Ibid.,

219

D. A. Woodman (see above) means that it was being written roughly contemporaneously to Wulfstan; it is also feasible that the author of Wulfstan (possibly John) may have taken details/themes from a source common to both Wulfstan and the VW, such as the Life written by Coleman which no longer survives. Darlington showed, for example, that details about Wulfstan in the CC’s annal for 1062, although sharing verbal similarities with William’s VW, probably derived its information from Coleman’s work.69 In what follows it will be sufficient to identify some principal similarities between William’s VW and Wulfstan, without attempting to discern whether or not detail in Wulfstan may actually have been derived at different points from Coleman’s Life (or another source). These similarities help to show the information and detail about Wulfstan that was current in Worcester in the late 1130s and which could be deployed in the poem about the bishop (and by William in his VW). Following Wulfstan’s death, the poem begins with a description of the wailing and sobbing of those present, including: the abbots, the Worcester brethren, the whole clergy, Wulfstan’s ‘retinue’ (‘miles’) and a poor man. This is intended to demonstrate the wide range of people who venerated Wulfstan both while he was alive and then after he died. It was also a topos of classical consolatory literature to state that ‘everyone mourned’.70 In doing so, the poem describes Wulfstan in various ways, as a ‘bishop’ (‘presulem’), a ‘shepherd’ (‘pastorem’) and a ‘father’ (‘patrem’), again in an attempt to highlight the different roles that Wulfstan fulfilled for different people. Later in the poem, Wulfstan is described as the ‘priest of Christ’ (‘Christi sacerdotis’) and the ‘teacher of justice’ (‘iustitie doctoris’). The sadness brought on by Wulfstan’s death is likewise described in the VW where it is said that his passing ‘brought tears on earth though joy in heaven’.71 It is in the account of Wulfstan’s funeral in the VW that the greatest similarity with the poem can be found, both in terms of the vocabulary used and the way that the two texts are structured. On the Sunday appointed for the funeral, Bishop Robert of Hereford oversaw the burial itself and those present wailed and groaned and ‘shouted words of grief’ (‘exclamabat … in plangorem’) and ‘genuine were the tears forced out by their sobs’ (‘sed exprimebantur ueris singultibus lacrimae’),72 using words – ‘plangorem’ and ‘singultibus’ – which are recalled in the opening few lines of Wulfstan. In the same manner as the poem, the VW then continues by describing the different kinds of people who were

69 The Vita Wulfstani of William of Malmesbury, ed. R. R. Darlington, Camden Society, 3rd

series 40 (London, 1928), pp. xi–xvi, discussed also in WM, VW (ed. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. xvi–xvii). See also Tinti’s chapter in this volume. 70 See the Consolatio ad Liuiam, 203–4. 71 WM, VW iii.20.3 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 138–9). 72 Ibid., iii.24.1–2 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 146–7).

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Poetry in the Worcester Chronicula bewailing the death of Wulfstan and shows also an awareness of the different roles Wulfstan fulfilled for these different people: Difficulterque discerneres qui iustiores fletus sui causas allegarent, clerus an populus, dum hic pro tutela pastorem, ille pro disciplina doctorem clamaret; senes an pueri, dum hi maturitatem, hi dulcedinem desiderarent; diuites an pauperes, dum isti opum abstinentiam, illi expensarum munificentiam predicarent. It would have been difficult to decide who could supply the juster reasons for their tears: the clergy or the people, the former bewailing the pastor for the protection, the latter the teacher for the instruction they had lost; the old or the young, the former missing his ripeness, the latter his sweet character; the rich or the poor, the former praising his abstinence from riches, the latter his generous expenditure.73

Lines 6–7 of the poem describe how his ‘retinue’ (‘miles’) were very sorrowful following the death of Wulfstan (who is described in this context as their ‘lord’, ‘herum’). Wulfstan’s engagement with a group of knights is attested again in the VW. In that text, William of Malmesbury tells us that, when not dining with the monks, Wulfstan would eat in public in his ‘palace’ (‘regia’) alongside his ‘knights’ (‘militibus’).74 And later in the VW we are told that, in his ‘court’ (‘curia’), Wulfstan had many ‘knights’ (‘milites’), a military resource that, it is explained, had been given to him by King William because of the looming threat of Danish invasion and following the decision of a council at which Archbishop Lanfranc proposed that the courts of all magnates be reinforced by knights.75 The CC corroborates this detail in its 1085 entry, stating that as a result of the aggressive activity of King Cnut of Denmark, William hired mercenary troops and spread them throughout his kingdom, ordering a range of people from abbots to sheriffs – and including bishops – to make sure that the mercenaries were given necessary provisions.76 The VW suggests that Wulfstan looked after these knights well,

73 Ibid.,

iii.24.2 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 146–7). Those words italicised occur also in the poem when describing Wulfstan. 74 Ibid., iii.2.2 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 108–9). For the use of the word ‘regia’, and its potential meanings, see ibid., p. 108, n. 1. 75 Ibid., iii.16.1 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 130–1). For the use of the word ‘curia’ (and ‘curiales’) at various points in the VW, see ibid., p. 21, n. 6, where it is noted that one meaning of ‘curia’ could be ‘the bishop’s lay household (including his knights)’. 76 JW, Chron. s.a. 1085 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 42–3). See also WM, GP iv.139.5 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom, I, 426–7), where William states that these knights were a drain on Wulfstan’s resources.

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D. A. Woodman paying them handsomely and making sure they were properly fed, just as the king had hoped.77 In lines 14–22 a description is given of the preparation of Wulfstan’s (chaste) body for burial.78 We are told that the body was washed (‘corpus … lauandum’), then clothed in ‘episcopal robes’ (‘sacerdotali … ueste’), before being taken to the church of Mary, which had been built by Wulfstan himself, and that the clergy were weeping for their bishop, while people were following. The washing of the body is described in similar terms in the VW, with words (‘lauerunt … corpus’) reminiscent of the poem; and the tears and wailing of the clerks and others are detailed at various points in the VW.79 There is no description of the bishop’s body being clothed in ‘episcopal robes’ for burial in the same way in the VW’s account, but, in recounting how Bishop Robert had a vision at the very hour of Wulfstan’s death, in which Wulfstan appeared to Robert and asked him to come to Worcester to supervise his burial, Wulfstan is described as being clad ‘in his bishop’s vestments’ (‘episcopalibusque uestimentis’), words which recall the description in the poem.80 When describing the carrying of Wulfstan’s body to the church, mention is made of Wulfstan’s role in the building of St Mary’s church at Worcester. This church had previously been built under the guidance of Oswald during the monastic reform movement of the tenth century.81 Following the Norman Conquest, Wulfstan oversaw a subsequent rebuilding of St Mary’s church, a project which may have begun c.1084, and which was designed to accommodate a growing population of monks.82 The VW depicts Wulfstan’s actions as a builder of churches in general on lands within his jurisdiction, and the example of his renovation work at Westbury-on-Trym is given.83 The VW also discusses Wulfstan’s work on St Mary’s church; in the same way that the

77 Annals

1074 and 1088 of the CC also depict Wulfstan as a military-like leader: see JW, Chron. s.a. 1074 and 1088 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 24–7 and 52–7). 78 The importance of chastity is stressed at various points in the VW; see for instance WM, VW i.1 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 16–21). See also Tinti’s chapter in this volume. 79 For the tears and lamentations, see ibid., iii.23.1 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 144–5) (following Wulfstan’s body being brought to the church) and iii.24.1–2 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 146–9) (following Wulfstan’s funeral). 80 Ibid., iii.23.1 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 144–5). See also WM, GP iv.148 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom, pp. 436–9), where Wulfstan’s death and burial are also described. 81 For a full discussion of all that follows, see R. D. H. Gem, ‘Bishop Wulfstan II and the Romanesque Cathedral Church of Worcester’, in Medieval Art and Architecture at Worcester Cathedral, ed. G. Popper, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 1 (Leeds, 1978), pp. 15–37. And see F. Tinti, Sustaining Belief: The Church of Worcester from c.870 to c.1100 (Farnham, 2010), pp. 31–3, 62–3. 82 Gem, ‘Bishop Wulfstan’, p. 17. 83 WM, VW iii.10.1–2 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 120–1).

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Poetry in the Worcester Chronicula poem, having described how Wulfstan’s body, once prepared, was brought to the church, and then proceeds to state that this church had been erected by Wulfstan himself, so too the VW follows the same process of thought, linking the two events.84 Following removal of the roof of the old church, Wulfstan comments earlier in the VW: We wretches are destroying the works of the saints, thinking in our insolent pride that we are improving them. How superior to us was St Oswald, maker of this church! How many holy and devout men have served God in this place!85

Despite his hesitation,86 Wulfstan completed the renovations of St Mary’s church and William of Malmesbury is able to describe it in glowing terms: ‘so wonderful was it in its details, so unique in every respect’.87 When finished, the remains of Oswald were translated into the shrine.88 Once reference has been made to the lamentations expressed for Wulfstan, the poem proceeds on lines 23–6 by describing how his flesh was shining brightly in an unusual and wonderful way and ‘his countenance appeared as white as snow’. This statement, which alludes ultimately to the Book of Revelation 1: 16, once more finds very similar parallels in the VW, where Wulfstan’s body, having been washed and prepared for burial, caused amazement to those who saw it for its gleaming brightly ‘in the hope of eternal resurrection’.89 When Wulfstan appeared in a dream to Bishop Robert of Hereford, he is also described as shining brilliantly.90 Having described Wulfstan in such terms, the poem continues by stating that he was buried on a Sunday, that masses were said and that people wept for their deceased bishop. This sequence of descriptions – from that of Wulfstan’s flesh shining brightly, to his burial on a Sunday, to the masses being said and the people’s 84 Ibid.,

iii.23.1 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 144–5).

85 ‘Nos … miseri sanctorum destruimus opera, pompatice putantes nos facere meliora.

Quanto prestantior nobis sanctus Oswaldus, qui hanc fecit aecclesiam, quot sancti uiri religiosi in ea Deo seruierunt’; ibid., iii.10.3 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 122–3). 86 See also WM, GP iv.141.4–5 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom, I, 428–31). For further comment about Wulfstan’s reluctance, and more about the wider Romanesque rebuilding of English cathedrals, see J. Blair, Building Anglo-Saxon England (Princeton and Oxford, 2018), pp. 402–4. 87 ‘ita erat in singulis mirabilis et in omnibus singularis’; WM, VW iii.10.4 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 122–3). 88 Ibid. and Gem, ‘Bishop Wulfstan’, p. 19. 89 ‘spe resurrectionis perpetuae’; WM, VW iii.22.1 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 142–3). 90 Ibid., iii.23.1 (ed. and trans. Winterbottom and Thomson, pp. 144–5). Robert’s vision is said to have taken place at the very hour that Wulfstan died, although it is mentioned at this moment in the VW once Wulfstan’s body had been brought for burial.

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D. A. Woodman audible grief – mirrors the sequence of events described in the VW, where, in chapter 23 of book 3, Wulfstan shines brightly in a vision of Bishop Robert, before the next chapter (24) details how Robert presided over the burial ceremony on a Sunday, making sure that the usual masses were said, while people were bewailing Wulfstan, and then that the body was properly buried. The last four lines of the poem (36–9) read: and the suspension of the ‘Alleluia’ corresponded to the reality. For it was on that day that we suspended the ‘Alleluia’; but may the bishop in the heavenly hall, released from eternal punishment, sing ‘Alleluia’.

The repetition of ‘Alleluia’ three times carries symbolic significance, for it points to the Trinity and to the three days that Christ spent in the tomb. In the context of the Divine Office and the Mass, ‘Alleluia’ was a term adopted from Hebrew as an exclamation of joy. Harper notes that it could be used ‘(1) as an appendage to another text, especially during the season of Easter; (2) as a substantial chant with verse after the Gradual (and before the Sequence) at Mass’.91 The use of ‘Alleluia’ was omitted at various points in the liturgical year, for example, from Septuagesima to Holy Saturday,92 and also at moments when the dead were being celebrated. Thus the reference in the poem to the ‘Alleluia’ being suspended represents its omission during the period when Wulfstan was being buried and commemorated.93 Wulfstan does not contain material which carries the same political importance for the late 1130s as do Edward and Harold. But, with Wulfstan, we find a personal tribute by a Worcester monk (possibly John) to the bishop of the community who was clearly regarded in the fondest and most reverential of terms by those at Worcester in the first half of the twelfth century and as someone who was considered the defender of the Worcester church’s rights from the Anglo-Saxon period to the Anglo-Norman period. This poem was of greater length and more ambitious than Edward and Harold. A glimpse of John’s own attitude towards Wulfstan may be found also in the CC. There, as part of an interpolation over an erased portion of a later addition in the upper margin to annal 1130, John himself adds further detail about Wulfstan. He states that two people who had been submitted to the trial by hot iron went to the tomb of Wulfstan, and, seeking the bishop’s help, they found that

91 J.

Harper, The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy from the Tenth to the Eighteenth Century: A Historical Introduction and Guide for Students and Musicians (Oxford, 1991), p. 287. 92 Ibid., p. 104. 93 For the Office of the Dead (Officium Defunctorum) and the Mass of the Dead (Requiem), see ibid., pp. 105–8 and 125–6 respectively. I am grateful to D. (Br. B.) Heisey for his advice about these last lines of Wulfstan.

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Poetry in the Worcester Chronicula he interceded on their behalf and made sure that their hands were healed at the crucial moment when they were to be revealed as part of judgement of their innocence or guilt.94 This addition to the CC’s 1130 annal provides an indication of John’s own high regard of Wulfstan and the importance to John personally of providing a suitable historical legacy for the bishop, so that he would be remembered in the most positive of terms.95

Edward, Harold and Wulfstan offer an insight into the minds of those composing history and other genres of literature in the late 1130s at the Worcester historical workshop. If written by John of Worcester himself, they provide testimony for how that author, renowned for his work on the CC, felt about these important figures from the Anglo-Saxon past. The poems about the last two Anglo-Saxon kings create a positive impression of them and seek to legitimise Harold’s kingship following Edward’s death, a political position that is perhaps surprising to adopt, given that these poems were being written (or copied) well into the Anglo-Norman period, at a time when those supportive of Norman kings sought to overlook and indeed to condemn Harold in the historical record. Wulfstan, meanwhile, provides an example of a text that was created as a personal tribute to a celebrated Worcester figure. It shows the very high regard that members of the Worcester community had for Wulfstan, a theme that is found in many of the texts emanating from Worcester at that time, in Hemming’s Cartulary and in the CC. We may finish by wondering whether, in Edward and Harold in particular, there is a message about politics of the late 1130s, the period when these poems were being written/copied. These years were characterised above all by civil war in England, as Stephen struggled to defend his position as king. Stephen’s weakness was caused by his disputed claim to the throne, which was contested by the Empress Matilda (who was supported by her halfbrother, Robert of Gloucester). Could Edward and Harold, in their enthusiastic tribute to Harold, who was likewise (in)famous for claiming the throne in disputed circumstances, be offering some kind of contemporary political comment? The likening of Harold to Judas Machabeus, a leader of rebellion in the Book of Maccabees famous for defeating the Seleucids in the 160s BC, could be intended to imply that Harold was a great commander, or that he

94 JW,

Chron. s.a. 1130 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 190–3).

95 In Worcester cartularies, Wulfstan is viewed as an upholder of his church’s property

and its deeds, someone mindful of the importance of making copies of charters and the function of literary memory. See in particular the testimony found in Hemming’s Enucleatio libelli, discussed, edited and translated in F. Tinti, ‘Si litterali memorię commendaretur: Memory and Cartularies in Eleventh-Century Worcester’, in Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald, ed. S. Baxter, C. Karkov, J. L. Nelson and D. Pelteret (Farnham, 2009), pp. 475–97.

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D. A. Woodman should be commended for his deeds in establishing independence for his people and attempting to fight off an alien invader. Perhaps the disturbed political situation in the late 1130s was encouraging comparison with biblical episodes involving rebellion. In a twelfth-century kingdom that was deeply troubled politically, we need not search far for reasons why a Worcester monk, possibly John, sought comfort in the Anglo-Saxon past. In doing so, the author championed two kings who, in his mind, had brought strong political leadership immediately before the events of 1066; and he celebrated a bishop of his own house who had given such careful and beneficial guidance to the religious community across the reigns of Anglo-Saxon and Norman kings.

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9 Networks of Chronicle Writing in Western Britain: The Case of Worcester and Wales Georgia Henley

Perhaps more than most of the other monastic chronicles produced in medieval England, those from Worcester cathedral priory demonstrate sustained interest in Wales and Welsh events.1 The chronicles produced at Worcester, particularly the Chronica Chronicarum (hereafter CC) and later the fourteenth-century Annals of Worcester, demonstrate extensive knowledge of Welsh politics and events, some dependent on Welsh written sources, and others reporting independently of the extant Welsh Latin and vernacular chronicles. Historical writing from medieval Worcester and its textual connections to Welsh chronicles provide evidence for a monastic network of communication that spanned the Welsh marches and the conquest lordships and independent kingdoms of North and South Wales.2 This network was able to uphold a healthy exchange of written sources transmitted through the medium of Latin. The following chapter considers evidence for textual connections between Worcester and Welsh centres producing chronicles. First, I analyse the use of Welsh sources and knowledge of Welsh events on the part of CC and the Annals of Worcester. Then I speculate about how textual contact may have occurred, whether through movement of monastic personnel, information spread by newsletter, or some other means. Finally, I evaluate evidence for Welsh use of Worcester sources in Latin chronicling from medieval Wales. These examples provide evidence for transmission patterns based on geography and political interest on the part of monasteries of the West Midlands and South Wales.

1 I

am grateful to Ben Guy, Joshua Byron Smith, Paul Russell, Tom O’Donnell and the editors of this volume for commenting on drafts of this chapter, and to David Woodman for generously tracking down several page references for me while libraries were closed during the pandemic. All errors are my own. 2 See further the contribution by Cleaver in this volume.

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Georgia Henley

CC’s Welsh sources Before the discussion of the evidence for CC’s use of Welsh sources, it is useful to provide an overview of the corpus of Welsh chronicles from the period, which survive in both Welsh and Latin.3 These include the Breviate Chronicle and the Cottonian Chronicle (the B- and C-texts of Annales Cambriae, respectively; both in manuscripts written in the second half of the thirteenth century), both written in Latin and extant in one independent medieval manuscript each, and three related versions of Brut y Tywysogyon (‘History of the Princes’), translated into Middle Welsh from Latin.4 I will address each briefly in turn. The Breviate Chronicle (extant in TNA, E 164/1, fols. 1r–13r, s. xiii/xiv) was probably written at Neath, a Cistercian abbey in Glamorgan. The chronicle, which advances to the year 1286, was compiled in the second half of the thirteenth century using annals from several different sources, including annals from Whitland and Strata Florida Abbey. It is extant alongside a copy of the Breviate of Domesday that contains annotations and other materials relevant to the de Braose family.5 Up to 1202/3 it shares a common core of St Davids material with the Cottonian Chronicle, or C-text of Annales Cambriae (London, BL, Cotton MS Domitian A. i, part ii, fols. 138r–155r, s. xiii2). This manuscript is a composite, with the chronicle section written at St Davids cathedral in the second half of the thirteenth century. Recent scholars have called the Cottonian Chronicle the ‘Annals of St Davids’.6 It is a history of the world to 1286 with a continuation by the same scribe to 1288. The core of material it shares with the Breviate Chronicle is from a chronicle kept at St Davids in the mid-tenth century. The Breviate and Cottonian

3 For







detailed accounts of the Welsh chronicles and the scholarship on them to date, see H. Pryce, ‘Chronicling and its Contexts in Medieval Wales’, in The Chronicles of Medieval Wales and the March: New Contexts, Studies, and Texts, ed. B. Guy, G. Henley, O. W. Jones and R. Thomas, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe 31 (Turnhout, 2020), pp. 1–32; B. Guy, ‘Historical Scholars and Dishonest Charlatans: Studying the Chronicles of Medieval Wales’, ibid., pp. 69–106; and H. Gough-Cooper, ‘Meet the Ancestors? Evidence for Antecedent Texts in the Late Thirteenth-Century Welsh Latin Chronicles’, ibid., pp. 107–38. 4 My reasons for using the titles Breviate Chronicle and Cottonian Chronicle rather than the conventional title Annales Cambriae are discussed below, pp. 269–70. The earliest version, the Harleian Chronicle (the A-text of Annales Cambriae) is not discussed here because it ends in 954, prior to the annals under discussion. 5 Discussion in D. Huws, ‘The Neath Abbey Breviate of Domesday’, in Wales and the Welsh in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to J. Beverley Smith, ed. R. A. Griffiths and P. Schofield (Cardiff, 2011), pp. 46–55. 6 See D. Stephenson, ‘Welsh Chronicles’ Accounts of the Mid-Twelfth Century’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 56 (2008), 45–57.

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Networks of Chronicle Writing in Western Britain Chronicles diverge after 1202/3 but since that later material is not pertinent to comparison with CC, I will not discuss it here.7 The vernacular chronicles relevant to the present discussion are the three versions of Brut y Tywysogyon, known as the Peniarth 20 version, the Red Book of Hergest version and Brenhinedd y Saesson (‘History of the English’), respectively. They begin in 682 as a continuation of Geoffrey of Monmouth and share a common core of material to 1198, with Brenhinedd y Saesson including information about English events from English chronicling sources. At 1198, the earlier copy of Brenhinedd y Saesson (in London, BL, Cotton MS Cleopatra B. v, part i, fols. 111r–164v, origin Valle Crucis Abbey, c.1330) ends, while the later copy (by Gutun Owain, in Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, 7006D, pp. 199–308, origin ?Valle Crucis Abbey, s. xv2) continues to 1461, with the material from 1198 onwards depending on the Peniarth 20 version, the Red Book version and Gutun Owain’s own continuation. The Peniarth 20 version – extant in the oldest manuscript of the three versions, Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS Peniarth 20, pp. 65–302 – was probably composed at Valle Crucis Abbey, c.1330. The Red Book of Hergest version (named for its most famous, though not most reliable, manuscript, Oxford, Jesus College, MS 111, fols. 58r–89v, written for a patron in Ynysforgan near Swansea, 1382 × 1408) extends to 1282, while the Peniarth 20 version includes a continuation to 1332.8 The most persuasive hypothesis for the relationship between the three Welsh vernacular chronicles discussed above is still that of Thomas Jones, who argues that they were translated from three related (and no longer extant) Latin chronicles, all of which were dependent on a common original compiled sometime after 1286.9 He argued that the Peniarth 20 version was

7 J.





Harrison suggests that the annals diverge at 1202 because that is when Gerald of Wales may have deposited a copy of ‘annals of St Davids’ at Strata Florida for safekeeping while he was in Rome; ‘A Note on Gerald of Wales and Annales Cambriae’, Welsh History Review 17 (1994), 252–5. Gerald’s copy, Harrison argues, was most similar to the Breviate Chronicle version. The difficulty of substantiating this hypothesis is pointed out by D. Stephenson, ‘Gerald of Wales and Annales Cambriae’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 60 (2010), 23–37, who argues instead that Gerald may have fed information to the St Davids chronicler for the 1180s portion of the text (pp. 27, 31–7). 8 For the Peniarth 20 continuation, see G. and T. M. Charles-Edwards, ‘The Continuation of Brut y Tywysogion in Peniarth MS. 20’, in Ysgrifau a Cherddi Cyflwynedig i Daniel Huws / Essays and Poems Presented to Daniel Huws, ed. T. Jones and E. B. Fryde (Aberystwyth, 1994), pp. 293–305; D. Stephenson, ‘The Continuation of Brut y Tywysogyon in NLW, Peniarth MS 20 Re-visited’, in Chronicles of Medieval Wales and the March, ed. Guy et al., pp. 155–68. 9 Brut y Tywysogyon: or, The Chronicle of the Princes. Peniarth MS. 20 Version, trans. T. Jones, History and Law Series 11 (Cardiff, 1952), pp. xxxvii–xl. Jones suggests this occurred at the Cistercian abbey of Strata Florida in Ceredigion, pp. xxxvii–xxxix; David Dumville suggests this model should be re-evaluated: Brenhinoedd y Saeson,

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Georgia Henley translated after 1282 and before the writing of Peniarth 20 c.1330, that the Red Book version was translated between 1307 and the writing of Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth 18 c.1350 and that Brenhinedd y Saesson was translated by the same person as the Cotton Cleopatra B. v version of Brut y Brenhinedd (‘History of the Kings’, a translation into Middle Welsh of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s De gestis Britonum whose earliest manuscript is dated to the second quarter of the fourteenth century).10 More recently, Barry Lewis has demonstrated that the author of Bonedd y Saint (‘Genealogy of the Saints’) drew on a copy of Brenhinedd y Saesson, which places the date of the Latin original of Brenhinedd y Saesson to before c.1300 and into the thirteenth century, corroborating J. Beverley Smith’s argument for the same approximate date.11 Jones argued further that the extant Welsh Latin chronicles represent the sources of the original Latin version of the Brut, while J. E. Lloyd and David Stephenson instead argue that the Breviate and Cottonian Chronicles began as outlines or abstractions of the original Latin Brut, with Stephenson demonstrating that the extant copies of Brut y Tywysogyon reflect Latin chronicles compiled at various times throughout the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries.12 Comparison of the Latin and Welsh vernacular texts can often yield interesting results that allude to the lost textual history of the Latin source(s) underlying them. It is because of the interrelationship between the Latin and Welsh versions that it is necessary to compare CC’s reportage of events concerning Wales and the Welsh to both Latin and Welsh vernacular ‘The Kings of the English’, A.D. 682–954: Texts P, R, S in Parallel, ed. and trans. D. N. Dumville, Basic Texts for Mediaeval British History 1 (Aberdeen, 2005), p. vi. 10 Brut y Tywysogyon: or, The Chronicle of the Princes. Peniarth MS. 20 Version, trans. Jones, p. xxxix, n. 3; Brut y Tywysogyon; or The Chronicle of the Princes. Red Book of Hergest Version, ed. and trans. T. Jones, 2nd edn, History and Law Series 16 (Cardiff, 1973), p. liv; Brenhinedd y Saesson: or, The Kings of the Saxons. BM Cotton MS Cleopatra B v and the Black Book of Basingwerk, NLW MS 7006, ed. and trans. T. Jones, History and Law Series 25 (Cardiff, 1971), p. xlvii. Peniarth 18 is the oldest manuscript of the Red Book version and together with Mostyn 116 it is used as the basis for Jones’s edition. 11 B. J. Lewis, ‘Bonedd y Saint, Brenhinedd y Saesson, and Historical Scholarship at Valle Crucis Abbey’, in Chronicles of Medieval Wales and the March, ed. Guy et al., pp. 139–54; J. Beverley Smith, ‘Historical Writing in Medieval Wales: The Composition of Brenhinedd y Saesson’, Studia Celtica 42 (2008), 55–86 (pp. 60–7, 83–4). 12 Brut y Tywysogyon: or, The Chronicle of the Princes. Peniarth MS. 20 Version, trans. Jones, pp. xxxvi–xlii; J. E. Lloyd, ‘The Welsh Chronicles’, The Sir John Rhŷs Memorial Lecture, British Academy (London, 1928), pp. 1–25 (pp. 16, 18); Stephenson, ‘Welsh Chronicles’ Accounts of the Mid-Twelfth Century’, p. 57; D. Stephenson, ‘Entries Relating to Arwystli and Powys in the Welsh Chronicles, 1128–32’, Montgomeryshire Collections 99 (2011), 45–51 (p. 51); D. Stephenson, Medieval Powys: Kingdom, Principality and Lordships, 1132–1293 (Woodbridge, 2016), pp. 25–8. The Welsh chronicle Cronica de Wallia (Exeter, Cathedral Library, MS 3514, pp. 507–19) is also thought to be very similar to the thirteenth-century Latin original underlying the versions of Brut y Tywysogyon. Because it spans the years 1190–1266, however, it is not useful to compare it to CC.

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Networks of Chronicle Writing in Western Britain chronicles, keeping in mind that it is some version of the extant chronicles’ Latin exemplar(s) circulating in the twelfth century that CC’s compilers would have accessed.13

The nature of CC’s interest in Welsh events Previous editors and scholars have noted CC’s attentiveness to Welsh affairs, with a particular focus on wars waged by English kings against the Welsh. CC also reports episcopal information, showing knowledge of St Davids and Llandaff (see of Glamorgan) elections and deaths. The editors of the chronicle are particularly interested in whether it reports anything not found in other historical sources and focus their discussion on this question.14 To summarise their findings: some of the Welsh events in CC are also recorded in both the ASC version E and the extant Welsh chronicles (outlined above),15 while others correspond to Welsh sources only.16 Two of CC’s entries give Welsh information not found in other chronicles at all, which, the editors suggest, is the result of the chronicler revising the text rather than lifting it directly from sources, and therefore obscuring those sources.17 These entries occur in the post-1070 section, a span of time that is of particular interest because it relies on a wider collection of sources than the pre-1070 material: the annals from 1070 onwards ‘include … a body of conciliar information and material not available to John for events before that date’.18 There is general agreement that Welsh sources were used in the compilation of CC and also that CC independently recorded some of the same events as Welsh chroniclers.19 13 The

vernacular chronicles are reliant on a Llanbadarn Fawr source for the first three quarters of the twelfth century. This source has been labelled the ‘Llanbadarn history’. For discussion, see O. W. Jones, ‘Brut y Tywysogion: The History of the Princes and Twelfth-Century Cambro-Latin Historical Writing’, Haskins Society Journal 26 (2014), 209–28; Lloyd, ‘The Welsh Chronicles’, p. 18. 14 JW, Chron. (ed. McGurk, III, xxxi–xxxii). 15 The first entry in 1094 (the Welsh shake off the yoke of Norman slavery), 1095 (the Welsh attack Montgomery and the king retaliates), 1097 (William mounts a second expedition to Wales), 1098 (the Welsh fight both Hughs), 1102 (a battle between Robert de Bellême and the king, with the Welsh on the side of Robert), 1114 (Henry leads an army into Wales) and 1121 (Henry leads an army against the Welsh). 16 1093 (Rhys ap Tewdwr is killed), second entry in 1094 (William fights the Welsh in an expedition), 1111 (the settlement of Flemings in Rhos), two entries in 1116 (Gruffudd ap Rhys burns castles to protest his disinheritance; Owain king of the Welsh is killed) and 1137 (Gruffudd ap Rhys dies and the Welsh battle the Normans and Flemings). 17 1094 (William mounts an expedition against the Welsh, the second listed in this year), 1101 (a castle is constructed at Carreghofa against the Welsh) and 1098 (the miracle of Cenred). For discussion, see JW, Chron. (ed. McGurk, III, xxxi–xxxii). 18 JW, Chron. (ed. McGurk, III, xix). 19 JW, Chron. (ed. McGurk, III, xxxi–xxxii); H. Pryce, ‘Gerald of Wales and the Welsh

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Georgia Henley In terms of source material, CC’s knowledge of and interest in Welsh events can be divided into three categories. First, there are those items that, due to verbal similarities, are not independently reported by both CC and Welsh chroniclers, but are manifestly from extant written Welsh sources and indicate a point of textual contact between CC and a written Latin source from Wales. These are three in number and they have been noted by Darlington and McGurk.20 Second, there are those items that may be from a common written source or may be the result of independent reportage, with a lack of verbal similarities and the question of survival leaving both options on the table. These instances are numerous.21 Third, there are common events in CC and Welsh chronicles that are almost certainly the result of independent reporting of the same events, with Welsh chronicles agreeing with one another in wording against very different phrasing or portrayal by CC. Each may be taken as different kinds of access to information about Wales and the Welsh by CC. There are three instances in CC where editors have noted a connection between CC and written Welsh sources.22 The first is the entry for 1093, reporting the death of Rhys ap Tewdwr at the hands of Normans inhabiting Brycheiniog (i.e. Bernard de Neufmarché, a Norman aristocrat who had been in the service of William I). This event is not reported in the ASC version E. Rhys’s death was viewed by CC and the Welsh vernacular chronicles as a decisive end to kingship in Wales (see Table 1 for text).23 The Peniarth 20 and Red Book versions of Brut y Tywysogyon characterise the severity of the event: ‘Ac yna y dygwydawd teyrnas y Brytanyeit’ (‘And then fell the kingdom of the Britons’), as does Brenhinedd y Saesson: ‘Ac yna y syrthws brenhiniaeth Kymre’ (‘And then the kingdom of Wales fell’).24 CC is in agreement with the vernacular chronicles concerning the significance of Rhys’s death, and echoes their lament with similar wording: ‘ab illo die regnare in Walonia reges desiere’ (‘from that day kings ceased to rule in Wales’).25 The Welsh Latin chronicles are more laconic and do not describe this result. These similarities between CC’s account and the Welsh vernacular chronicles make a case for Past’, in Gerald of Wales: New Perspectives on a Medieval Writer and Critic, ed. G. Henley and A. J. McMullen (Cardiff, 2018), pp. 19–46 (p. 21). 20 JW, Chron. (ed. McGurk, III, xxxi–xxxii). 21 They are also noted by McGurk, ibid. 22 JW, Chron. (ed. McGurk, III, xxxi–xxxii). 23 The significance of the event is discussed by J. E. Lloyd, rev. D. E. Thornton, ‘Rhys ap Tewdwr (d. 1093)’, ODNB: (accessed 7 August 2019). 24 Brut y Tywysogyon; or The Chronicle of the Princes. Red Book of Hergest Version, ed. Jones, pp. 32–3; Brut y Tywysogyon; Peniarth MS. 20, ed. T. Jones, History and Law Series 6 (Cardiff, 1941), p. 25; Brenhinedd y Saesson, ed. Jones, pp. 84–5. Interestingly, the portentous second sentence of this text is missing in the oldest complete manuscript witness of the Red Book version of Brut y Tywysogyon (Peniarth 18, c.1350). The sentence is present in the other manuscripts of the Red Book version. 25 JW, Chron. s.a. 1093 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 64–5).

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Networks of Chronicle Writing in Western Britain CC’s use of Welsh sources, as others have stated: ‘It has been assumed that a Latin text of uncertain date lay behind the Welsh Brut texts: at these two points at least [1093 and 1097], and probably elsewhere in John’s annals, there seems to have been contact, directly or indirectly, with this text’.26 This case is strengthened by the fact that CC and the Welsh vernacular chronicles not only agree on the significance of the death of Rhys but also follow the report of Rhys’s death with the death of Malcolm, king of Scotland, and his wife Margaret’s reaction, suggestive of commonalities in an underlying exemplar. The entries 1093 and 1097 in the Welsh chronicles are based on a Welsh Latin chronicle of the late eleventh century, kept at St Davids. The authors of CC certainly could have had access to a version of such a text. Table 1: Annals for 1093 compared JW, Chron (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 64–5) ‘Res, Walanorum rex, in ipsa ebdomada Pascali, iuxta castellum quod Brecehenieau nominatur, in pugna occisus est. Ab illo die regnare in Walonia reges desiere.’ (‘Rhys, king of the Welsh, was killed in battle in Easter Week [17–23 April] near the castle of Brecknock. From that day kings ceased to rule in Wales.’) Peniarth 20 Brut, text 25, trans. 19

Red Book Brut 32–3

ByS 84–5

Breviate 52

Cottonian 30

‘Vn mlyned ar dec aphedwarugeint amil oed oed krist pan las rys vab tewdwr brenhin ydeheu ygan freig a oedynt yn presswylyaw brycheinyawc yn yr hwn y dygwydawd teyrnas y brytanyeid.’

‘[D]eg mlyned a phetwar ugeint a mil oed oet Crist pan [las] Rys uap Tewdwr, brenhin Deheubarth, y gann y Ffreinc a oed ynn presswylaw Brecheinawc. [Ac yna y dygwydawd teyrnas y Brytanyeit].’

‘y llas Rys vab Teudwr, brenhin Deheubarth, y gan y Ffreinc a yttoed yn trigaw yna yn Brecheiniauc. Ac yna y syrthws brenhiniaeth Kymre.’

‘Resus filius Teudur rector dextralis partis a Francis Brechinauc occisus est.’

‘Res filius Teudur a Francis qui in Brecheniauc habitabant occiditur.’

—continued

26 JW,

Chron. (ed. McGurk, III, xxxii).

233

Georgia Henley Table 1: Annals for 1093 compared (concluded) (‘One thousand and ninety-one was the year of Christ, when Rhys ap Tewdwr, king of the South, was slain by Frenchmen who were inhabiting Brycheiniog– with whom fell the kingdom of the Britons.’)

(‘One thousand and ninety was the year of Christ when Rhys ap Tewdwr, king of Deheubarth, was slain by the French who were inhabiting Brycheiniog. And then fell the kingdom of the Britons.’)

(‘Rhys ap Tewdwr, king of Deheubarth, was slain by the French who were then dwelling in Brycheiniog. And then the kingdom of Wales fell.’)

(‘Rhys ap Tewdwr, ruler of Deheubarth, was killed by the French of Brycheiniog.’)

(‘Rhys ap Tewdwr was killed by the French who were inhabiting Brycheiniog.’)

Source: For this and the following tables, the text and translation of CC are from JW, Chron.; text and translation of Brut y Tywysogyon are from Brut y Tywysogyon; Peniarth MS. 20, ed. Jones (Peniarth 20 text); Brut y Tywysogyon: or, The Chronicle of the Princes. Peniarth MS. 20 Version, trans. Jones (Peniarth 20 translation); Brut y Tywysogyon; or The Chronicle of the Princes. Red Book of Hergest Version, ed. and trans. Jones (Red Book of Hergest version text and translation); Brenhinedd y Saesson, ed. and trans. Jones (Brenhinedd y Saesson text and translation, abbreviated in the table as ByS); texts of the Breviate and Cottonian Chronicles are from Annales Cambriae: The B Text. From London, National Archives, MS E164/1, pp. 2–26, ed. Gough-Cooper, Welsh Chronicles Research Group (Bangor, 2015),

(accessed 6 August 2019); Annales Cambriae: The C Text. From London, British Library, Cotton MS Domitian A. i, ff. 138r–155r, ed. H. Gough-Cooper, Welsh Chronicles Research Group (Bangor, 2015) (accessed 6 August 2019). Translations are my own when not otherwise noted.

The second event that provides evidence of CC’s use of Welsh sources is in 1094 when it describes a pan-Welsh reaction to oppression by the Normans three decades after the Norman Conquest. CC states: Ad hec etiam primitus North Walani, deinceps West Walani et Suth Walani, seruitutis iugo, quo diu premebantur, excusso, et ceruice erecta, libertatem sibi uindicare laborabant.

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Networks of Chronicle Writing in Western Britain In addition first the North Welsh, then the West and South Welsh, shaking off the yoke of slavery, which they had long endured, and holding their heads up high, sought to recover their liberty.27

This statement is markedly sympathetic to the idea of Welsh independence from Norman control, unexpected in a chronicle otherwise sympathetic to and interested in the deeds of the Norman and English kings.28 To the initiated reader of Welsh literature, it sounds like the kind of panegyric that appears in Welsh praise poetry and the heightened rhetorical Latinity of Cronica de Wallia.29 A comparison of CC’s passage with the extant Welsh chronicles (see Table 2) indicates that the Latin chronicles, Peniarth 20 and the Red Book were accessing a common source, while Brenhinedd y Saesson was reporting independently on the same event.30 Table 2: Annals for 1094 compared JW, Chron. (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 72–3) ‘Ad hec etiam primitus North Walani, deinceps West Walani et Suth Walani, seruitutis iugo, quo diu premebantur, excusso, et ceruice erecta, libertatem sibi uindicare laborabant.’ (‘In addition first the North Welsh, then the West and South Welsh, shaking off the yoke of slavery, which they had long endured, and holding their heads up high, sought to recover their liberty.’) —continued

27 JW,

Chron. s.a. 1094 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 72–3). war between Welsh and French is also reported in the ASC version E but not in the same phrasing, so John did not get it from there. See The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Volume 7: MS E, ed. S. Irvine (Cambridge, 2004), p. 105. 29 Edited by T. Jones, ‘“Cronica de Wallia” and Other Documents from Exeter Cathedral Library MS. 3514’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 12 (1946), 27–44; transcribed in full in Annales Cambriae: The E Text. From Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3514, pp. 507–19, ed. H. Gough-Cooper, Welsh Chronicles Research Group (Bangor, 2016)

(accessed 7 August 2019); and discussed by P. Russell, “‘Go and Look in the Latin Books”: Latin and the Vernacular in Medieval Wales’, in Latin in Medieval Britain, ed. R. Ashdowne and C. White, Proceedings of the British Academy 206 (London, 2017), pp. 213–46; G. Henley, ‘Rhetoric, Translation and Historiography: The Literary Qualities of Brut y Tywysogyon’, Quaestio Insularis 13 (2012), 78–103. 30 In this case, Brenhinedd y Saesson describes the event using different wording, seeming to follow a different exemplar; see Brenhinedd y Saesson, ed. and trans. Jones, pp. 86–7. While Brenhinedd y Saesson often uses English annals as sources, particularly the Annals of Winchester, comparison with the Annals of Winchester indicates it has not used those annals as a source for this event. For Brenhinedd y Saesson’s use of the Annals of Winchester elsewhere, see below, p. 260. 28 This

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Table 2: Annals for 1094 compared (concluded) Peniarth 20 Brut, text 26, trans. 19

Red Book Brut 34–5

ByS 86–7

Breviate 52

Cottonian 30

‘y gwrthladassant arglwydiaeth yfreig y brytanyeit heb allu diodef kreulonder ac enwired y freig athorri eu kestyll o wyned a gwneuthur lladuaeu onadunt.’

‘A Gwillym yn trigyaw ynn Normandi, y gwrthladawd y Bryttanyeit lywodraeth y Ffreinc hep allel godef eu creulonder, a thorri y kestyll yGwyned a dechemygu anreitheu a lladuaeu arnunt.’

Ac yn y vlwydyn honno y bv mynych ymgyrchu y rwng y Kymre a’r Freinc a oed yn gwledychu yna Keredigion a Dyvet; a dwyn anreithiev a mynych lladuaev o bop parth.’

‘Willelmus Anglorum rex Normanniam adiit, quo ibi morante, Britanni iugum Francorum respuerunt.’

‘Willelmus rex Anglorum Normanniam adiit, ipsoque ibi morante et fratrem suum expugnante, Britanni Francorum iugum respuunt.’

(‘And while he stayed there, the Britons, being unable to bear the tyranny and injustice of the French, threw off the rule of the French, and they destroyed their castles in Gwynedd and inflicted slaughters upon them.’)

(‘Whilst William stayed in Normandy, the Britons threw off the rule of the French, being unable to suffer their tyranny, and they destroyed their castles in Gwynedd and devised plunderings and slaughters against them.’)

(‘And in that year there were frequent encounters between the Welsh and the French who were then ruling Ceredigion and Dyfed; and plunderings and frequent massacres were committed on either side.’)

(‘William, king of the English, went to Normandy, and while he was dwelling there, the Britons cast off the yoke of the French.’)

(‘William, king of the English, went to Normandy, and while he was dwelling there and while he was fighting with his own brother, the Britons cast off the yoke of the French.’)

Networks of Chronicle Writing in Western Britain The Welsh vernacular chronicles report the same event, an uprising of the Welsh against the Normans (whom they refer to as ‘the French’). While Brenhinedd y Saesson records the event in its own wording, indicating independent reportage of the same event,31 the Red Book and Peniarth 20 versions express a similar sentiment and action to CC. They describe the Welsh not as figuratively throwing off the ‘yoke of slavery’ (‘seruitutis iugum’) but rather the ‘rule’ or ‘authority’ (‘arglwyddiaeth’ or ‘llywodraeth’) of the French. Even more strikingly, the Welsh Latin chronicles – like CC – describe the Welsh as throwing off a ‘yoke’ (‘iugum’) imposed by the French. This wording is too similar to be a coincidence, and it is shared by CC and the Welsh chronicles against the ASC version E, which describes a Welsh uprising that year but in different language.32 This suggests CC accessed a source that was at some level textually related to extant Latin chronicles from medieval Wales. The third and final example of direct textual contact between CC and Welsh chronicles is the entry for 1097, when William II goes on an expedition to Wales.33 Others have noted that CC uses the word ‘secundo’ (‘a second time’) to describe the expedition, even though it is the third expedition by William into Wales that CC records (William goes to Wales in 1094, 1095 and 1097 in CC). The out-of-place word ‘secundo’ in the entry for 1097 has been taken to mean that CC’s compilers were copying from another source and inadvertently kept the language of that source even though they were reporting more expeditions than that source.34 Indeed, just two of William’s expeditions into Wales are recorded by the Red Book and Peniarth 20 versions of Brut y Tywysogyon and the Latin chronicles (see Table 3 for text). The Welsh chronicles do not record William’s first expedition in 1094 and therefore they are correctly using the phrase ‘a second time’ (Welsh: ‘yr eilweith’; Latin: ‘secundo’) to characterise William’s action in 1097.35 These similarities again suggest that CC’s compilers had access to a source related to the Welsh chronicles’ exemplar, and copied the word secundo from it without editing for context. 31 Jones

notes that Peniarth 20, Red Book and the Cottonian Chronicle give a more accurate version of events given that J. E. Lloyd, A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest, 2 vols., 2nd edn (London, 1912), II, 403 shows the uprising began in Gwynedd, not Ceredigion and Dyfed. Brut y Tywysogyon: or, The Chronicle of the Princes. Peniarth MS. 20 Version, trans. Jones, p. 158. This event in Brenhinedd y Saesson is not paralleled in the Annals of Winchester (which is elsewhere a source for Brenhinedd y Saesson; see below, p. 260 for discussion). 32 ASC MS E, s.a. 1094 (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Irvine, p. 105). I am grateful to Alex Woolf for assisting me with this reference. 33 This expedition is also reported in the ASC version E but not in the same words; ASC MS E, s.a. 1097 (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Irvine, pp. 107–8). 34 JW, Chron. (ed. McGurk, III, xxxii, 85 n. 1). 35 Brenhinedd y Saesson is again different in its wording: ‘Yn y vlwydyn honno ydygvores Willim Goch vrenhin anneirif o lu yn erbyn y Kymry’ (‘In that year William Rufus mustered a host past number against the Welsh’); Brenhinedd y Saesson, ed. Jones, pp. 88–9.

237

‘Post hec rex Wilelmus .iiii. kal. Ianuarii Angliam rediit, et ut Walanos debellaret, mox exercitum in Waloniam duxit, ibique homines et equos perdidit multos.’ (‘After this King William on 29 December went back to England and led an army into Wales in order to fight the Welsh, and there lost many men and horses.’)

‘Interea Walenses castellum Muntgumri fregerunt, et Hugonis Scrobbesbyrie comitis homines in illo nonnullos occiderunt. Vnde rex iratus, expeditionem cito mandauit, et post festiuitatem sancti Michaelis exercitum in Waloniam duxit, ibique homines et equos quamplures perdidit.’ (‘Meantime the Welsh stormed the castle of Montgomery, and there slew many of Earl Hugh of Shrewsbury’s men. This angered the king, he quickly mounted an expeditionary force, and after the feast of St Michael [29 September] led an army into Wales, there losing many men and horses.’)

1094

1095

JW, Chron. (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 72–3, 78–9, 84–5)

Table 3: Annals for 1094, 1095 and 1097 compared

‘a haner y kynhayaf ykyffroes wiliam vrenhin lloegyr lu yn erbyn y brytanyeid.’ (‘And in the middle of autumn William, king of England, moved a host against the Britons.’)

Peniarth 20 Brut, text 26, 27–8, trans. 19–20

‘[A hanner y kynhayaf y] kyffroes Gwillym urenhin lu [yn erbyn y Bryttanyeit].’ (‘And in the middle of autumn King William moved a host against the Britons.’)

Red Book Brut 34–7

‘Mediante autumpno rex Anglorum Willelmus contra Britones mouet excercitum, quibus Deo tutatis uacuus ad sua rediit.’ (‘In the middle of autumn William king of the English moves an army against the Britons. And since they were protected by God, he returned to his home unsuccessful.’)

Breviate 52

‘Media autem autumpno Willelmus rex Anglorum exercitum contra britones mouit, sed uacuus domum rediit.’ (‘In the middle of autumn William king of the English moved an army against the Britons, but he returned home unsuccessful.’)

Cottonian 30–1

1097

‘Rex Anglorum Willelmus Quadragesimali tempore Angliam rediit, et post Pasca cum equestri et pedestri exercitu secundo profectus est in Waloniam, ut omnes masculini sexus internitioni daret, at de eis uix aliquem capere aut interimere potuit, sed de suis nonnullos, et equos perdidit multos.’ (‘William, king of the English, returned to England during Lent, and after Easter [5 April] set out a second time for Wales with an army of horse and foot with the intention of killing all the male population; but he was barely able to capture or kill anyone, but lost many men and horses.’)

‘a gwilim vrenhin lloegyr yr eilweith a gyffroes llu mawr ac aneiryf ogenedloed yn erbyn y brytanyeid.’ (‘And William, king of England, a second time moved a great host and folk without number against the Britons.’)

‘Ac yna yr eilweith y kyffroes Gwillym, vrenhin Lloegyr, anyeiryf o luoed a diruawr medyant a gallu ynn erbyn y Bryttanyeit.’ (‘And then a second time William, king of England, moved innumerable hosts and immense power and strength against the Britons.’)

‘Willelmus rex anglie se[cun] do in britones excitatur eorum omnium imitans excidium britones vero diuino protecti munimine in sua remanent. illesi rege vacuo redeunte.’ (‘William king of England for a second time is roused against the Britons, desiring the destruction of all of them, but the Britons remained in their own land, having been protected by divine fortification. The Britons were unharmed and the king returned home unsuccessful.’)

‘Willelmus rex contra britannos exercitum mouit. sed nihil impetrans uacuus domum rediit.’ (‘King William moved an army against the Britons, but gaining nothing he returned home unsuccessful.’)

Georgia Henley Together, the three examples discussed above indicate that the compilers of CC had access to a written Latin source similar to an exemplar underlying the extant Welsh chronicles in word choice and phrasing. I now turn to events in CC concerning Wales that may share a common source with one or more of the extant Welsh chronicles, but lack of distinct word similarity precludes decisive proof of textual contact. Taken together, these examples nevertheless suggest use of a common source with expansions and alterations made by both CC and the Welsh vernacular chroniclers that have obscured direct connection. In the entry for 1098, CC and the two Welsh Latin chronicles report that Hugh, earl of Leicester, and Hugh, earl of Shrewsbury, attacked Anglesey. Then, Magnus, king of the Norwegians, sailed to Britain where he was met on the beach by Hugh, earl of Shrewsbury. Hugh was killed by the king’s arrow, and it is implied that his death was punishment for the treatment of the people of Anglesey (see Table 4).36 While the Welsh Latin chronicles are again typically laconic on the details, CC provides an extended account of Hugh of Shrewsbury’s atrocities against the people of Anglesey, including the cutting out of the tongue of an old priest, Cenred, who is miraculously restored to speech three days later. Brenhinedd y Saesson reports a very similar pattern of events but without the Cenred episode.37 CC, the Welsh Latin chronicles and Brenhinedd y Saesson agree with each other against the Red Book and Peniarth 20 texts in holding both Hughs responsible for the invasion. They all attribute the death of Hugh, earl of Shrewsbury, to Magnus during a volley of arrows. By contrast, the Red Book version has only Hugh of Shrewsbury leading the men (‘a deu tywyssawc yn y blaen a Hu, iarll Amwythic, ynn bennaf arnunt’ (‘with two leaders in the van and with Hugh, earl of Shrewsbury, as chief over them’)), likely the result of misunderstanding or miscopying a phrase similar to that in Brenhinedd y Saesson: ‘a deu dywyssauc arnadunt, nyt amgen, Hugone Goch, jarll Amhwythic, a Hugon[e] Vras, jarll Caerlleon’ (‘with two leaders over them, namely, Hugh the Red, earl of Shrewsbury, and Hugh the Fat, earl of Chester’), and the Peniarth 20 version has King Magnus being wounded in the face by an arrow rather than Hugh earl of Shrewsbury, likely a mistranslation of its source.38 Further, the Red Book version portrays Magnus as the king of Germany (Germania) and the saviour of the Welsh rather than an invader like the Normans.

36 For

discussion of the event, see R. Power, ‘Magnus Barelegs’ Expeditions to the West’, The Scottish Historical Review 65 (1985), 107–32. 37 This is not an entry that is derived from Annals of Winchester. For Brenhinedd y Saesson’s reliance on the Annals of Winchester see below, p. 260. 38 Brut y Tywysogyon; or The Chronicle of the Princes. Red Book of Hergest Version, ed. Jones, pp. 36–7; Brenhinedd y Saesson, ed. Jones, pp. 88–91; Brut y Tywysogyon: or, The Chronicle of the Princes. Peniarth MS. 20 Version, trans. Jones, p. 160.

240

—continued

(‘At that time Magnus, king of the Norwegians, son of King Olaf, himself son of Harold Fairhair, added the Orkneys and the Mevanian islands to his rule, and came there with a few ships. When he tried to beach his ships, Hugh, earl of Shrewsbury, met him on that same shore with many armed troops, and, as it is reported, struck by an arrow from the king’s own bow, died seven days after he had barbarously treated the said priest.’)

‘Eo tempore rex Norreganorum Magnus, filius regis Olaui, filii regis Haroldi Haruagri, Orcadas et Meuanias insulas cum suo adiecisset imperio, paucis nauibus aduectus illuc uenit. At cum ad terram rates appellere uellet, comes Hugo de Scrobbesbyria, multis armatis militibus in ipsa maris ripa illi occurrit, et, ut fertur, mox ab ipso rege sagitta percussus, die .vii. quo crudelitatem in prefatum exercuerat presbiterum interiit.’

(‘Meanwhile Hugh, earl of Leicester, and Hugh, earl of Shrewsbury, with an armed force invaded the Mevanian island, which is usually called Anglesey, and killed many Welshmen taken prisoner there, blinding some, cutting off their hands and arms, and castrating them. They seized from his church a priest of advanced years, Cenred by name, to whom the Welsh turned for advice with their plans, castrated him, putting out one eye, and cutting off his tongue, but by God’s mercy, speech was restored to him three days later.’)

‘Interea comites Hugo de Legeceastra, et Hugo de Scrobbesbyria Meuaniam insulam, que consuete uocitatur Anglesege, cum exercitu adierunt, et multos Walanorum quos in ea ceperant occiderunt, quosdam uero, manibus uel pedibus truncatis, testiculisque abscisis, excecauerunt. Quendam etiam prouecte etatis presbiterum, nomine Cenredum, a quo Walani in iis que agebant consilium accipiebant, de ecclesia extraxerunt, et eius testiculis abscisis et uno oculo eruto, linguam illius absciderunt, sed die tertia, miseratione diuina illi reddita est loquela.’

JW, Chron. (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 86–9)

Table 4: Annals for 1098 compared

Breviate 52–3 (Cottonian gives same report as Breviate) ‘Omnes Venedoti in Mon Insula se receperunt, et ad eos tuendos de Hibernia piratas inuitauerunt. Ad quos expugnandos missi sunt duo consules, Hugo comes Urbis Legionum et alter Hugo, qui contra insulam castra metati sunt … Francis in insula morantibus, Magnus rex Germanie cum excercitu venit in insula uolens. Sed ei nolenti Franci ei occurrentes seinuicem sagittis salutauerunt, hii de terra ille de mari. Alter comes sagitta in facie percussus occubuit.’

ByS 88–91

‘y doeth y Freinc y drydyweith a llu maur ganthunt hyt yng Gwyned, a deu dywyssauc arnadunt, nyt amgen, Hugone Goch, jarll Amhwythic, a Hugon[e] Vras, jarll Caerlleon … Ac yn yr amser hwnnw yd oed Magnus, brenhin Norwei, yn gwiliaw mor y geisiaw gwassanaethev, a lllogheu ganthaw. A gwelet tir Kymre a dyuot tu ac ynys Von a orugant. Ac yn ev herbyn y doeth y Freinc ac ymseithu ac wynt. Ac yn yr ymseithu hwnnw y brathwit jarll Amwithic yn y wyneb o law brenhin Norwei yny golles y eneit.’

Red Book Brut 36–9

‘Y ulwydyn racwynep y kyffroes y Ffreinc luoed y tryded weith ynn erbyn Gwyned, a deu tywyssawc yn y blaen a Hu, iarll Amwythic, ynn bennaf arnunt … Ac val yd oedynt ynn trigyaw yno, y deuth Magnus, brenhin Germania, a rei o logeu gantaw hyt yMon trwy obeithaw cael gorescyn ar holl wladoed y Bryttannyeit. A gwedy clybot o Magnus urenhin [uot] y Ffreinc yn mynych vedylyaw diffeithaw yr holl wlat a’e dwyn hyt ar dim, dyurssaw a oruc e’u kyrchu. Ac ual yd oedynt ynn ymsaethu, y neill rei o’r mor a rei ereill o’r tir, y brathwyt Hu jarll yn y wyneb, ac o law y brenhin ehun yn y vrwydyr y dygwydawd.’

Peniarth 20 Brut, text 28–9, trans. 20–1

‘ykyffroes y freig y dryded weith luoed yn erbyn gwyr gwyned a deuyeirll yndywyssawc arnadunt. nyd amgen hu yarll amwythic ac arall gyd ac ef achyrchu a orugant ynys von … ac acwyntwy yn trigaw yno ydoeth mawrus brenhin germania tu ac ynys von a llyges ganthaw ar vedwl goresgyn holl ynys brydein. a gwedy klybod o vawrus vrenhin bod ymryd y freig diffeithyaw yr holl wlad ay distryw o gwbyl bryssyaw a oruc ef yw y kyrchu. ac ac wynt yn ymsaethu yneillrei or mor ar lleill or tir ac yna y brathawd hu yarll mawrus vrenhin. yny wyneb.’

Table 4: Annals for 1098 compared (concluded)

(‘The French a third time moved hosts against the men of Gwynedd, with two earls as their leaders, namely, Hugh, earl of Shrewsbury, and another along with him. And they made for the island of Anglesey … And as they stayed there, Magnus, king of Germany, approached the island of Anglesey, and a fleet with him, thinking to conquer all the island of Britain. And after King Magnus had heard that the French were minded to ravage the whole land and to destroy it utterly, he hastened to attack them. And as they were shooting at one another, the one side from the sea and the other from the land, then Earl Hugh wounded King Magnus on his face.’)

(‘The following year the French moved hosts, for the third time, against Gwynedd, with two leaders in the van and with Hugh, earl of Shrewsbury, as chief over them … And as they were staying there, Magnus, king of Germany, and some ships with him came to Anglesey, hoping to overrun all the lands of the Britons. And when King Magnus had heard [that] the French were often minded to ravage the whole land and to reduce it to naught, he hastened to attack them. And as they were shooting at one another, the one side from the sea and the other from the land, Earl Hugh was wounded in the face, and by the hand of the king himself he fell in the battle.’)

(‘The French came the third time, and a great host with them, to Gwynedd, with two leaders over them, namely, Hugh the Red, earl of Shrewsbury, and Hugh the Fat, earl of Chester … And at that time Magnus, king of Norway, was keeping watch on the sea in search of supplies, and ships with him. And they sighted the land of Wales, and came towards the island of Anglesey. And the French came against them, and they discharged arrows at them. And in that discharge of arrows the earl of Shrewsbury was wounded in his face by the hand of the king of Norway, so that he lost his life.’)

(‘All the men of Gwynedd withdrew to Anglesey and invited pirates from Ireland to protect them. In order to fight them two earls had been sent, Hugh earl of Chester and another Hugh, and they measured out castles against the island … While the French were dwelling on the island, Magnus king of Germany came with his army to the island willingly. But he was unwilling as the French withstood him, and they greeted each other with arrows. The French did so from the land and he from the sea. The second earl died, having been struck by an arrow in the face.’)

Georgia Henley Given that these events (Magnus’s conquest of Anglesey and his killing of Hugh) are reported in a number of chronicles, it is at first glance likely that all of these chronicles are reporting independently on the same event.39 However, the events in CC and the Welsh chronicles agree in specific details against the other chronicles, with the other chronicles providing rather different accounts of events that vary widely. The ASC version E reports merely that Hugh was killed in Anglesey by pirates.40 The Chronicle of Melrose mentions briefly that Magnus takes Anglesey.41 William of Malmesbury says that Magnus and Harold try to take Anglesey but are driven away by the Hughs, and Hugh of Shrewsbury is killed by an iron spear, not an arrow.42 Orderic Vitalis says that an unnamed Norwegian kills Hugh and Magnus offers peace to the other Hugh.43 Walter of Coventry uses the same words as CC, having copied this section from him.44 Roger of Howden reports on Magnus’s life and death but not on the battle with Hugh.45 Henry of Huntingdon has Hugh killed by the Irish.46 This is all to say that the agreement of CC and the Welsh chronicles against these other accounts suggests a common source of information, with CC and the Welsh vernacular chronicles’ exemplars altering and expanding that source in different directions. Another instance of CC providing an expanded version of events that appear in the Welsh Latin chronicles is in 1102, when it describes Robert de Bellême’s military opposition to Henry I. Against Henry, Robert fortifies Shrewsbury, Arundel, Tickhill, Bridgnorth and Carreghofa castles, and brings the Welsh to his side with various gifts.47 When the tide turns against Robert and Henry offers the Welsh better gifts, they desert Robert. The Welsh

39 A

full list is in Power, ‘Magnus Barelegs’ Expeditions’, pp. 109–10, and it includes the Chronicle of Melrose, John of Fordun, William of Malmesbury, Orderic Vitalis, Walter of Coventry, Symeon of Durham, Roger of Howden, Henry of Huntingdon, Gerald of Wales and the Latin Life of Gruffudd ap Cynan. 40 ASC MS E, s.a. 1098 (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Irvine, p. 109). 41 The Chronicle of Melrose: From the Cottonian Manuscript, Faustina B. IX in the British Museum, ed. A. O. Anderson, M. O. Anderson and W. C. Dickinson (London, 1936), p. 30. 42 WM, GR iv.329 (ed. and trans. Mynors, Thomson and Winterbottom, I, 570–1). John of Fordun follows William of Malmesbury; Johannis de Fordun, Chronica Gentis Scotorum, ed. W. F. Skene, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1871–2), I, 223–4; II, 213–14, 215–16. 43 OV, HE x.6 (ed. and trans. Chibnall, V, 224–5). 44 Memoriale Fratris Walteri de Coventria. The Historical Collections of Walter of Coventry, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols., RS 28 (London, 1872–3), I, 115, xxxv. 45 Chronica Magistri Rogeri de Houedene, ed. W. Stubbs, 4 vols., RS 51 (London, 1868–71), II, 212–1 W. Stubbs, 2 vols., RS 28 (London, 1872–3), I, 115, xxxv. 4. 46 Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum. The History of the English People, ed. and trans. D. Greenway, OMT (Oxford, 1996), pp. 444–5. 47 JW, Chron. s.a. 1102 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 100–1). This event is not in the ASC version E which ends at 1101, though it is possible CC was using a version that is now lost.

244

Networks of Chronicle Writing in Western Britain vernacular chronicles provide a markedly similar account to CC, including the fortification of particular castles, gift-giving to the Welsh, Henry’s siege of Arundel and the betrayal of Robert by the Welsh, though in slightly different order. Once again, CC and the vernacular chronicles agree against the extant Latin chronicles and also against other non-Welsh chronicles.48 The similarities in the two accounts suggest that both CC and the vernacular chronicles are adapting the same Welsh Latin source in different ways. They also take different perspectives. Specifically, the vernacular chronicles include a defence of the Welsh betrayal. The young men who initially support Robert turn against him because they remember ‘y sarhaedeu a gauas y Bryttannyeit gynt y gann Rosser, y tat ef, a Hu, vrawt y tat, – y rei a oed gudedic gann y Bryttannyeit yn y callonneu yn vyuyr’ (‘the injuries that the Britons had previously suffered at the hands of Roger, [Robert’s] father, and of Hugh, his father’s brother, – which the Britons held in remembrance hidden away in their hearts’).49 This defensive posture perhaps anticipates criticism of the betrayal and sympathises with the sons of Bleddyn ap Cynfyn over the Normans. The vernacular Welsh chronicles also list the names of the Welsh supporters of Robert (Cadwgan, Iorwerth and Maredudd, the sons of Bleddyn ap Cynfyn), which would be relevant to their audience, but perhaps less relevant to the audience of CC, which does not include them. Two mentions of Henry leading armies into Wales, one in 1114 and one in 1121, follow a similar pattern of delocalisation. CC and the extant Welsh Latin chronicles give similar, brief mentions of the event (‘Henry led an army into Wales’, or some variation thereof), while the vernacular chronicles go into much greater detail, providing an extended account of Henry’s activities and the Welsh reaction. In 1121, the detail in the vernacular text includes mention of the specific kingdom Henry challenges (Powys), whereas CC and the Welsh Latin chronicles state more generally ‘Wales’, which could suggest a broader, less local audience than that intended for Brut y Tywysogyon who would have

48 Orderic

Vitalis does note Robert’s fortification of Bridgnorth (OV, HE x.7 (ed. and trans. Chibnall, V, 224–5)). Walter of Coventry copies CC in this section (Memoriale Fratris Walteri de Coventria, ed. Stubbs, pp. 120–1). Henry of Huntingdon reports on the castles of Bridgnorth and Arundel but not on Robert’s alliance with the Welsh (Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. and trans. Greenway, pp. 450–1). William of Malmesbury reports that Robert fortifies the two castles and the Welsh of Shrewsbury decide to join in, with no official alliance noted: WM, GR v.396 (ed. and trans. Mynors, Thomson and Winterbottom, I, 718–19). 49 Brut y Tywysogyon; or The Chronicle of the Princes. Red Book of Hergest Version, ed. Jones, pp. 44–5, similar in Brut y Tywysogyon; Peniarth MS. 20, ed. Jones, p. 34; Brut y Tywysogyon: or, The Chronicle of the Princes. Peniarth MS. 20 Version, trans. Jones, p. 24: ‘ysarahedeu agawssei y brytanyeid gynt ygan roger ydad ahu yvrawd ac ygan ygwyr yr rei a oed yn vyvyr gan ybrytanyeid’ (‘the wrongs that the Britons had formerly suffered at the hands of Roger, his father, and Hugh, his brother, and at the hands of their men, which were held in remembrance by the Britons’).

245

Peniarth 20 Brut, text 32, trans. 23

‘achubeid eu kestyll a orugant ay kadarnhau agalw nerthoed attunt o boptu agwahawd y brytanyeid aoed y danunt ay tywyssogyon attunt nyd amgen meibyon bledyn vab kadwgawn Iorwerth maredud. ay haruoll yn anrydedus a orugant. a rodi vdunt rodyon ac adaw llawer o betheu vdunt a llawenhau y wlad o rydyd achadarnhau eilweith eu kestyll ay kylchynu o ffossyd a muroed kadarn achyweiryaw vitael achynullaw marchogyon arodi rodyon vdunt. Robert a achubawd pedwar kastell nydamgen. arwndel a blidense a bruche … ac amwythic.’

JW, Chron. (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 100–1)

‘Supradictus comes Rotbertus de Beleasmo … ciuitatem Scrobbesbyriam, et castellum in ea situm, castella quoque Arundel et Tychyll, alimentis, machinis, armis, militibus, ac peditibus contra regem Heinricum firmiter muniuit. … Walanos etiam suos homines, ut promptiores sibique fideliores ac paratiores essent ad id perficiendum quod uolebat, honoribus, terris, equis, armis incitauit, uariisque donis largiter donauit.’

Table 5: Annals for 1102 compared

‘Achub a orugant eu kedernit a galw porth o bob tu vdunt, a gwahawd attunt y Brytanyeit a oedyn darestygedigyon vdunt yn eu medyant, ac eu penaetheu, nyt amgen, Cadwgawn, Iorwerth a Maredud, veibon Bledyn vab Kynuyn, yn borth vdunt. Ac eu haruoll yn vawrurydic enrydedus vdunt a orugant ac adaw llawer o da vdunt a rodi rodyon a llawenhau y gwlat o rydit. Yg kyfrwg hyny kadarnhau eu kestyll a’e kylchynu o fossyd a muroed a pharatoi llawer o ymborth a chynullaw marchogyon a rodi rodyn vdunt: Robert a achubawd petwar castell, nyt amgen, Arwndel a Blif a Bryg … ac Amwythic.’

Red Book Brut 42–3

Cottonian 32: ‘Sedicio magna orta est inter Henricum regem et Robertum fratrem eius.’ (‘Great dissension arose between King Henry and his brother Robert.’)

Breviate 53: ‘Sedicio orta est inter Robertum de Belleem et Henricum regem.’ (‘Dissension arose between Robert de Bellême and King Henry.’)

Welsh Latin chronicles

(‘The said Count Robert of Bellême … strongly fortified against King Henry the city of Shrewsbury and the castle there, as well as the castles of Arundel and Tickhill, supplying them with provisions, siege engines, arms, knights, and footsoldiers … He encouraged his Welsh followers with honours, lands, horses, and arms so that they would carry out his plans more faithfully and eagerly, and showered them with many gifts.’)

(‘they occupied their castles and fortified them, and summoned help to them from all sides and summoned to them the Britons who were under them, together with their leaders, namely, the sons of Bleddyn ap Cynfyn, Cadwgan, Iorwerth and Maredudd. And they received them with honour, and gave them gifts and promised them many things and gladdened the land with liberty. And a second time they fortified their castles and encompassed them with ditches and strong walls and prepared provision and gathered together knights and gave them gifts. Robert occupied four castles, namely, Arundel and Blyth and Bridgenorth … and Shrewsbury.’)

(‘They [Robert and his brother Arnulf] occupied their fortifications and summoned aid to them from all sides, and called to them the Britons who were subject to them and in their power, together with their chiefs, to wit, Cadwgan, Iorwerth and Maredudd, sons of Bleddyn ap Cynfyn, to come to their aid. And they received them with magnificent honour and promised them much wealth and gave gifts and they gladdened their land with liberty. In the meantime they fortified their castles and encompassed them with ditches and walls and prepared much provision and gathered together knights and gave them gifts: Robert occupied four castles, namely, Arundel and Blyth and Bridgenorth … and Shrewsbury.’)

Georgia Henley understood what Powys was.50 In fact it has recently been argued that the chronicler responsible for this period (1100–26), a Llanbadarn Fawr chronicler, actually relocated to Meifod in Powys during the occupation of Llanbadarn by Gloucester monks, which corroborates this localising detail.51 In 1116, CC and the Welsh Latin chronicles again give a rather abbreviated account of Gruffudd ap Rhys’s rampage through Wales, burning castles in protest of his disinheritance. Gruffudd ap Rhys was the son of Rhys ap Tewdwr, whose death in 1093 was lamented by chroniclers as the end of the kingdom in Wales, discussed above. Gruffudd was a child when his father was killed and fled to exile in Ireland. He returned to Dyfed in 1113 to reclaim his patrimony from the Normans. Burning castles throughout South Wales, he eventually reclaimed a small amount of territory in Deheubarth.52 CC states rather generally that Gruffudd ‘Walonie predam egit, et castella incendit’ (‘took much booty in Wales, and burnt castles’), where the Cottonian Chronicle mentions more specifically that he burned Arberth and Carmarthen, and the Breviate says he burned Carmarthen.53 In contrast, the vernacular chronicles characteristically go into extensive, localising detail. In the Red Book version, Gruffudd burns Arberth, the outer part of Llandovery and a castle near Swansea belonging to Henry Beaumont (Swansea Castle); in addition it states that hotheads are attracted to Gruffudd’s cause ‘wedy y twyllaw o chwant anreitheu neu o geissaw atgyweiraw neu atnewydu Bryttannawl deyrnas – ac ny thal ewyllus dyn dim ony byd Duw yn borth idaw’ (‘lured by desire for booty or by an urge to restore and to renew the Brittanic kingdom – but the will of man availeth naught unless God aids it’).54 These examples could suggest that CC and the extant Welsh Latin chronicles were both using laconic Latin sources that the vernacular chronicles’ exemplars later extended with detail and commentary, or that CC has dropped localising information from a Welsh Latin source text that went into far greater localising detail than CC was interested in (or indeed that both were reporting laconically on the same events independently).

50 For

further discussion of the Brut in this period and its relation to Powys and Llanbadarn Fawr see Stephenson, ‘Welsh Chronicles’ Accounts of the Mid-Twelfth Century’; Stephenson, ‘Entries Relating to Arwystli and Powys’; D. Stephenson, ‘The “Resurgence” of Powys in the Late Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries’, ANS 30 (2008), 182–95 (pp. 184–9); Jones, ‘Brut y Tywysogion’, pp. 215–27. 51 Stephenson, ‘Entries Relating to Arwystli and Powys’, pp. 47–9. 52 For Gruffudd ap Rhys, see T. F. Tout, rev. H. Pryce, ‘Gruffudd ap Rhys (d. 1137)’, ODNB: (accessed 16 April 2020). He is not to be confused with Gruffudd ap Rhys, son of the Lord Rhys ap Gruffudd of Deheubarth. 53 JW, Chron. s.a. 1116 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 138–9); Annales Cambriae: The B Text, ed. Gough-Cooper, p. 55; Annales Cambriae: The C Text, ed. Gough-Cooper, p. 33. 54 Brut y Tywysogyon; or The Chronicle of the Princes. Red Book of Hergest Version, ed. Jones, pp. 86–7. This phrase is not in the Peniarth 20 version.

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Networks of Chronicle Writing in Western Britain An additional instance of possible textual contact between CC and Welsh chronicles is in the year 1115, when Wilfrid, bishop of St Davids, died.55 When CC reports the death, it adds that, ‘usque ad illum episcopi extitere Brytonici’ (‘Before him all the bishops had been Welsh’).56 A stronger statement on the death of Wilfrid and election of his successor Bernard is found in the vernacular chronicles, which report that Bernard was from Normandy and ‘a dyrchafwyt yn escob yMyniw y gan Henri vrenhin o [a]nuod holl yscolheigon y Bryttannyeit gan eu tremygu’ (‘was raised to be bishop in Menevia by king Henry against the will and in despite of all the clergy of the Britons’).57 This is perhaps an instance of CC offering a Welsh point of view on an event, in this case the replacement of Welsh bishops at St Davids for Norman ones, which indicate some sympathy for the Welsh due to similarity to the English experience, as well as the use of a Welsh Latin source. Immediately prior to the comment about the Welsh throwing off the yoke of slavery in 1094, for example, it states that ‘graui et assiduo tributo ... tota uexabatur Anglia’ (‘all of England was oppressed by heavy and persistent taxation’); elsewhere it laments that English people could no longer hold high offices in the Church.58 It is quite possible that the compilers of CC saw something of the English plight in the Welsh resistance to the Normans, in particular the installation of Norman bishops above all other choices. The parallels between the Welsh and the English experience are implicit in this episode. Another possible example of different perspectives on the same event is the entry for 1137, which reports the death of Gruffudd ap Rhys. Where the Welsh Latin chronicles merely report his death without further comment (‘Grifinus Resi filius obiit’), the Red Book version includes a bit of panegyric: ‘Y ulwydyn racwyneb y bu varw Gruffud vab Rhys, lleufer a chadernit ac aduwynder y Deheuwyr’ (‘The following year died Gruffudd ap Rhys, the light and strength and excellence of the men of the South’).59 Interestingly, CC provides rather more information about the circumstances of Gruffudd’s 55 Additional

examples not discussed at present due to constraints of space are Henry’s settlement of Flemish people in the district of Rhos in 1111 and the devastation of Wales after the death of Henry I in 1135, including the battle of Crug Mawr. 56 JW, Chron. s.a. 1115 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 136–7). 57 Brut y Tywysogyon; or The Chronicle of the Princes. Red Book of Hergest Version, ed. Jones, 82–3, similar in Brut y Tywysogyon; Peniarth MS. 20, ed. Jones, p. 62; Brut y Tywysogyon: or, The Chronicle of the Princes. Peniarth MS. 20 Version, trans. Jones. p. 39: ‘yr hwn a wnaeth henri vrenhin yn esgob ymynyw heb diolch y ysgolheigyon y brytanyeid’ (‘whom king Henry made bishop in Menevia in contempt of the clerics of the Britons’). 58 JW, Chron. s.a. 1094 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 72–3). 59 Annales Cambriae: The B Text, ed. Gough-Cooper, p. 58; Brut y Tywysogyon; or The Chronicle of the Princes. Red Book of Hergest Version, ed. Jones, pp. 116–17, similar in Brut y Tywysogyon; Peniarth MS. 20, ed. Jones, p. 88; Brut y Tywysogyon: or, The Chronicle of the Princes. Peniarth MS. 20 Version, trans. Jones, p. 52: ‘Blwydyn wedy hyny ybu varw gruffud ap rys goleuat ac adwyndra achydernyt deheubarth gymry

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Georgia Henley death, which occurred soon after a campaign against Rhos: ‘Rex Walie Griffinus filius Res, dolo coniugis sue circumuentus, defungitur’ (‘The Welsh king, Gruffydd, son of Rhys, was betrayed by the treachery of his wife, and died’).60 It seems that CC is the only chronicle to mention the role played by Gruffudd’s wife in his death.61 Even more interestingly, it follows this statement with an extended description of a war between the Welsh and the Flemings that expresses some degree of partisanship for the Welsh cause: Walenses in defensione sue natiue terre, non solum a Normannicis diuitibus, sed etiam a Flandrensibus multa perpessi pluribus utrinque peremptis, deuictis tamen ad ultimum Flandrensibus, non cessant in circuitu omnia uastare, uillas ac castella uastando comburere, omnes resistentes sibi simul cum innocentibus et nocentibus neci tradere. In the defence of their native land, the Welsh were hard pressed not only by the powerful Normans, but also by the Flemings. Many were killed on both sides, but in the end the Flemings were beaten, and the Welsh laid waste all around them, setting fire to townships and castles, killing all who resisted, whether innocent or not.62

This particular war is not reported in the Welsh chronicles, but it can be found in the vernacular chronicles, where it takes the same tone and pacing. It is striking that CC depicts these events as a defence of their native land, which would suggest either the use of a Welsh source or some sympathy on CC’s part for their right to that land, which is certainly possible given that England had also been conquered by Normans, and the chroniclers would have seen parallels to the English experience. The discussion has thus far focused on instances of textual contact between CC and the extant body of Welsh chronicles. A number of additional items of Welsh interest are mentioned by CC that are not in the extant Welsh chronicles. In the eleventh century these items are taken from the ASC and they concern various battles between Welsh and English kings. Twelfth-century items that go unreported by Welsh chronicles (and unreported by the ASC version E, which ends in 1101) are typically ecclesiastical in nature. The compilers of CC would have known about the movements of Welsh bishops probably from monastic chronicling sources, since monastic chronicles tend to report on the elections and deaths of bishops, and perhaps a no-longer-extant Llandaff source, given the Llandaff focus of the events (see Table 6).63

oll’ (‘A year after that, died Gruffudd ap Rhys, the light and excellence and strength of all of South Wales’). 60 JW, Chron. s.a. 1137 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 228–9). 61 Ibid. (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 228–9, n. 6). 62 Ibid. (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 228–9). 63 As suggested by Wendy Davies and discussed below, pp. 253–4.

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Table 6: Eleventh- and twelfth-century items of Welsh interest in CC that are not reported by Welsh chronicles Items in JW, Chron. derived from the ASC 1039: The Welsh kill Earl Leofric’s brother Edwin (II, 528–9). 1046: Leofric ‘the Welshman’ attains the bishopric of Crediton and Cornwall (II, 542–3).a 1049: Irish pirates and Gruffudd ap Rhydderch plunder near the mouth of the Severn and kill people in or near Worcester (II, 550–1). 1053: Rhys, brother of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn, is killed at Bullington and his head is brought to Gloucester (II, 572–3).b 1055: A battle with Gruffudd and Ælfgar against King Edward (II, 576–9). 1056: Bishop Leofgar is killed in battle by Gruffudd ap Llywelyn and Harold makes peace with Gruffudd (II, 580–1). 1058: Ælfgar recovers his fleet with the help of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn (II, 584–5). 1063: Harold tries to kill Gruffudd ap Llywelyn, who is deposed by his own men (II, 592–3). 1064: When Gruffudd ap Llywelyn is killed by his own men, his brothers swear fealty to King Edward and Earl Harold (II, 596–7).c 1065: Caradog ap Gruffudd kills workmen constructing a tower (II, 596–7). 1067: Welsh kings help Eadric lay waste to Herefordshire (III, 4–5). 1088: Ralph Mortimer and Roger of Shrewsbury, together with many Welsh, attack Worcester (III, 52–7). Items in JW, Chron. that occur after the ASC version E ends 1101: A castle constructed at Carreghofa against the Welsh (III, 100–1). 1107: Urban is elected to the see of Glamorgan at Canterbury and consecrated (III, 110–13). 1111: Hervey, bishop of Bangor, is moved to Ely and Bangor is described as a Welsh monastery filled with inmates (III, 130–1). 1119: Bernard, Urban and others are sent to a council at Rheims (III, 146–7). 1120: David is consecrated to the see of Bangor after being chosen by Gruffudd ap Cynan and the Welsh people (III, 146–7). 1121: Urban and Bernard attend the consecration of Richard to the bishopric of Hereford at Lambeth and the consecration of the bishop of Chester at Abingdon. Urban attends the consecration of Tewkesbury church (III, 148–51). 1125: Seffrid is made bishop of Chichester with Urban and Bernard present. David, bishop of Bangor, is present at the ordaining of Simon to the see of Worcester, John to the see of Rochester and Benedict’s consecration as abbot of Tewkesbury (III, 158–61). 1127: A council at London of all the bishops, including David, Urban and Bernard (III, 168–9). 1128: A dispute between Urban and Bernard prompts Urban to go to Rome and return the same year. He goes to Rome a second time and dies (III, 182–7). 1138: Seven or Eight Welshmen killed from fire after city near Wye burns (III, 244–5). 1140: Maurice of Bangor and Uhtred of Llandaff consecrated (III, 284–5). a

Note that Leofric was probably Cornish, not Welsh, and the translation of Leofrico Brytonico as ‘Leofric the Welshman’ should be revised to ‘Leofric the Cornishman’. This item may not belong in the table. b John adds information to this account that is not in the ASC. c The vernacular chronicles report his death but not the swearing of fealty.

Georgia Henley

Networks of communication and contact The intertextual connections between Worcester and Welsh chronicles raise the question of causality: how do we account for Worcester’s interest in Wales? Textual connections between Worcester and Welsh chronicle writing may be in part the result of Worcester’s geographical placement along a Roman road, a well-travelled thoroughfare from the English Midlands to Chepstow and West Wales, which William Rees calls a route ‘of the utmost importance … along it are found the major castles and boroughs of the entire line of lordships through South Wales’.64 Worcester’s placement on this routeway may have stimulated interest in Welsh events and increased chroniclers’ ability to collect information about Welsh events in both written and oral form. Its position also resulted in its use as a staging area for English kings’ battles with the Welsh. The Annals of Worcester’s interest in Wales, for example, most often relates to the visits of English kings to the abbey on their way into Wales. Gransden notes that the Annals of Worcester derives its facts from the priory and episcopal archives, from the records of the sheriffs of Worcestershire, and by ear. Some news came direct from the king’s court, for Edward I was often at Worcester for his Welsh campaigns. In places in the chronicle news of national importance immediately precedes a notice of a royal visit, which suggests that the chronicler obtained his information from the court.65

The connection may also have been ecclesiastical: the medieval diocese of Worcester, much larger then than it is today, included St Peter’s Abbey, Gloucester, which held a number of properties in Wales and exhibited demonstrable interest in Welsh hagiography and other texts.66 While Worcester did 64 W.

Rees, Handbook to the Historical Map of South Wales and the Border in the Fourteenth Century (Cardiff, 1933), pp. 7–8. Another important route-way was the River Severn. 65 A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England c.550 to c.1307 (London, 1974), p. 451. 66 Gloucester’s dependencies in Wales included Cardiff, Cardigan, Ewenny, Glasbury, Llantwit, Llancarfan, Llanbadarn Fawr and Newport. For a list of Gloucester’s Welsh properties see Historia et cartularium monasterii Sancti Petri Gloucestriae, ed. W. H. Hart, 3 vols. (London, 1863–7), III, 2, 31–3; also E. Cownie, Religious Patronage in Anglo-Norman England 1066–1135 (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 54–65; M. Heale, ‘The Dependent Cells of the Benedictine Monasteries of Medieval England, 1066–1540’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2001), pp. 289–94; M. Heale, The Dependent Priories of Medieval English Monasteries, Studies in the History of Medieval Religion 22 (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 289–94. For discussion of Gloucester’s interest in Welsh texts, see K. Hughes, ‘British Library MS. Cotton Vespasian A. XIV (Vitae Sanctorum Wallensium): Its Purpose and Provenance’, in Celtic Britain in the Early Middle Ages: Studies in Scottish and Welsh Sources by the late Kathleen Hughes, ed. D. N. Dumville, Studies in Celtic History 2 (Woodbridge, 1980), pp. 53–66 (pp. 60–1); J. R. Davies, The Book of Llandaf and the Norman Church in Wales, Studies in Celtic History 21 (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 114–15; J. Byron Smith,

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Networks of Chronicle Writing in Western Britain not have its own Welsh holdings, perhaps because it did not have as close a relationship with Marcher lords conquering Welsh territories as Gloucester did, the latter was under its diocesan jurisdiction. Worcester’s geographical position would have increased chroniclers’ interest in Welsh events, politics and battles with the English, which did not impede textual transmission as much as one might assume, but rather stimulated it. It is likely that CC’s access to Welsh sources was facilitated by this geographical position. Worcester’s location on the roadway would have encouraged engagement with and knowledge of Welsh politics. Monastic houses in the West Midlands and South Wales would have been in touch by way of book traffic, newsletters, chapter meetings (and with the Cistercians the requirement of annual visits of abbots to Cîteaux) and monks moving between placements in Anglo-Norman houses throughout western Britain. Some of CC’s sources would have been written in the form of chronicles. Information about large-scale political events – treaties, battles, captures and invasions – presumably would have circulated by newsletters.67 We must also allow for the possibility that some of the chronicle’s sources were probably oral, in the form of direct reports given by people who had recently visited Wales. Worcester was, more specifically, in contact with Llandaff, as demonstrated by Wendy Davies, whose study of similar charter formulae in Worcester and Llandaff charters indicates contact between the two scriptoria in the late eleventh century.68 This contact is corroborated by the appearance of the ‘Literary Encounters in the Anglo-Welsh Borderlands: 1138–1400’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, Northwestern University, 2011), pp. 96–7; J. Byron Smith, ‘An Edition, Translation, and Introduction to Benedict of Gloucester’s Vita Dubricii’, Arthurian Literature 29 (2012), 53–100; J. Byron Smith, Walter Map and the Matter of Britain (Philadelphia, 2017), pp. 112, 205 n. 46. 67 Julian Harrison notes several moments in English Cistercian chronicles where newsletters appear to have been used as source material for events across the Channel and in Scotland; in ‘Cistercian Chronicling in the British Isles’, in The Melrose Chronicle: A Stratigraphic Edition, Vol. 1: Introduction and Facsimile, ed. D. Broun and J. Harrison (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 13–29 (p. 25), he provides the example of a newsletter used in the Annals of Waverley, specifically an account by Arnaud, archbishop of Narbonne, of the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa / the Battle of Al-Uqab on 16 July 1212 (Annales Monastici, ed. H. R. Luard, RS 36, 5 vols. (London, 1864–9), II, 129–412 at II, 271–3). Harrison also notices that a newsletter was used in the Hailes Chronicle concerning the surrender of John of Scotland to Edward in 1296, and that the Melrose Chronicle may have used a newsletter to relate a list of captives taken by the English in 1217 in France. See, for example, the newsletter in the Hagnaby Chronicle giving notice of Edward’s campaigns against the Welsh in Powys in 1294–5. For discussion see R. F. Walker, ‘The Hagnaby Chronicle and the Battle of Maes Moydog’, Welsh History Review 8 (1976–7), 125–38 (pp. 128–30); M. Prestwich, ‘A New Account of the Welsh Campaign of 1294–5’, Welsh History Review 6 (1973–4), 89–94 (p. 91). 68 W. Davies, ‘Saint Mary’s Worcester and the Liber Landavensis’, Journal of the Society

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Georgia Henley death of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn in 1063 in the obits of the Worcester calendar in Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Hatton 113.69 The Annals of Worcester, though written well after CC, exemplify how geographic placement could have an effect on the transmission of oral and textual sources, and it is to this chronicle that I now turn. The Annals of Worcester demonstrate that geographical position had some degree of influence on chroniclers’ interests. A distinction can be made, for example, between chronicles produced in geographical regions that impeded contact with Wales on the one hand (such as Abbey Dore, a Cistercian monastery on the eastern side of the Black Mountains, which produced a decidedly England-focused chronicle despite its location near the Welsh border, with the mountains presumably impeding contact with Wales), and abbeys in the fertile lowlands just east of Swansea Bay on the other, such as Margam Abbey, which was subject to intense Welsh raiding and produced a chronicle that was keenly knowledgeable about the regional Welsh politics that would have affected its safety. Chroniclers at Worcester took a similar interest in Welsh events due to proximity and relevance. The case of the Annals of Worcester demonstrates that the monastery’s proximity to Wales made it important for the monks to understand the political situation in Wales, often for their own safety.

The Annals of Worcester The Annals of Worcester, an anonymous set of annals compiled at the priory, are extant in an early fourteenth-century manuscript, London, BL, Cotton MS Caligula A. x.70 The text covers the years 1–1308, with a later continuation bringing it down to 1377. Its sources include CC, the Annals of Waverley, Roger of Wendover’s Flores historiarum and a Winchester-focused chronicle in London, BL, Cotton MS Vespasian E. iv (fols. 153r–201v, s. xiiiex) covering the Incarnation to 1286. The Annals of Worcester are independent from 1202 to 1262 and from 1281 to 1307 and dependent on BL, Cotton MS Vespasian E. iv from the Incarnation to 1201 and from 1261 until 1286.71 of Archivists 4 (1972), 459–85 (p. 478); I. Atkins, ‘An Investigation of Two AngloSaxon Kalendars (Missal of Robert of Jumièges and St. Wulfstan’s Homiliary)’, Archaeologia 78 (1928), 219–54. 69 Davies, ‘Saint Mary’s Worcester’, p. 484. The extent to which Worcester feuded with Llandaff in the latter’s quest to expand in the twelfth century is worthy of further study. 70 For text, see Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, IV, 355–562 (with discussion on pp. xxxv–xxxix); Gransden, Historical Writing in England, I, 449–51; more recently The Winchcombe and Coventry Chronicles: Hitherto Unnoticed Witnesses to the Work of John of Worcester, ed. and trans. P. A. Hayward, 2 vols. (Tempe, AZ, 2010), I, 169–73. 71 The Annals of Worcester rely so closely on the BL, Cotton MS Vespasian E.

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Networks of Chronicle Writing in Western Britain Like CC, the Annals of Worcester are more interested in Wales and Welsh affairs than many other monastic chronicles of England. The text details a number of episodes not noticed elsewhere in English chronicles: the burning of Brecon and Radnor by the Welsh in 1231,72 the Marcher lords’ recuperation of their lands in Wales in 1241,73 a series of entries from 1244 to 1247 detailing the war between Dafydd ap Llywelyn and Henry III and its aftermath,74 the arrival of Welsh soldiers and nobility in England during dealings with Simon

iv chronicle from the Incarnation to 1201 and from 1261 to 1286 that Luard’s edition of the Annals of Worcester can be used as an edition of the BL, Cotton MS Vespasian E. iv chronicle for those years (Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, IV, 356–90, 447–92). Entries from 1202 to 1262 are edited in Ungedruckte Anglo-Normannische Geschichtsquellen, ed. F. Liebermann (Strasbourg, 1879), pp. 182–202. 72 ‘Conflagratis Brewen et Radenovere cum ecclesiis, et facta magna strage laicorum et clericorum a Walensibus, scilicet a Lewelino et complicibus suis … rex firmavit castrum Matildis’ (‘with Brecon and Radnor and their churches burnt, and a great massacre of laity and clerics by the Welsh, that is, by Llywelyn and his accomplices, having taken place … the king strengthened Castle Maud’); Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, IV, 422. This episode is not reported by other English chronicles I surveyed, nor by the Cottonian Chronicle. The Annals of Chester, Margam, Tewkesbury and Neath mention Welsh events in this year but they are substantially different events. The episode is reported independently by the Breviate Chronicle: ‘Lewelinus princeps Norwallie … Mungumrium, Brechoniam et Haiam cum Radenor castello solete[n]us dirupto et incendio deuastauit’ (‘Llywelyn, prince of North Wales, laid waste to Montgomery, Brecon and Hay, with the castle in Radnor broken to pieces and burnt to the ground’); text from Annales Cambriae: The B Text, ed. GoughCooper, p. 75; and in nearly the same words by Cronica de Wallia: Jones, ‘Cronica de Wallia’, p. 11. 73 ‘Omnes marchiones recuperaverunt terras suas in Wallia’ (‘all the Marchers regained their lands in Wales’): Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, IV, 433. While the submission of Dafydd ap Llywelyn to Henry III is recorded elsewhere (by the Annals of Worcester, Tewkesbury, Thomas Wykes, Chester, Neath and Cronica de Wallia), only the Annals of Worcester adds this detail. 74 Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, IV, 436–8: a war between the Welsh and the Marchers in 1244 (‘gravis guerra inter Walenses et Marchisos’); Henry III’s leading of an army into Wales in 1245 (‘dominus rex duxit exercitum in Walliam, et firmavit castrum apud Gannon, et vastavit penitus Angleseyam’ (‘the lord king led an army into Wales, and strengthened a castle at Degannwy, and laid waste deep into Anglesey’)), the death of Dafydd ap Llywelyn in 1246 and the division of Wales between Henry III, Owain ap Gruffudd and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in 1247 (‘duo fratres filii Griffini Walensis pacificati sunt cum rege, tota Wallia citra Abercunwey cedente in usus regis, Snaudonia et Angleseia in usus eorum’ (‘the two brothers, sons of Gruffudd the Welshman, having made peace with the king, with all of Wales below Aberconwy conceded to the king’s use, [and] Snowdonia and Anglesey conceded to their use’)). The death of Dafydd is also recorded by the Annals of Chester, Neath, the Breviate Chronicle, the Cottonian Chronicle and Cronica de Wallia; the division of territory between Owain and Llywelyn is also reported by the Annals of Chester; and the king’s trip to Wales in 1245 by the Annals of Dunstable, the Breviate Chronicle, the Cottonian Chronicle and Cronica de Wallia. The Annals of Worcester are unique in noticing all four.

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Georgia Henley de Montfort in 1263,75 Simon’s alliance with the Welsh in 1265,76 the capture of Rhys ap Maredudd in 1291,77 and the foolishness of the abbot of Strata Florida, resulting in the burning of that abbey by Edward I in 1295.78 The entry for 1294 describes the king travelling to Worcester in the process of an advance against the Welsh.79 The fact that these events do not match with the Welsh Latin chronicles indicate that they are reported independently of those sources. A few examples will be taken as representative of the chronicle’s knowledge of Welsh events. The Annals of Worcester mention Strata Florida Abbey (a Cistercian abbey in Ceredigion patronised by the princes of Deheubarth) on two occasions, indicating that it interacted directly with that abbey.80 The first occasion, in 1211, records a meeting between the two houses: ‘Facta est socialis conventio inter ecclesiam Wygorniae et ecclesiam de Stratflur’ (‘a meeting of allies took place between the church of Worcester and the church of Strata Florida’).81 This indicates that monks of Worcester were in direct correspondence and contact with the monks of Strata Florida, with tempting possibilities for textual contact offered by the meeting. The meeting occurs in the middle of an account of a conflict between King John and Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, resolved eventually by the intervention of Joan, Llywelyn’s wife and John’s daughter.82 75 Annales

Monastici, ed. Luard, IV, 449: ‘Edwardus primogenitus regis alienigenas duxit in Angliam sub specie congrediendi cum Walensibus’ (‘Edward, the king’s firstborn, led foreigners into England under the guise of meeting with the Welsh’). This entry is also in the BL, Cotton MS Vespasian E. iv chronicle. It is not reported in the Welsh Latin chronicles. 76 Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, IV, 456: ‘inierat foedus cum Leulino principe Walliae’ (‘he entered into an agreement with Llywelyn, prince of Wales’); also in the BL, Cotton MS Vespasian E. iv chronicle, but not reported elsewhere. 77 Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, IV, 509: ‘Res ap Meriaduc per suos in Wallia captus, catenatus ad regem Angliae missus fuit’ (‘Rhys ap Maredudd, captured by his own men in Wales, was sent in chains to the king of England’). 78 Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, IV, 520, discussed below. 79 Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, IV, 517: ‘Vicesimo primo die Novembris, rex E[dwardus] venit Wygorniam … et in crastino versus Cestriam iter sumpsit. Octavo die Decembris Walenses cum igne et armis undique hostiliter rex invasit’ (‘On the twenty-first day of November, King Edward came to Worcester … and the next day he began a journey toward Chester. On the eighth day of December the king attacked the Welsh violently with fire and weapons on all sides’). 80 Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, IV, 400, 520. This is unusual, as other chronicles from England and the March do not name Strata Florida at all. 81 Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, IV, 400. 82 Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, IV, 399: ‘Rex J. cum magno exercitu profectus super Lewelinum principem Norwalliae, quatuor castra in terra ejus firmavit. Sed Lewelinus ad pedes regis veniens, cum eo ob gratiam filiae regis, quam pridem in uxorem acciperat [pacificatur added by Luard]; remisit etiam domino regi omnes terras suas praeter Snaudone et Anglesiam et aliam parvam terram ultra Snaudone supra mare; et obsides dedit de fidelitate’ (‘King John, having set out with a great army against Llywelyn, prince of North Wales, strengthened four castles in his land.

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Networks of Chronicle Writing in Western Britain The war between Llywelyn and John was directly relevant to Worcester because the community was affected by it: soon after, Lewelinus et alii principes totius Walliae, ascitis sibi undecunque copiis militaribus, castra de novo per Walliam constructa capiunt, comburunt, et deiciunt; et crebris irruptionibus marchias nostras inquietant. Llywelyn and other princes of all Wales, with military resources appropriated from everywhere, seized, burnt and destroyed newly built castles throughout Wales, and disturbed our marches with frequent attacks.83

It is Worcester’s location in the border region that makes it susceptible to Welsh attacks and probably, therefore, more interested in keeping track of and recording political events having to do with Wales and the Welsh princes. In addition to raids and burnings, abbeys were sometimes caught in the crossfire between English kings and Welsh princes, and it was in their best interests to keep track of events.84 The Annals of Worcester often provide lengthier accounts of Welsh events than the Annals of Tewkesbury (compiled in the thirteenth century, extant in London, BL, Cotton MS Cleopatra A. vii, fols. 3–69, s. xiii3/4), which agree substantially with the Annals of Worcester in the section from 1141 to 1229.85 The Annals of Tewkesbury’s account of the war between John and Llywelyn, for example, is more cursory in its description than Worcester’s: it reports in 1211, ‘Debellata Norwallia per Johannem regem Angliae, princeps ejus Lewelinus cum rege pacificatur, datis obsidibus et terris multis cum decima vaccarum et aliis monilibus multis’ (‘With North Wales vanquished But Llywelyn, coming to the feet of the king, [was granted peace], on account of the esteem of the daughter of the king, whom [Llywelyn] had previously taken as a wife; moreover, he surrendered to the lord king all his lands except Snowdonia and Anglesey and another small territory beyond Snowdonia above the sea [Arfon and Llŷn?], and he gave hostages for fidelity’). 83 Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, IV, 400. 84 For example, in 1212 John ordered the destruction of Strata Florida by Falkes de Breauté because it had ‘harboured [his] enemies’ (‘sustentat i[n]imicos’), and Strata Florida paid a fine of 700 marks to avoid destruction. Discussed by F. G. Cowley, The Monastic Order in South Wales, 1066–1349, Studies in Welsh History 1 (Cardiff, 1977), pp. 210–13; S. W. Williams, The Cistercian Abbey of Strata Florida: Its History, and an Account of the Recent Excavations Made on Its Site (London, 1889), p. xx; the fine was paid off in 1253: Close Rolls of the Reign of Henry III Preserved in the Public Record Office, A.D. 1251–1253 (London, 1927), p. 398; The Great Roll of the Pipe for the thirteenth year of the reign of King John: Michaelmas 1211 (Pipe Roll 57), ed. D. M. Stenton, Pipe Roll Society (London, 1953), p. 235. 85 Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, IV, 379–421 (Worcester), I, 46–57 (Tewkesbury). Luard suggests that these two chronicles shared a common source from Worcester, perhaps an earlier version of the Annals of Worcester as it now exists in BL, Cotton MS Caligula A. x; ibid., I, xxxviii. For discussion see Winchcombe and Coventry, ed. Hayward, I, 175; II, 709.

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Georgia Henley by John, king of England, its prince Llywelyn surrendered to the king, with hostages, and many lands, with a tithe of cows, and many other riches given to him’).86 The Annals of Tewkesbury do not demonstrate knowledge of or interest in reporting the ravages of the March by Llywelyn’s army in 1211. Perhaps the abbey of Tewkesbury, located some eighteen miles south of Worcester, was outside the range of Llywelyn’s assaults. Furthermore, the Annals of Tewkesbury do not mention Strata Florida in 1211, indicating that the Worcester annalist, though he may have used the same exemplar as the Annals of Tewkesbury, was furnishing additional local details relating to his own priory.87 The second mention of Strata Florida in the Annals of Worcester occurs in 1295, in the midst of an uprising throughout Wales by Madog ap Llywelyn, Cynan ap Maredudd, Maelgwyn ap Rhys and Morgan ap Maredudd, some of the noblemen who remained alive after the destruction of independent Gwynedd in the 1280s.88 According to the Annals of Worcester, King Edward paused at Worcester in 1295 before invading Wales.89 Immediately after Easter, he arrived at Anglesey, rebuilt Beaumaris castle and crossed over Snowdonia, heading south.90 Upon his arrival in Ceredigion the abbot of Strata Florida ‘stupidly promised’ (‘stulte promisit’) Edward that the county of Cardigan would swear peace to him.91 When no one appeared before the king and his waiting army on the appointed day, Edward was so angry that he had Strata Florida burnt to the ground: the Annals of Worcester record him shouting angrily, ‘Burn it, burn it’ (‘Ideo iratus dixit, “Accendite, accendite”’).92 The Worcester chronicler concludes the episode with ‘Et sic ignis qui nunquam dicit “Sufficit”, simul abbathiam et patriam involvebat’ (‘and thus the fire, which never says “enough”, simultaneously engulfed the abbey and the

86 Annales

Monastici, ed. Luard, I, 60. I, 59–60. 88 For contemporary accounts, see Brenhinedd y Saesson, ed. and trans. Jones, pp. 260–1; Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, IV, 517–20 (Worcester); IV, 339 (Osney); the Annals of Abbey Dore, ‘Annales Dorenses’, ed. R. Pauli, MGH SS 27, 514–31 (p. 530); for discussion see J. G. Edwards, ‘Madog ap Llywelyn, the Welsh Leader in 1294–5’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 13 (1950), 207–10; D. Stephenson, The Governance of Gwynedd (Cardiff, 1984), pp. 143–4; Prestwich, ‘New Account’; Walker, ‘Hagnaby Chronicle’. 89 Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, IV, 517–19. In the south, Morgan ap Maredudd was defeated in a battle at Maes Maedoc on 5 March by William, earl of Warwick. Later, Morgan was granted clemency, while Madog ap Llywelyn evaded capture. 90 Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, IV, 520. 91 Ibid., IV, 520: ‘Transuente rege ad partes Walliae meridionales, abbas de Stratflur stulte promisit regi quod certo die et loco comitatum de Cardigan adduceret ad pacem regis’ (‘with the king having penetrated into the middle parts of Wales, the abbot of Strata Florida stupidly promised the king that on a certain day and to a certain place he would bring the county of Cardigan into peace with the king’). 92 Ibid., IV, 520. 87 Ibid.,

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Networks of Chronicle Writing in Western Britain land’).93 The vivid detail of this account suggests an eyewitness source and can be taken as an example of local interest in Welsh events on the part of the Worcester chronicler. While evidence of the relationship between Worcester and Welsh sources in a later era than CC, this discussion demonstrates the possibility of oral sources for Welsh events reaching Worcester and being recorded in its chronicle, which could have happened in the twelfth century as well as the thirteenth.

Welsh chroniclers’ interest in Worcester The final section of this chapter departs from Worcester interest in Wales and turns to transmission in the opposite direction: Welsh interest in and use of Worcester chronicling sources. The use of English monastic annals as sources by Welsh chroniclers has been noticed in several instances, and while the manuscripts and several of the chronicles discussed here are from the thirteenth century, later than the time period relevant to CC, we should take the thirteenth-century examples as the result of sustained interest in English and Norman events on the part of Welsh chroniclers dating back to at least the late eleventh century. The Harleian Chronicle (the A-text of Annales Cambriae, London, BL, MS Harley 3859, fols. 190r–193r) appears in a manuscript written c.1100 in an Anglo-Norman scriptorium, possibly St Augustine’s, Canterbury, probably copied from a mid-tenth-century manuscript belonging to St Davids, and indicating a line of transmission between St Davids and that Anglo-Norman centre as a result of the latter’s interest in early Welsh history.94 The core St Davids annals jointly underlying the Breviate Chronicle and the Cottonian Chronicle are ‘really Anglo-Welsh’ in character from the 1160s to 1202,95 a feature Hughes attributes to pervasive Anglo-Norman influence in southwest Wales from the late eleventh century: ‘the St. Davids scribes were at work in an Anglicized society’.96 The Breviate Chronicle, furthermore, uses a Waverley-focused chronicle as a source, also indicating

93 Ibid.,

IV, 520. discussion, see B. Guy, ‘A Second Witness to the Welsh Material in Harley 3859’, Quaestio Insularis 15 (2014), 72–91 (pp. 73–8) and B. Guy, ‘The Origins of the Compilation of Welsh Historical Texts in Harley 3859’, Studia Celtica 49 (2015), 21–56. 95 The B- and C-texts of Annales Cambriae, extant in TNA, E 164/1, s. xiii/xiv, fols. 1r–13r and BL, Cotton MS Domitian A. i, part ii, s. xiii2, fols. 138r–155r, respectively, are transcribed in Annales Cambriae: The B Text, ed. Gough-Cooper and Annales Cambriae: The C Text, ed. Gough-Cooper. The Worcester additions to the C-text / Cottonian Chronicle are printed in Winchcombe and Coventry, ed. Hayward, II, 709–16. 96 K. Hughes, ‘The Welsh Latin Chronicles: Annales Cambriae and Related Texts’, Proceedings of the British Academy 59 (1973), 233–58 (pp. 245–6); this is in contrast to other sections that are independently Welsh. 94 For

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Georgia Henley a connection with English chronicling sources.97 Moving to the thirteenth century, the Welsh vernacular chronicle Brenhinedd y Saesson uses William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum Anglorum as well as some version of the Annals of Winchester (a thirteenth-century chronicle extant in London, BL, Cotton MS Domitian A. xiii, fols. 9r–71v, s. xiii, and CCCC MS 339, fols. 1r–24v, s. xiii, a copy possibly written by Richard of Devizes) as sources.98 Cronica de Wallia and Chronica ante aduentum Domini, two thirteenth-century chronicles in Exeter, Cathedral Library, MS 3514 (s. xiiiex, origin ?Whitland Abbey) use the Chronicle of Bury St Edmunds by John of Taxster as a source.99 This is all to say that it is not unusual for Welsh chroniclers to use English annalistic sources, though critical interpretation has historically tended to consider the two traditions separately. The following discussion will focus primarily on the Cottonian Chronicle (the C-text of Annales Cambriae, BL, Cotton MS Domitian A. i, part ii, fols. 138r–155r, s. xiii2, origin St Davids) and the inclusion of annals containing information relating to Worcester into the manuscript by the same scribe as the main text after the rubrication of the main text had occurred.100 Though the Cottonian Chronicle is a Welsh chronicle, within its manuscript context it is in fact a striking composite of Welsh and English information.101 The chronicle 97 Discussed

by Hughes, ‘Welsh Latin Chronicles’, p. 256; D. Stephenson, ‘In Search of a Welsh Chronicler: The Annales Cambriae B-text for 1204–30’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 72 (2016), 73–86. 98 For the manuscripts of Brenhinedd y Saesson, see above, p. 229. Its use of an Annals of Winchester source is discussed by T. Jones, ‘Historical Writing in Medieval Welsh’, Scottish Studies 12 (1968), 15–27 (pp. 20–1); Brenhinedd y Saesson, ed. and trans. Jones, pp. xli–xlviii, and discussed further by Beverley Smith, ‘Historical Writing’, pp. 58 n. 18, 60–8; G. Henley, ‘The Use of English Annalistic Sources in Medieval Welsh Chronicles’, Haskins Society Journal 26 (2015), 229–47. The Annals of Winchester are edited in Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, II, 3–128 and The Chronicle of Richard of Devizes, ed. J. T. Appleby (London, 1963). 99 Cronica de Wallia: Exeter MS 3514 (s. xiiiex), pp. 507–19, transcribed in Annales Cambriae: The E Text, ed. Gough-Cooper, and edited in Jones, ‘Cronica de Wallia’; Chronica ante aduentum domini: Exeter MS 3514, pp. 523–8, transcribed in Annales Cambriae: The D Text. From Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3514, pp. 523–8, ed. H. GoughCooper, Welsh Chronicles Research Group (Bangor, 2015), (accessed 31 July 2019); discussed by Hughes, ‘Welsh Latin Chronicles’ (pp. 246–50); Henley, ‘The Use of English Annalistic Sources’, pp. 229–47. The Chronicle of Bury St Edmunds is edited and translated in The Chronicle of Bury St Edmunds, 1212–1301, ed. and trans. A. Gransden (London, 1964). 100 The manuscript is digitised and viewable at British Library Digitised Manuscripts, (accessed 31 July 2019). 101 The contents of the Cottonian Chronicle can be summarised as follows: it begins with an Isidorean section before turning to a core annalistic text from 642 to 954 that is very similar to the Harleian Chronicle and the Breviate Chronicle (due to a common exemplar kept at St Davids), but with material from Geoffrey of

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Networks of Chronicle Writing in Western Britain demonstrates how closely intertwined are English and Welsh monastic annals, as a scribe responsible for copying a Welsh-focused chronicle kept at St Davids combined them with annals containing information about Worcester that are dependent, ultimately, on CC (hereafter ‘Worcester annals’, but not to be confused with the Annals of Worcester). In the following pages, I discuss the layout, hand and quiring of this composite text, offer speculation about why the Worcester annals were added to the Welsh material and discuss the overall effect of the inclusion of Worcester material on the annalistic narrative. The Cottonian Chronicle is preceded in the manuscript, part ii, by Gerald of Wales’s Itinerarium Kambriae, Descriptio Kambriae, Retractationes and Catalogus brevior librorum suorum (fols. 56r–137v), copied in the thirteenth century. It is followed in the manuscript by the anonymous life of Bishop David fitz Gerald in a fifteenth-century hand (fols. 155v–156v) and Cognacio Brychan (‘The Kindred of Brychan’) in John Prise’s hand (after 1539, fols. 157v–160r).102 The Gerald texts and the Cottonian Chronicle were written in the thirteenth century at St Davids and probably bound together then as well.103 By 1539 the manuscript was given to John Prise by the treasurer of St Davids, John Lewis, after which point, presumably, he added Cognacio Brychan.104 The medieval contents, written at St Davids, reflect South Welsh interest, particularly present in the

Monmouth incorporated into it. At 954 the entries in the Harleian Chronicle end. From 954 to 1202/3, the Cottonian Chronicle is very similar to the Breviate Chronicle due to the same common exemplar continued at St Davids. The two diverge after 1202/3, where the Breviate Chronicle, probably compiled at Neath Abbey, a Cistercian house in Glamorgan, goes on to use sources from Strata Florida, Whitland, Cwm-hir and Waverley. Before 1202/3 the Breviate Chronicle also uses a Waverley source, it should be noted. Stephenson argues that this compilation process took place at Whitland (for the section from 1204–63). For discussion, see Hughes, ‘Welsh-Latin Chronicles’, pp. 242–51; Stephenson, ‘Gerald of Wales and Annales Cambriae’, pp. 25–7; Stephenson, ‘In Search of a Welsh Chronicler’, pp. 76–7, 81–3; D. Stephenson, ‘The Chronicler at Cwm-hir Abbey’, 1257–63: The Construction of a Welsh Chronicle’, in Wales and the Welsh in the Middle Ages, ed. Griffiths and Schofield, pp. 29–45 (pp. 31–4). For the Cottonian Chronicle see also H. Gough-Cooper, ‘Decennovenal Reason and Unreason in the C-text of Annales Cambriae’, in The Medieval Chronicle 11, ed. E. Kooper and S. Levelt (Leiden, 2017), pp. 195–212. For overviews of the Welsh Latin chronicles, see Guy, ‘Historical Scholars’. 102 The Life of David fitz Gerald is edited by M. Richter, ‘A New Edition of the So-called Vita Dauidis Secundi’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 22 (1966–8), 24–59; Cognacio Brychan is edited in A. W. Wade-Evans, ‘The Brychan Documents’, Y Cymmrodor 19 (1906), 18–48; reprinted in Vitae sanctorum Britanniae et genealogiae: The Lives and Genealogies of the Welsh Saints, ed. A. W. Wade-Evans (Cardiff, 1944, new edn, 2013, introduction by S. Lloyd), pp. 313–18. 103 D. Huws, A Repertory of Welsh Manuscripts and Scribes c.800–c.1800, 3 vols. (Aberystwyth, forthcoming, 2022). 104 N. R. Ker, ‘Sir John Prise’, The Library, 5th s. 10 (1955), 1–24 (pp. 7, 21–2).

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Georgia Henley works of Gerald, who aspired to be the bishop of St Davids. The manuscript also contains medieval annotations that are interested in St Davids.105 Interleaved with the Welsh-focused annals in the Cottonian Chronicle (fols. 138r–155r) are five leaves of Worcester annals. These are folios 142, 144, 146, 148 and 150 (see Table 7).106 Table 7: Interleaved Worcester annals in the Cottonian Chronicle Folio

Text

138

Welsh annals (two-column layout, rubricated)

139

Welsh annals

140

Welsh annals

141

Welsh annals

142

Worcester annals (single-column layout, unrubricated)

143

Welsh annals

144

Worcester annals

145

Welsh annals

146

Worcester annals

147

Welsh annals

148

Worcester annals

149

Welsh annals

150

Worcester annals on 150r [150v is blank]

151

Welsh annals

152

Welsh annals

153

Welsh annals

154

Welsh annals

155

155r: Part of column a: Welsh annals; end of column a and all of column b: contemporary additions in the same hand as the Worcester annals [155v begins the Life of David fitz Gerald]

105 See

ibid., p. 22. refer to the non-Worcester annals, for the sake of simplicity, as the ‘Welsh annals’ as they focus primarily on events in Wales, though it should be noted that they sometimes report on events outside of Wales. As mentioned above, the interleaved Worcester annals in the Cottonian Chronicle are edited in Winchcombe and Coventry, ed. Hayward, II, 709–16.

106 I

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Networks of Chronicle Writing in Western Britain The Worcester annals are written using a different layout than the main text. The main Welsh text of the chronicle, what I am calling ‘Welsh annals’, is written in a two-column layout, with rubrication. In contrast, the five Worcester leaves are written in a single-column layout, without rubrication (see Figs. 1a and 1b for comparison). The Worcester leaves were probably added to the manuscript after the rubricator did his work. Though the presence of the Worcester insertions into the main text of the Welsh annals has been, historically, de-emphasised by scholars, the manuscript itself gives a very different impression.107 At times, practically every other page is a Worcester folio. Some of them only fill about half the page (as on fol. 148r) or two-thirds of the page (as on fol. 150r), leaving room for occasional later additions in thirteenth- and fifteenth-century hands; sometimes the verso side is left blank as well (as on fol. 150v). The differences in layout (single-column versus double-column) and the absence of rubricated capital ‘A’s for each Anno in the Worcester leaves are visibly apparent. Each Worcester entry is marked with a small signe-de-renvoi for insertion into the main text, indicating that the two sets of annals were meant to be read together, or perhaps intended to be merged during a subsequent act of copying. Gough-Cooper suggests that the project of interpolating Worcester extracts into the text ‘was left in note form’, that is, never completed.108 If this latter scenario is the case, then the physical makeup of this chronicle provides a fascinating window into an early stage in the compilation of a composite Welsh-English annalistic text: when a copy of this manuscript was made, one can imagine the Worcester entries being seamlessly incorporated into the main text with the help of the signes-de-renvoi, resulting in the synthesised composite of information from English and Welsh monastic records observable in other Welsh Latin chronicles such as the Breviate Chronicle. Though the quiring of this portion of the manuscript is difficult to ascertain, as the book is rather tightly bound, careful examination of the manuscript reveals its structure.109 The Cottonian Chronicle with its Worcester interpolations appears in quire 11 (fols. 138–154, currently an unusually large quire of 16 + 1) and quire 12 (fols. 155–156).110 The inserted Worcester leaves consist of two bifolia (fols. 142–150, 144–148) and one singleton (fol. 146).111 They 107 A

recent transcription by Gough-Cooper understandably prioritises the text of the Cottonian Chronicle, separating the Worcester annals from the main text and printing them at the end. See Annales Cambriae: The C Text, ed. Gough-Cooper. 108 Gough-Cooper, ‘Meet the Ancestors?’, p. 115. 109 Collation of part ii, fols. 56–160: 1–98, 1010, 1116+1, 122, 134. Quire 13 consists of material added in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries on newer parchment. 110 Quire 12 consists of two folios separated by four stubs. It may be a quire of one bifolium, or perhaps two singletons tipped in – the binding is rather too tight to tell whether the two leaves are conjoint. 111 Correspondences of hair and flesh sides throughout the quire bear this out. Sewing is visible between fols. 146–7 and 148–9.

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Fig. 1a: BL Cotton MS Domitian A. i, fol. 149v © The British Library Board.

Fig. 1b: BL Cotton MS Domitian A. i, fol. 150r © The British Library Board.

Georgia Henley were inserted into quire 11 after that quire had been created. Both the main Welsh text and the inserted Worcester leaves are written by the same scribe, but not continuously. Huws dates the writing of the Welsh annals and the inserted Worcester leaves to c.1286.112 A scenario can thus be reconstructed. Circa 1286, this scribe wrote an initial stint of the main Welsh annalistic text from the beginning of quire 11 (fol. 138) to the beginning of quire 12 (fol. 155), concluding at the year 1285. This twelve-leaf quire was subsequently rubricated. In a different stint, the scribe wrote the Worcester leaves. Prior to the insertion of the Worcester bifolia and singleton, quire 11 would have been a regular quire of twelve leaves containing the Welsh annals written by the scribe in the first stint. After the scribe wrote the Worcester annals on two bifolia and one singleton, these leaves were inserted into the twelve-leaf quire, forming a rather large quire of 16 + 1 leaves (see below, Fig. 2). Huws suggests that at this point the scribe continued the main text from 1286 to 1288 on fol. 155r, cols. a–b, after the manuscript was rubricated.113 The addition to quire 11 of the Worcester annals broadens the interests of the chronicle narrative. The Worcester annals begin with 1016 (fol. 142r), recording the death of Æthelred and the accession of Cnut. They conclude with the coronation of John in 1199 (on fol. 150r). They are, in general, concerned with the events leading up to the Norman Conquest (which is perhaps why they begin with 1016) and the lives of William the Conqueror, William Rufus, Henry I and II, Richard and John. From 1084 they give attention to the accessions of bishops of Worcester and events in Worcester, with reference to elections and other events in York, Winchester and Canterbury. Very little information is repeated by the Welsh annals; the person adding the Worcester information to the manuscript was doing the work of supplementing and broadening the scope of the narrative. The scribe has done this, however, ‘without much regard for chronological accuracy or historical consistency’, as the Worcester annals are dislocated chronologically forward by between four and six years.114 It is tempting to view this activity as a practice of active compilation: planning the integration of two sources in a future copy, but perhaps without possession of the exemplars at the same time, the scribes alternated between two sources. A fresh copy of this text, when made, would elide the differences in layout and source, resulting in the combination of sources that we see in other chronicles from South Wales. The Worcester annals in the Cottonian Chronicle are not unique. Kathleen Hughes and Paul Hayward notice that they are very similar to the portions of the Annals of Worcester that are dependent on CC (in particular, 1104 to 1121).115 112 Huws, 113 Ibid.

A Repertory of Welsh Manuscripts and Scribes.

114 Winchcombe

and Coventry, ed. Hayward, I, 174. ‘Welsh-Latin Chronicles’, p. 246 n. 1; Winchcombe and Coventry, ed. Hayward, I, 169–73.

115 Hughes,

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Networks of Chronicle Writing in Western Britain

Fig. 2: Quire 11, BL Cotton MS Domitian A. i, fols. 138–54.

Close comparison of the three texts indicates that the Worcester annals in the Cottonian Chronicle share an intermediary with the Annals of Worcester. This intermediary has been discussed at length by Paul Hayward, who argues that the intermediary from 1016 to 1121 is probably the same ‘common root’ underlying sections of the Winchcombe Chronicle, the Coventry Chronicle and the Annals of Tewkesbury.116 From 1122 to 1199, the Worcester annals in the Cottonian Chronicle correspond to additions to the core text of the Annals of Worcester from an extended version of the ‘common root’.117 This ‘common

116 Winchcombe

and Coventry, ed. Hayward, I, 173–6, 349–53 (discussion); II, 709–16 (text). The Worcester annals in the Cottonian Chronicle are particularly similar to the Annals of Tewkesbury from 1125 to 1199; ibid., I, 175; II, 709. 117 Ibid., I, 175.

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Georgia Henley root’, Hayward argues, was compiled at Worcester cathedral priory by John of Worcester ‘in tandem’ with the CC and the Chronicula.118 The Worcester annals in the Cottonian Chronicle present something of the character of this common root. A closer look reveals that it typically presents information from CC in condensed, streamlined form, with some words and phrases simplified. To take a representative example, CC states, for 1050: ‘Edsius, Dorubernensis archiepiscopus, obiit, cui Rothbertus, monachus Gemmeticensis, Lundoniensis episcopus, genere Nortmannus, successit’ (‘Eadsige, archbishop of Canterbury, died and Robert, monk of Jumièges, bishop of London and a Norman by birth, succeeded him’); the Worcester annal in the Cottonian Chronicle shortens this to ‘Edsius Dorobern’ archiepiscopus obiit, cui Robertus Normannus successit’ (‘Eadsige, archbishop of Canterbury, died, and Robert the Norman succeeded him’).119 Similarly, for 1079, CC states: Venerandus uir Rotbertus, qui per ministerium reuerentissimi Wigornensis episcopi Wlstani gradum presbiteratus suscepit, a Landfranco arcipresule Dorubernie, ad Herefordensem ecclesiam, .iiii. kal. Ianuarii, die dominica, episcopus ordinatur Cantuuarie. The reverend Robert, who had been ordained priest by the most reverend Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester, was consecrated bishop of Hereford by Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, on Sunday, 29 December, at Canterbury.

The corresponding Worcester annal in the Cottonian Chronicle condenses this language to ‘Robertus ad Hereford’ ecclesiam a Lanfranco Dorobern’ archiepiscopo consecratur’ (‘Robert was consecrated bishop of Hereford by Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury’).120 In other words, where CC goes into considerable detail about a particular event, the common root sums up the event in a sentence or two, and does not include the ferial dating, nor, at times, the days of the week or dates that CC is careful to include. Additionally, it often copies only the first item or two from the lengthy CC entry. Very occasionally the Worcester annals in the Cottonian Chronicle include items that are not mentioned by CC. These include the death of Robert, king of France, in 1031 (in the common root); Cnut’s journey to Rome in 1027 (also in the Annals of Worcester); the foundation of the monastery of Worcester in 1084 (also in the Annals of Worcester); the death of Pope Gregory VII (Hildebrand) in 1085 (in the common root); the death of Wulfstan bishop of Worcester in 1095; and the death of the Holy Roman Emperor Lothar III

118 Ibid.,

I, 64. Chron. s.a. 1050 (ed. Darlington and McGurk, trans. Bray and McGurk, II, 552–3); Winchcombe and Coventry, ed. and trans. Hayward, II, 710. 120 JW, Chron. s.a. 1079 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 32–3); Winchcombe and Coventry, ed. and trans. Hayward, II, 711. 119 JW,

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Networks of Chronicle Writing in Western Britain and the consecration of Theobald as archbishop of Canterbury in 1137. The Worcester annals in the Cottonian Chronicle contain more scribal errors than the equivalent entries in the Annals of Worcester.121 The scribe has also left spaces for personal and place names in 1058, possibly because they could not read the exemplar or the names are missing from the exemplar because the rubrication was not done.122 These indicate a step in the textual history of the common root further away than the extant copy of the Annals of Worcester. Several broad conclusions can be drawn from the Cottonian Chronicle’s composite state. Though BL, Cotton MS Domitian A. i was written at St Davids, from annals kept there since at least the late tenth century, the Worcester leaves indicate that the St Davids chroniclers in the late thirteenth century were not outside the sphere of influence of Anglo-Norman and English textual culture or politics; rather, they were interested in what was going on in England, given the influence of Anglo-Norman culture and politics in South Wales from the late eleventh century onwards. It is tempting to attribute this interest in the 1280s to events having to do with the Edwardian conquest of Wales in 1282, but this conquest was not as significant in southwest Wales as it was in Gwynedd. This chronicle’s combination of English and Welsh sources demonstrates that it is impossible to evaluate the contents, circulation and impact of the Latin chronicles of medieval Wales without also considering the role of networks of communication between ecclesiastical scriptoria in England, the Welsh Marches and South Wales, particularly St Davids and Strata Florida. Ecclesiastical centres in the Welsh Marches and Anglo-Norman centres in the conquest lordships of South Wales fed English historical texts into Wales, and vice versa, and the historical texts produced in Wales were indelibly touched by this mutual contact. In particular, networks of communication between Anglo-Norman houses in the Marcher lordships and native houses in pura Wallia were driven by desire for historical materials in Latin, especially in South Wales.123 In contrast to North Wales (which enjoyed a greater degree of independence from England and therefore may have had more of an imperative to write in Welsh), in South Wales it was precisely the Latinity of materials from houses in Wales such as Whitland, Strata Florida and Neath, and houses further afield in Tewkesbury and Worcester, that made these materials more readily mobile. Finally, the umbrella title Annales Cambriae put into use by John Williams ab Ithel’s Rolls Series edition, which 121 For

example, in the entry for 1105, where John of Worcester and the Annals of Worcester report ‘Baius, cum ecclesia sancte Marie, que intus erat, combussit’ (‘[Henry] set fire to Bayeux with the church of St Mary therein’), the Worcester additions state, ‘Baiocum cum matre ecclesia combussit’, with cum repeated and matre an error for marie. For texts, see JW, Chron. s.a. 1105 (ed. and trans. McGurk, III, 106–7); Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, IV, 374; Winchcombe and Coventry, ed. and trans. Hayward, II, 712. See also 1093, 1115, 1133. 122 I am grateful to David Woodman for suggesting this possibility. 123 Beverley Smith, ‘Historical Writing’, p. 77.

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Georgia Henley treated the three texts as one, is a misnomer for several reasons. The title not only suggests that some kind of national project was underway to create annals of all of Wales, it also ignores the texts’ hybrid nature, especially for the entries covering the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which reflect composite interest in Welsh, English and Marcher events and represent skilful amalgamations of a variety of sources that view history on a broad scale.

Conclusion This chapter has focused on textual connections between Worcester and South Wales in both directions. I have discussed CC’s use of Welsh sources and the possibility that CC’s compilers felt sympathy for the Welsh experience and may have decided to highlight Welsh events in the chronicle because they saw strong parallels between the Welsh and the English experiences with the Normans. I have evaluated potential written sources for these events while also allowing for the possibility that some of CC’s sources may have been oral. Additionally, the case of the Annals of Worcester, written in the thirteenth century, indicates sustained contact between Worcester and South Wales, with the Annals of Worcester interested in politics to the same degree as the Annals of Margam due to their relevance and proximity. Worcester’s position on a well-travelled coastal roadway that stretched to Chepstow and West Wales probably accounts for these textual and oral connections. Finally, I have discussed transmission in the opposite direction with the case of the Welsh Latin Cottonian Chronicle’s inclusion of annals containing events of Worcester interest, which indicates sustained interest on the part of Welsh chroniclers in English events dating back at least to the tenth century. Further study of contacts between monasteries in the West Midlands, the Welsh Marches, the conquest lordships of Wales and independent Wales will shed further light on the networks of contact that sustained chronicle writing in the twelfth century and long after.

270

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Index of Manuscripts Additional Charter 19790  73 n. 24, 74 n. 27, 81 n. 37 Additional Charter 19791  73 n. 24 Additional Charter 19792  73 n. 24, 75 n. 27 Additional Charter 19793  73 n. 24 Additional Charter 19794  73 n. 24 Additional Charter 19795  73 n. 24, 75 n. 27 Additional Charter 19796  73 n. 24 Additional Charter 19797  73 n. 24 Additional Charter 19798  74 n. 24 Additional Charter 19799  74 n. 24 Additional Charter 19800  74 n. 24 Additional Charter 19801  74 n. 24 Additional Charter 19802  74 n. 24 Additional MS 46204  4 n. 16, 65 Cotton Charter VIII. 37  74 n. 24 Cotton MS Augustus ii. 3  74 n. 24 Cotton MS Augustus ii. 9  74 n. 27 Cotton MS Augustus ii. 30  74 n. 27, 75–7, 83 Cotton MS Caligula A. x  254, 257 n. 85 Cotton MS Cleopatra A. vii  257 Cotton MS Cleopatra B. v, part i  229, 230 Cotton MS Domitian A. i  228, 259 n. 95, 260, 269 Cotton MS Domitian A. viii  183–4, 189–90, 195 Cotton MS Domitian A. xiii  260 Cotton MS Nero C. v  17, 154, 156, 159–60, 162, 163, 165, 167, 168, 169, 186–7, 189, 198 Cotton MS Nero E. i, part 1  46–7, 49, 52 n. 84, 74, n. 27, 184 Cotton MS Nero E. i, part 2  4 n. 16, 5 n. 21, 46–7, 49, 52 n. 84, 65, 74 n. 27, 75, 86, 89, 90–1, 123 n. 12 Cotton MS Otho C. i, vol. 2  52, 53, 54, 58 Cotton MS Tiberius A. xiii  2 n. 7, 3 n. 10, 19 n. 5, 41 n. 40, 42 n. 42, 46 n. 59, 64, 65, 66 n. 10, 67–8, 71 n. 16, 74, 75, 85, 87–8, 90, 92, 115–20, 123 n. 9, 181

Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales MS 7006D  229 MS Peniarth 18  230, 232 n. 24 MS Peniarth 20  229, 230, 232, 233–4, 235, 237, 238–9, 240, 242–3, 248 n. 54 Avranches, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 159  181, 189 Cambridge, Clare College MS 30, part i  52 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 9  46, 47 n. 65, 51 n. 80, 184 MS 92  19, 20, 158, 194 MS 139  192 MS 178  59 MS 198  59 MS 322  52 MS 341  191 MS 367  196 n. 85 MS 391  51 n. 80 MS 452  177, 191 Cambridge, St John’s College MS I. 15  166, 169 Cambridge, Trinity College MS O.7.41  162 n. 34, 163, 166, 167 n. 48, 168, 169 MS R. 5. 36  191 Cambridge, University Library MS Ff. 1. 27  166 MS Kk. 3. 18  184, 196 MS Kk. 4. 6  206 MS Kk. 5. 32  163 Dublin, Trinity College MS 502  19–20, 158, 193–4 MS 503  14, 19, 21, 22, 158, 195, 201–2 Durham, Cathedral Library MS B. iv. 24  197 n. 92 MS Hunter 100  163, 165, 166, 169, 192 Evesham, Almonry Museum s. n.  19–20, 193 Exeter, Cathedral Library MS 3514  260 Glasgow, University Library MS Hunter 85  163, 166, 168, 169 London, BL Additional Charter 19788  73 n. 24 Additional Charter 19789  73 n. 24, 74 n. 27

295

Index of Manuscripts London, BL (continued) Cotton MS Tiberius B. i  60 n. 115 Cotton MS Tiberius B. iv  183, 196 Cotton MS Tiberius E. iv  159, 166, 168, 169, 194 Cotton MS Titus A. ix  191 Cotton MS Vespasian D. xix  163, 172 n. 67 Cotton MS Vespasian E. iv  254, 256 n. 75, 256 n. 76 Cotton MS Vitellius C. viii  25 n. 96, 162 Cotton MS Vitellius C. ix  63 n. 4, 75, 81 n. 36 Harley Charter 83 A. 1  74 n. 24 Harley Charter 83 A. 2  74 n. 24 Harley Charter 83 A. 3  74 n. 24 MS Egerton 3088  166, 168 MS Egerton 3314  173 n. 72 MS Harley 2253  53 n. 88 MS Harley 3642  191 MS Harley 3775  159, 194 MS Harley 3859  259 MS Harley 4660  63–4 n. 4 MS Royal 5 B. iii  181 MS Royal 6 C. viii  25 n. 96 London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 42  19–20, 158, 194 MS 585  64 n. 4 London, TNA MS E 164/1  228, 259 n. 95 Oxford, Bodl. Lib. MS Auct. F. 1. 9  28, 166, 167, 168, 169, 172 MS Auct. F. 3. 14  163, 165, 166, 167 n. 48 MS Auct. F. 5. 19  166, 167 n. 48

MS Bodley 297  19, 20, 21, 158, 159, 163 n. 38, 192–3, 211–12 MS Digby 56  166, 167 n. 48 MS Dugdale 12  63 n. 4 MS Hatton 76  52 MS Hatton 113  45, 51 n. 80, 59, 254 MS Hatton 114  59 MS Hatton 115  59 MS Hatton 116  59 MS Laud Misc. 636  181 MS Rawlinson B 445  71 n. 16 MS Tanner 3  52, 196 n. 86, 197 Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 157  9, 11, 14–22, 24, 25, 26, 28, 33, 43, 56, 64 n. 4, 74, 121, 122, 123, 155, 156–7, 158, 159, 163, 165, 168, 174–5, 176–7, 181, 186, 190, 192–3, 194, 196, 198, 200, 203, 206, 211–12 Oxford, Jesus College MS 111  229 Oxford, Magdalen College MS 172  177, 191 Paris, BnF MS Lat. 5506 A  176, 177 MS Lat. 5506 B  176 MS Lat. 10062  197 n. 91 MS Lat. 10913  176 Rome, Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana MS Pal. lat. 830  17 n. 66, 152, 186–7, 189 St Petersburg, National Library of Russia MS Lat. O. v. IV. 1  165 n. 41, 166, 167 n. 48 Worcester, Cathedral Library MS Q. 28  196, 197 Muniments, B. 1598  73 n. 24

296

General Index Aachen 153 Abbey Dore (Herefordshire)  254 Abbo of Fleury Passio Sancti Eadmundi  27 Abingdon (Oxfordshire)  19, 158, 194, 199, 251 Ablington (Gloucestershire)  144 Adelard Vita Sancti Dunstani  27 Adelard of Bath  28, 168 Ælfgar, earl  105, 116–19 Ælfred, comes 135 Æflred, dux 138 Æflric 60 Catholic Homilies  51 n. 82, 59 Lives of the Saints  51, 59 Ælfric Puttoc, bishop of Worcester and archbishop of York  72 n. 18 Ælfstan, prior of Worcester  105, 116–17, 119–20 Æthelbald, king of the Mercians  125, 127, 131, 132, 133, 137, 138, 143 n. 71 Æthelburh, abbess  135, 138 n. 52 Æthelflæd, lady of the Mercians  12, 146 Æthelmund, princeps 140 Æthelred, lord of the Mercians  145, 146, 147 Æthelred I, king of Mercia  123–4, 125, 128, 129, 130 Æthelred Unræd, king of England  2, 26, 92, 125 n. 19, 266 Æthelric, comes  132 n. 31 Æthelric, monk of Worcester  29 n. 118 Æthelric, son of Æthelmund  140 Æthelstan, king of England  22 n. 87, 124, 147 Æthelwig, abbot of Evesham  103 Æthelwine, bishop of Lindsey  129 Æthelwulf, dux 146 Ætla, bishop of Dorchester  129 Aidan, bishop of Lindisfarne  15 Aki, thegn  148 Aldred/Ealdred, sub-king/dux of the Hwicce  79, 90–1, 96, 134, 136 Aldwin, monk of Worcester  204–5 Alexander III (Roland), pope  197 Alfred, ætheling  204, 213 n. 54

Alfred, king of the Anglo-Saxons  12, 127, 145, 146, 147 Alhhun, bishop of Worcester  124, 143, 144, 145 al-Khwārizmī  28, 168, 172 Alstone (Gloucestershire)  95, 148 n. 88 Alta 138–9 Alvechurch (Worcestershire)  136, 147 Alveston (Warwickshire)  97, 106–8, 109 n. 56, 116–17, 118, 120, 148, 149 Anglesey  240, 241, 242, 257 n. 82, 258 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle  11–12, 13–14, 19, 22, 27, 33 n. 8, 43, 44, 45, 60 n. 115, 181, 183, 189, 195, 196, 198, 200, 204, 213–14, 215, 216, 231, 232, 235 n. 28, 237, 244, 250, 251 verses in  203–4, 215–16 Annales Lindisfarnenses et Dunhelmenses see Symeon of Durham, Annales Lindisfarnenses et Dunhelmenses Arberth 248 Arundel  244–5, 246, 247 Asser 19 Vita Ælfredi 27 Aston (Gloucestershire)  116–17, 118, 120, 133 Aston (in Stoke Prior, Worcestershire) 134 Augustine, bishop of Canterbury  157 Aust (Gloucestershire)  130, 131, 132, 138, 147 Avon (river)  87, 88, 89, 137 B

Vita Sancti Dunstani 27 Balthhun, abbot  139 n. 54, 141, 142 n. 68 Bardney (Lincolnshire) monastery 129 Barnsley (Gloucestershire)  141, 144 Bath  90, 91, 137 Batsford (Gloucestershire)  132 Baudri, abbot of Bourgueil  205–6 Beaumaris castle  258 Bec, abbey  181, 189 Beckford (Worcestershire)  136, 137

297

General Index Bede  19, 45, 53, 72 n. 173, 151, 157, 158, 159 De locis sanctis 15 Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum  27, 51, 74, 75, 124, 197 Old English translation of his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum 184, 196 Benedict IX, pope  43 Benedictine reform movement  1, 7, 31, 33–4, 35, 44, 46, 49, 108, 222 Bentley (Worcestershire)  144 Beonna, comes 138 Berhtwulf, king of the Mercians  95, 106, 125, 142, 143 Berkeley (Gloucestershire) minster 145 Bernard, bishop of St Davids  249, 251 Bernard de Neufmarché  232 Bernard of Clairvaux  203 Bernicia 16 Bishops Cleeve (Gloucestershire)  134 n. 40, 136 Blackwell (Worcestershire)  96, 99, 104–5, 110, 116, 117, 118, 119, 147, 148 Bleddyn ap Cynfyn  245, 247 Blockley (Gloucestershire)  139, 144 Bonedd y Saint 230 Bosel, bishop of Worcester  123, 129, 130 Bradley Green (Worcestershire)  132 Brecon  56 n. 101, 255 Bredon (Worcestershire)  86, 124, 131, 137, 138, 144 n. 72, 148 minster  83, 84, 85, 86, 126, 131, 132 n. 30, 134, 136, 143–4 Bredons Norton (Worcestershire)  136 Bridgnorth  244, 245 n. 48 Brihtheah, bishop of Worcester  107 n. 49 Bromsgrove (Worcestershire)  140 Brut y Brenhinedd 230 Brycheiniog  232, 234 Bucga 131 Burgred, king of the Mercians  105, 125, 144, 145 n. 77 Bury St Edmunds  19, 20, 21, 158, 159, 193–4, 199, 211–12 Byrhtferth of Ramsey  13, 60 Vita Sancti Ecgwini  49, 50, 51 Vita Sancti Oswaldi  13, 27, 44 n. 51, 48, 49, 50, 51, 108–9, 184

Cambrai 175 Canterbury  21, 177, 184, 195, 198–9, 251, 266, 268 Christ Church  172 St Augustine’s  259 Carmarthen 248 Carreghofa  231 n. 17, 244, 251 Cenred  231 n. 17, 240, 241 Cenwald/Cenwold, bishop of Worcester  14 n. 50, 147 Ceolfrith, abbot  135 Ceolwulf I, king of the Mercians  125, 142 Ceolwulf II, king of the Mercians  145 Ceredigion  229 n. 9, 236, 256, 258 Chad, abbot and bishop  15 Chaddesley Corbett (Worcestershire)  126 n. 21, 139 Chepstow  252, 270 Chronica Chronicarum  9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19–21, 22, 24, 25–9, 32, 33, 42–6, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 54, 55–60, 74, 93, 94 n. 8, 98, 100, 102, 103, 108, 121, 156, 157 n. 25, 158, 159, 162, 163 n. 38, 168, 169, 170, 174–7, 181–6, 189–94, 195, 197, 198, 200–2, 203, 204, 207, 210, 211–12, 213–14, 215, 219, 221, 222 n. 77, 224–5, 227, 254, 255, 259, 261, 266, 268, 269 n. 121, 270 see also Florence of Worcester and John of Worcester interest in Welsh events  26, 44, 45, 231–51 Welsh sources  44 n. 50, 228–31, 253 Chronicle of Melrose  244, 253 n. 67 Clement III (Wibert), antipope  163 Cnut, king of England  2, 137 n. 47, 140 n. 60, 210, 266, 268 Coenwulf, king of the Mercians  106, 125, 139, 140, 144 n. 72, 146 Cofton Hackett (Worcestershire)  76, 83, 84, 85, 86, 136 Cognacio Brychan 261–2 Coleman  36, 100, 102, 109, 112–13, 201, 203 n. 15 Old English Life of Wulfstan  57, 59, 93, 94–5, 99–103, 107, 109, 112–13, 212 n. 50, 219, 220 Colesborne (Gloucestershire)  141, 142 Cookley (Worcestershire)  97, 116, 117, 118, 120, 148, 149

298

General Index Cotton-Corpus Legendary  33, 36, 46–52, 53, 54, 55, 184, 191 Coventry 19 abbey  158, 159, 193–4, 199 Chronicle  24, 267 Cronica de Anglia  see John of Worcester, works attributed to his atelier, Cronica de Anglia Crowland Chronicle  170 Cuthwine, bishop  129 Cuthwulf, thegn  146 Cynan ap Maredudd  258 Cyneberht, comes 135 Cyneburg  132 n. 33 Cynethryth, queen of the Mercians  84, 85, 86, 87 Cynewulf, king of the West Saxons  137 Dafydd ap Llywelyn  255 David fitz Gerald  261, 262 Daylesford (Gloucestershire)  142, 145 n. 78 Deheubarth  233, 234, 248, 256 Deira  16, 24 Deneberht, bishop of Worcester  139, 140, 141, 142, 144 n. 72 Dionysius Exiguus  16, 151, 153, 157, 159, 163, 171, 172 Domesday Survey  98, 136 n. 44, 154, 167, 168, 216 n. 62 Dorn (Gloucestershire)  139 Doughton (Gloucestershire)  137 Dowdeswell (Gloucestershire)  141 Droitwich (Worcestershire)  130, 131 n. 27 Dublin 205 Duddonus, thegn  133 n. 35 Dunhampstead (Worcestershire)  97, 116, 117, 118, 120, 126 n. 21, 146 Dunne, nun  131 Dunstan, bishop of Worcester and archbishop of Canterbury  1, 27 Durham  20, 21, 162–3, 165, 166, 169, 183, 192, 197, 198 Liber Vitae  20 n. 78, 34–5, 112 n. 67 Dyfed  236, 248 Eadmer of Canterbury  82, 192 Historia Novorum  19, 21, 27, 177, 190, 191 Miracula Sancti Oswaldi  47 n. 65 visit to Worcester  177, 190–1

Vita Sancti Dunstani  55 n. 98 Vita Sancti Oswaldi  47 n. 65, 55 n. 98, 57 n. 104 Eadred, king of England  124 n. 15 Eadwig, king of England126, 147 Ealdred, bishop of Worcester and archbishop of York  2, 8, 31, 34, 50, 67 n. 11, 72 n. 18, 92, 95–8, 99, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107, 114, 115–16, 117, 118, 119, 120, 126, 136 n. 44, 140 n. 60, 143 n. 70, 148, 214 n. 58 Ealdwulf, bishop of Worcester and archbishop of York  4, 72 n. 18 Ealhferth 140 Eanberht, sub-king of the Hwicce  134 Eanswith, matron  141, 142, 145 n. 77 Eanswith, queen  145 Eanwulf, comes  131, 132 n. 30, 132 n. 31, 136 Eardiston (Worcestershire)  139 Eared 146 Eaton (Oxfordshire)  144 Ecgfrith, king of the Mercians  90–1 Ecgwine, bishop of Worcester  49, 50, 51, 131, 132 Edgar, king of England  1, 68, 124 n. 15, 125, 210 Edward I, king of England  8 n. 31, 252, 253 n. 67, 256, 258 Edward the Confessor, king of England  16, 24, 148, 202, 204, 206, 251 poem about his death  202, 203, 204, 207, 208–16, 224, 225 Edward the Elder, king of the AngloSaxons  124 n. 15 Eisey (Wiltshire)  137, 144 Encomium Emmae Reginae  213 n. 54 Eusebius  159, 196, 197 Evenlode (Gloucestershire)  136 Évreux 34 Evesham  49, 107 n. 49, 133 n. 35, 134 n. 40, 194, 198 Feckenham (Worcestershire)  140 Felix Vita Sancti Guthlaci  48–9, 51, 184 Fladbury (Worcestershire)  130, 131 n. 27, 140 n. 58 Flanders  31, 36, 47 Fleury  34, 50, 109

299

General Index Florence of Worcester  20 n. 78, 29, 122, 190, 201, 202 n. 11, 203 n. 15 authorship of Chronica Chronicarum  13 n. 44, 14, 25–6,156–7, 174, 177, 200–1 Frithewald, monk  130 Geoffrey of Monmouth  229, 230, 261 n. 102 Gerald of Wales  229 n. 7, 244 n. 39, 261–2 Gervase of Canterbury  171 Gilbert Foliot, abbot of Gloucester  24 Gloucester  22, 24, 195, 251 St Peter’s Abbey  158–9, 199, 248, 252–3 Godfrey, abbot of Winchcombe  26 Godgifu/Godiva  96, 104–5, 110, 116, 117, 118, 119, 147 Godwine, earl  210, 211 n. 43, 213 n. 55 Godwine, thegn  148 Great Malvern, priory  169, 196 Gregory I, pope  52, 54 Dialogues  33, 36, 52–7 Old English translation of his Dialogues  33, 52–5 Gregory VII (Hildebrand), pope  163, 268 Grimbald, royal physician  26, 56 n. 101 Grimley (Worcestershire)  97, 106, 116, 117, 118, 120 Gruffudd ap Llywelyn  45, 251, 254 Gruffudd ap Rhys  231 n. 16, 248, 249–50 Gutun Owain  229 Gwynedd  236, 237 n. 31, 243, 258, 269 Hallow (Worcestershire)  64 n. 4, 139 Hampnett (Gloucestershire)  95, 96, 115–16, 148 Hampton Lucy (Warwickshire)  137, 138 Hanbury (Worcestershire)  135, 142 Hariulf de Saint-Riquier  203 Harold, king of England  24, 202, 204, 251 poem about his death  207, 208–16, 224, 225 Harvington (Worcestershire)  141, 145 n. 77 Hawkesbury (Gloucestershire)  107 n. 49 Headda, abbot  141

Heahberht, bishop of Worcester  95, 143 Heathored, bishop of Worcester  127, 132 n. 31, 137, 138, 139, 141 Hemming  7, 9, 11, 20 n. 78, 46, 58, 64, 82, 100, 103, 110 Cartulary  2, 3 n. 10, 4, 5, 6–11, 32, 33, 40–2, 52, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60, 65–75, 81, 92–120, 122, 123, 125, 126, 131 n. 28, 132 n. 31, 133 n. 34, 133 n. 37, 134 n. 39, 136 n. 44, 136 n. 45, 137 n. 47, 137 n. 48, 138 n. 49, 138 n. 50, 139 n. 53, 139 n. 56, 140 n. 57, 140 n. 59, 142 n. 64, 143 n. 70, 143 n. 71, 144 n. 73, 147 n. 83, 147 n. 84, 147 n. 86, 148 n. 87, 148 n. 88, 148 n. 89, 175, 181, 219, 225 Henbury (Gloucestershire)  130, 131, 132, 135 n. 42 Henry, monk of Worcester  29 n. 118 Henry I, king of England  3 n. 8, 16, 26, 28, 55, 194, 201, 244–5, 249, 266 Henry II, king of England  216, 266 Henry III, king of England  255 Henry Beaumont  248 Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester  26 n. 100 Henry of Huntingdon  170, 244, 245 n. 48 Hereford  17, 55, 123 n. 13, 153, 154–5, 198 Hermann, archbishop of Cologne  50 Hild, abbess  129 Himbleton (Worcestershire)  126 n. 21, 146 Historia Regum/Historia de regibus Anglorum et Dacorum  see Symeon of Durham, Historia Regum/Historia de regibus Anglorum et Dacorum Hrothwaru, abbess  131, 135 Hugh, earl of Leicester  240, 241, 244 Hugh, earl of Shrewsbury  238, 240, 241, 243, 244 Hugh of Fluery Historia ecclesiastica  20, 22, 25 n. 95, 27, 45, 54 Humberht, comes  144 Hwicce  122, 123, 125, 127, 128, 129 diocese of  123, 128, 129, 145 Hwita, dux 132 Iccomb (Church Iccomb,

300

General Index Gloucestershire)  97, 105, 116, 117, 118, 119, 138 Ireland  243, 248 Kemerton (Worcestershire)  133 n. 36, 142 Kempsey (Worcestershire)  144 n. 72 minster  124, 126, 139, 141, 143 Knighton-on-Teme (Worcestershire)  139 John Cassian Collationes  36, 51 John, king of England  256–8, 266 John of Taxster Chronicle of Bury St Edmunds  260 John of Worcester  2, 13, 15, 19, 20 n. 78, 24, 25–6, 36, 52 n. 84, 55–6, 57, 72–3, 93, 124, 131 n. 27, 155, 156, 157, 165, 174, 175, 177, 193, 194, 199, 201, 203, 206, 207, 212, 220, 224–5, 226, 231 see also Chronica Chronicarum authorship of Chronica Chronicarum 2, 14, 25–6, 32, 42, 157 Chronicula  14–15, 19, 22–4, 24, 25, 46, 158, 162, 184, 195, 196, 201–2, 203, 204, 209, 214, 216, 219, 268 his hand  14, 19, 21–2, 28, 47 n. 65, 64 n. 84, 156, 158, 168, 184, 194, 195, 201, 203, 206 visit to Winchcombe  26, 194, 203 works attributed to his atelier Cronica de Anglia  25, 162 John the Deacon Vita Sancti Nicholai 50–1 Judas Machabeus  207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 225–6 Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury  221, 268 Lantfred Translatio et miracula Sancti Swithuni  49, 51 Lapworth (Warwickshire)  139 Leicester 129 Leo IX, pope  49, 50 Leofric, earl  96, 99, 104–5, 110, 114, 116–19, 147, 196 Liber Wigorniensis  3–6, 64–6, 67 n. 11, 69–81, 93 n. 3, 125, 126, 130 n. 26, 131 n. 27, 131 n. 29, 132 n. 31, 132 n. 33, 133 n. 34, 133 n. 35, 133 n. 37, 135 n. 41, 135 n. 42, 135 n. 43, 136 n. 44,

136 n. 45, 136 n. 46, 137 n. 48, 138 n. 49, 138 n. 51, 139 n. 54, 139 n. 55, 139 n. 56, 140 n. 59, 141 n. 62, 141 n. 63, 142 n. 66, 142 n. 67, 143 n. 69, 143 n. 71, 144 n. 73, 144 n. 74, 144 n. 75, 145 n. 78, 145 n. 79, 146 n. 80, 146 n. 81, 147 n. 84, 147 n. 85 Libuin 49–50 Miracula Sancti Leonis 49–50 Lichfield Bishopric 129 Lincoln 129 Lindsey  15, 129 Little Washbourne (Gloucestershire)  136, 142 Llandaff  231, 250 contact with Worcester  45, 253–4 Llandovery 248 Llywelyn ab Iorwerth  256–8 London  132, 146, 251 Lothar III, Holy Roman Emperor  268 Lotharingia  31, 36, 47 Loxley (Warwickshire)  95, 115, 116, 126 n. 21, 140 Maelgwyn ap Rhys  258 Madog ap Llywelyn  258 Magnus, king of the Norwegians  240, 241, 242, 243, 244 Magonsæte  123, 129 Mainz  16, 34, 43, 150, 153, 154, 186, 198–9 Malcolm, king of Scotland  233 Malmesbury  21, 163, 165, 177, 198 Margam abbey 254 Annals of  254, 255 n. 72, 270 Marianus Scotus  17, 150, 152, 153 Chronicon  2, 15, 16–17, 19, 29, 36, 43, 45, 48, 93, 150–2, 153–9, 162, 163, 165–7, 169, 170–3, 175, 176, 181, 184–6, 189, 192, 198, 200 Marlcliff (Worcestershire)  126 n. 21, 146, 147 n. 83 Master Cunestabulus  172–3 Matilda, empress  225 Maurice, monk of Worcester  29 n. 118 Mercia  12, 15, 122, 123 Milred, bishop of Worcester  133, 134, 135 Mitton (Worcestershire)  95, 96, 115, 116, 117, 118, 120, 126 n. 21, 143

301

General Index Mont-Saint-Michel  181, 189 see also Robert of Torigni Morgan ap Maredudd  258 Neath, abbey  228, 261 n. 101, 269 Nero-Middleton Cartulary/ Wulfstan Cartulary  4–7, 8, 40, 52 n. 84, 65, 66–71, 76–81, 123, 125, 126, 131 n. 27, 132 n. 31, 132 n. 33, 135 n. 41, 135 n. 42, 136 n. 45, 137 n. 47, 139 n. 55, 140 n. 59, 142 n. 67, 143 n. 69, 144 n. 74, 146 n. 81, 147 n. 85 Nicholas, prior of Worcester  201 Nicholas II, pope  95 n. 11 Nicholas Trevet  170 Norman Annals  20, 27, 44 n. 50, 45 Norman Conquest  2, 5, 11, 32, 58, 60, 61, 72 n. 20, 92, 107, 108, 112, 114, 222, 234–5, 266 and issues of identity  35, 214–16 Northumbria 15 Northwick (Worcestershire)  105, 116, 117, 119, 120 Notgrove (Gloucestershire)  133 Oda, archbishop of Canterbury  50 Odda of Deerhurst  54 n. 91 Offa, king of the Mercians  76, 77, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 96, 125, 132 n. 30, 132 n. 31, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140 Oftfor, bishop of Worcester  130, 131 Orderic Vitalis  176, 177, 197, 244 his hand  76 Historia ecclesiastica  2, 16 n. 61, 25, 45 n. 57, 155, 156, 174, 175–7, 244, 245 n. 48 visit to Worcester  2, 93, 174, 176 Orosius 198 Osbern Vita Sancti Alphegi 27 Vita Sancti Dunstani  27, 44 n. 51 Osbert of Clare  209 Oshere, sub-king of Hwicce  123–4, 128, 130, 131 Osred, thegn  133 n. 35 Oswald, bishop of Worcester and archbishop of York  1, 7, 33–4, 50, 72, 96, 108–9, 114, 119, 120, 157 foundation of St Mary’s church at Worcester  34, 95–6, 107, 222, 223

his cult at Worcester  49, 51, 107, 109, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 223 leases  3–4, 68, 69, 106, 123 n. 13, 125–6 Oswald, king of Northumbria and saint  51, 59 Overbury (Worcestershire)  133 Oxford 170 Parrett (river), synod on  72, 124 Patrick, bishop of Dublin  204–5 Paulinus, bishop of York  15 Penda, king of the Mercians  8, 123 Peterborough  19, 107 n. 49, 158, 199 Phepson (Worcestershire)  147 Poulton (Wiltshire)  144 Powys  245–6, 248 n. 50, 253 n. 67 Pyrton (Oxfordshire)  133 Radnor 255 Ramsey, abbey  13, 34, 108 Ravenshill (Worcestershire)  139 Rednal (Worcestershire)  76, 83, 136 Reims, see  47 Rhys ap Maredudd  256 Rhys ap Tewdwr, king of Deheubarth  231 n. 16, 232, 233, 234, 248 Richard I, king of England  44 n. 50, 171, 266 Richard of Devizes  260 Rievaulx, abbey  25, 162 Ripple (Worcestershire)  126, 130, 136, 137, 142, 144, 145 n. 76 Robert, bishop of Hereford  16–17, 94 n. 8, 153–4, 155, 186, 222, 223–4 Excerptio de Chronica Mariani 17, 165–9, 186 Robert, king of France  268 Robert de Bellême  231 n. 15, 244–5, 246–7 Robert of Jumièges, bishop of London and archbishop of Canterbury  268 Robert of Leicester  170 Robert of Torigni, monk of Bec, abbot of Mont-Saint-Michel  181, 189, 191 Roger, abbot  176 Roger, bishop of Worcester  197 Roger of Howden  244 Roger of Wendover  254 Rome  45, 49–50, 54, 209, 229 n. 7, 251, 268

302

General Index Saint-Évroult  174, 176, 177, 197, 198 Salmonsbury (Gloucestershire)  133 Salomon, monk of Christ Church, Canterbury 172–3 Samson, bishop of Worcester  2, 9, 11, 29, 93, 109–10, 113, 121, 123, 148, 149 Saxwulf/Seaxwulf, bishop  123, 128, 129 Scottarit see Shottery Sedgeberrow (Worcestershire)  95, 96, 115, 116, 126 n. 21, 136 Severn (river)  41, 42, 138, 139, 251, 252 n. 64 Shipston-on-Stour (Warwickshire)  134 Shottery (Warwickshire)  87, 88, 89 Shrewsbury  238, 244, 247 Sigebert of Gembloux  175, 181, 203 Simon, bishop of Worcester  2, 11, 251 Simon de Montfort  255–6 Snowdonia  255 n. 74, 257 n. 83, 258 Spetchley (Worcestershire)  139 St Davids, cathedral  125 n. 19, 228, 231, 233, 259, 260, 261–2, 269 Stephen, king of England  26, 207, 225 Stoke Bishop (Gloucestershire)  140, 145 Stoulton (Worcestershire)  142 Stour in Ismere (Worcestershire)  135, 137, 138 Stour (river)  140 Strata Florida  228, 229 n. 7, 229 n. 9, 256, 257 n. 84, 258, 261 n. 101, 269 Stratford (Warwickshire)  126, 137, 138, 142, 143 Symeon, monk of Worcester  29 Symeon of Durham  192, 194, 244 n. 39 Annales Lindisfarnenses et Dunhelmenses 163 Historia Regum/Historia de regibus Anglorum et Dacorum  20, 192, 162–3, 169 n. 58, 192 Libellus de exordio  20 Tapenhall (Worcestershire)  148, 149 Tatfrith  123, 129, 130 Teddington (Gloucestershire)  95, 96, 115, 135, 148 Tetbury (Gloucestershire)  136, 137 Tewkesbury (Gloucestershire) abbey  251, 258, 269 Annals of  255 n. 72, 255 n. 73, 257–8, 267 Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury 269

Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury  123, 124, 128, 129–30 Theulf, bishop of Worcester  2, 11 Thomas, archbishop of York  73, 124 Thomas, prior of Worcester  29, 105, 116, 117, 119, 120, 201, 203 n. 15 Tickhill  244, 247 Tilhere, bishop of Worcester  136 Tollandine (Worcestershire)  139 Tostig, earl  211 Tredington (Warwickshire)  135 Tunthryth 146 Twyning (Gloucestershire)  140 minster  126, 135, 138, 139 n. 55 Uhtred, monk of Worcester  26 Uhtred, sub-king of the Hwicce  79, 90–1, 134 Upton in Blockley (Worcestershire)  146 Upton on Severn (Worcestershire)  146 Utel, bishop of Hereford  133 n. 35 Valle Crucis, abbey  229 Vita Ædwardi regis  209–12 Vitalis, abbot of Savigny  29, 206 Vitas Patrum  36, 53, 59 Wærferth, bishop of Worcester  12, 127, 145, 146, 147 n. 83 Walcher of Malvern  172 De Dracone  28, 168 De lunationibus  168–9 Wales  227, 237, 238, 239, 240, 243, 245, 248, 249 n. 55, 252, 253, 254, 255, 257, 258, 259, 269, 270 presence of Flemings  250 Walter of Coventry  244, 245 n. 48 Warin, prior of Worcester  56 n. 101, 93, 219 Wast Hills (Worcestershire)  76, 84, 85, 86, 136 Waverley Annals of  253 n. 67, 254 Welland 146 Welsh chronicles Annales Cambriae  228, 259, 260–1, 269–70 and see below Breviate Chronicle, Cottonian Chronicle and Harleian Chronicle Breviate Chronicle  228–9, 248, 259–60, 263

303

General Index Welsh chronicles (continued) Brut y Tywysogyon  228, 230, 232, 237, 245 Brenhinedd y Saesson  229–30, 232, 235, 237, 240, 260 Peniarth 20  229–30, 232, 235, 237, 240 Red Book of Hergest  229–30, 232, 235, 237, 240, 248, 249 Cottonian Chronicle  228–9, 248, 259, 260–1, 262 annals related to Worcester  261, 262–70 Cronica de Wallia  235, 260 Harleian Chronicle  259 interest in Worcester  259–70 and networks of communication 252–4 Wermund, bishop of Worcester  136, 137 Wessex  15, 16, 122 Westbury-on-Trym (Gloucestershire)  11, 97, 105, 106, 108–10, 111, 112 n. 67, 113, 114, 117, 119–20, 140, 145, 148, 149, 222 Westminster, abbey  196, 209 Whitland, abbey  228, 260, 261 n. 101, 269 Whittington (Worcestershire)  139 Wiferth 138–9 Wiglaf, king of the Mercians  142, 143 n. 71 Wilfrid, bishop of St Davids  249 Wilfrid, bishop of Worcester  133, 132 William I, duke of Normandy and king of England  2, 3 n. 8, 44 n. 50, 105, 107, 111, 116, 117, 118, 120, 148–9, 154, 167, 208, 209, 214–15, 216 n. 62, 232, 266 William II ‘Rufus’, king of England  3 n. 8, 8, 93 n. 4, 123, 231 n. 15, 231 n. 16, 231 n. 17, 236, 237, 238, 239, 266 William of Malmesbury  51, 54, 60, 72 n. 20, 82, 102, 110, 153, 165, 170–1, 186, 191, 206, 207, 215, 244 De antiquitate Glastonie 27 Gesta Pontificum Anglorum  17, 19, 20, 25, 27, 93, 98, 109–10, 153, 165–6, 177, 190, 191 Gesta Regum Anglorum  19, 20, 27, 44, 170–1, 242, 245 n. 48, 260 visits to Worcester  165, 177

Vita Wulfstani  57, 58, 93, 97, 100–3, 109, 165, 190, 207, 212, 219–24 Winchcombe  26, 162, 166, 194, 199, 203 abbey  34, 159 Chronicle  24, 159, 169 n. 59, 267 Winchester  254, 266 Annals of  235 n. 30, 237 n. 31, 240 n. 37, 260 Old Minster  44 Withington (Gloucestershire)  126, 131, 134 n. 40 minster 135 Wolverley (Worcestershire)  96, 97, 99, 104–5, 110, 116, 117, 118, 119, 126, 132, 147, 148 Woodchester (Gloucestershire)  132, 133 Wootton Wawen (Warwickshire)  132, 143 Worcester  26, 88, 89, 95, 128, 129, 130, 147, 148, 155, 158–9, 162, 165, 169, 171, 174, 176, 177, 184, 190, 192, 193–4, 195, 197, 198, 205, 206, 215, 216, 217, 218, 222, 227, 251, 252–3, 256, 258, 260–1, 263, 266, 268, 269, 270 Annals of  227, 252, 254–9, 266–9, 270 archive  2–6, 61–4, 66–7, 69–74, 77–82, 83, 112, 121, 124 n. 16, 125–6 record-keeping  2–11, 33, 38, 61–82, 94, 113–14, 122, 147 cathedral  34, 45, 59, 61, 62, 71, 107, 109, 180, 196, 217, 218, 222–3 priory  6, 11, 36, 42, 57, 150, 155, 156, 165, 227, 254, 268 church  1–3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 13, 17, 24–5, 27, 95, 96, 121, 122, 123–4, 127, 128, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 144, 145, 146, 147–8, 149, 165, 183, 224, 225, 256 community/familia  4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 14, 28, 29, 30, 31–60, 61–2, 64, 66, 69, 76, 82, 92–100, 104–14, 115–20, 124, 125, 130, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 140, 141, 142, 143–4, 145, 147, 148, 149, 174, 191, 192, 199, 200, 204, 205–6, 207, 212, 213, 216, 218, 220, 222, 256, 257 monastic identity  7, 31, 32, 33–35, 39, 51, 53, 106–10, 114, 216 endowment  6, 7, 9, 11, 42, 63, 73, 76, 92, 94–9, 102 n. 32, 104–10, 113, 114, 115–20, 121, 122, 123, 126, 130–49

304

General Index see  1, 9, 12, 14, 15, 64 n. 4, 72, 121, 122, 123, 124, 127–30, 135, 137, 214 n. 58, 252 use of Old English  5, 29, 31, 32, 33, 36, 51, 52–60, 79, 93, 94–5, 99–102,104, 105, 108, 110–13, 116–17, 123, 196, 219 Wulfhere, king of the Mercians  128 Wulfstan I, bishop of Worcester and archbishop of York  1–2, 3, 64, 66, 72 Wulfstan II, bishop of Worcester  2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 11, 17, 20 n. 78, 24, 31, 34, 45, 51, 54, 58, 60, 64, 66, 92, 94, 96, 97, 98, 99–114, 116–20, 121, 124, 126, 147, 148, 149, 155, 156, 183, 190, 198, 199, 202, 205, 208, 212–13, 268

death  7, 17, 64, 93, 104, 106, 107, 109, 155, 157–8, 186, 222, 268 poem about his death  216–25 promotion of archival and literary activities  2–3, 4, 6, 7, 16 n. 61, 26, 29, 65, 67–73, 79, 80, 93, 94, 121, 125, 126, 174–6, 207 rebuilding of St Mary’s cathedral 222–3 Wychbold (Worcestershire)  126 n. 21, 131 Wynfrith, bishop  130 Yate (Gloucestershire)  136 Ynysforgan 229 York  4 n. 12, 64, 266 see  1, 14 n. 50, 64 n. 5, 72, 73, 95 n. 11

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Writing History in the Middle Ages 1  Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s Historia Normannorum: Tradition, Innovation and Memory, Benjamin Pohl (2015) 2  The Classicist Writings of Thomas Walsingham: ‘Worldly Cares’ at St Albans Abbey in the Fourteenth Century, Sylvia Federico (2016) 3  Medieval Cantors and their Craft: Music, Liturgy and the Shaping of History, 800–1500, edited by Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis, A.B. Kraebel and Margot E. Fassler (2017) 4  Universal Chronicles in the Middle Ages, edited by Michele Campopiano and Henry Bainton (2017) 5  The Construction of Vernacular History in the Anglo-Norman Prose Brut Chronicle: The Manuscript Culture of Late Medieval England, Julia Marvin (2017) 6  Writing History in the Anglo-Norman World: Manuscripts, Makers and Readers, c.1066–c.1250, edited by Laura Cleaver and Andrea Worm (2018) 7  Writing History in the Community of St Cuthbert, c.700–1130: From Bede to Symeon of Durham, Charles C. Rozier (2020) 8  Lost Artefacts from Medieval England and France: Representation, Reimagination, Recovery, edited by Laura Cleaver and Kathryn Gerry (2022)