Bath

These notes originated in the early 1990s. See now Charters of Bath and Wells, ed. S. E. Kelly, Anglo-Saxon Charters 13 (Oxford, 2007). 

The monastery at Bath was reputedly founded by Osric, king of the Hwicce, in 675.  It seems at first to have been a double house, under the rule of a Frankish abbess called Berta, but it later became a community of monks alone.  Bath’s position on the river Avon meant that the monastery and its endowments were the focus of attention from Mercians and West Saxons alike: the monks received a grant of land from Cynewulf, king of the West Saxons, in 758 (S 265); soon afterwards the monastery passed into the control of the bishop of Worcester; but in 781 King Offa managed to wrest it from the see, claiming it as part of his own inheritance (S 1257).  William of Malmesbury attributed the foundation of Bath abbey to Offa himself; Offa’s son Ecgfrith issued a charter from a meeting (perhaps a church council) held at the abbey in 796 (S 148); and Bath was still a ‘Mercian’ town in 864 (S 210).  A burh was established at Bath during the reign of King Alfred the Great.  The abbey presently came to enjoy the patronage of King Æthelstan (924-39); it was given soon afterwards by King Edmund to monastic refugees from Saint-Bertin in Flanders; and during the reign of King Eadwig (955-9) the abbey was governed by a (king’s) priest called Wulfgar.  The community was probably reformed in the early 960s, under Abbot Æscwig; though it would appear that Ælfheah (bishop of Winchester 984-1005, and archbishop of Canterbury 1005-12) was also regarded as an abbot at Bath in the 960s and 970s.  When Archbishop Dunstan visited Bath he was entertained by the community (Vita S. Dunstani, ch. 34); and Bath was chosen as a fitting site for the (second) coronation of King Edgar, in 973.  There was a curious multiplicity of ‘abbots’ of Bath in the years immediately before and after the Conquest, which seems to reflect special arrangements made during the abbacy of Wulfwold (see below).  The abbey was given by William Rufus to John de Villula, bishop of Wells, in 1088, whereafter Bath replaced Wells as the episcopal see for Somerset. 

The principal surviving cartulary of Bath abbey is Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 111, pp. 57-132 (Davis 23), written in the mid-twelfth century; for an edition of its contents, see Hunt, Two Chartularies, pt I, pp. 5-72.  The cartulary commences with a charter of King Eadwig granting an estate of 30 hides at Tidenham, in Gloucestershire, to St Peter’s, Bath, and to his priest Wulfgar (S 610); a vernacular survey of the estate occurs further on in the cartulary (S 1555: Robertson, Charters, no. 109), in apparent association with a copy of a document recording the community’s lease of the estate to Archbishop Stigand (S 1426: Robertson, Charters, no. 117).  Tidenham was held by Stigand at the time of the Conquest, passing thereafter into the hands of Earl William fitz Osbern, and then into the hands of the king (GDB 164r); in effect, therefore, the compiler of the cartulary gave pride of place to the title-deed for a major estate which had since been lost.  The Tidenham charter is followed by a series of over twenty pre-Conquest documents pertaining to the abbey’s endowment, arranged in a roughly chronological order.  The series begins with a group of three charters dating from the late seventh century: one is the alleged foundation charter (S 51); the two others (S 1167-8) pertain to an abbey under the rule of an abbess Beorngyth, in the early 680s, and seem to represent an ‘archive’ acquired by Bath in circumstances unknown.  The series continues with a purported charter of King Æthelstan, dated ‘931’ (S 414), and concludes with two documents from the reign of Edward the Confessor (S 1034 and 1427); the charter of King Cynewulf (S 265, dated ‘808’, for 758) is placed among the mid-tenth-century texts.  The majority of the Latin diplomas are direct grants to the monastery itself (S 265, 414, 610, 643, 661, 664, 694, 735, 777, 785, 854, 1034); the six in favour of laymen are title-deeds for lands which subsequently came to form part of the endowment (S 476, 508, 593, 627, 692 and 711).  There seems no reason to doubt that the compiler of the cartulary reproduced his exemplars in good faith; but it is likely that several of the charters cast in favour of the abbey were not authentic in the form in which they lay before him.  It is worth noting that five of the charters in the cartulary have boundary clauses in an ‘irregular’ position, following the witness-list (S 265, 414, 661, 694, 1034).  All five of these charters are among those cast in favour of the abbey; in four cases (S 265, 414, 661, 694) the irregularity may reflect the fact that the exemplars had probably been produced or ‘improved’ at Bath, though in the case of the fifth (King Edward the Confessor’s charter for Abbot Wulfwold (S 1034)) it may be significant that the charter is said to have been drawn up by Bishop Giso of Wells (cf. Keynes, ‘Regenbald’, p. 213, n. 170).  It should also be noted that five charters in the archive, all among those in favour of the abbey, conform to the type known as ‘Dunstan B’ (S 661, 694, 735, 785, 854); of these charters, only S 735 and 785 are likely to be authentic in their received form.  The pre-Conquest documents in the cartulary (CCCC MS. 111, pp. 57-92) are followed by a summary of the lands belonging to the abbey (p. 93), derived from Domesday Book (see DBSom., pp. 385-7), and thereafter by a series of post-Conquest charters from William I to Henry II (CCCC MS. 111, pp. 94-126).  The series begins with two vernacular writs of William I relating to the abbey’s acquisition of an estate at Charlcombe in Somerset (Pelteret, nos. 1 and 30), followed by a vernacular boundary-clause of four hides at Charlcombe, presumably derived from a pre-Conquest diploma (S (Add.) 1569a), and by a cyrographum (in the vernacular) recording the terms on which Charlcombe was leased by the community to William Hosett (not listed by Pelteret); William ‘Hussey’ is duly registered as the abbey’s tenant at Charlcombe in 1086 (GDB 89v).  The final item in the cartulary, as originally conceived, is the text of the important Domesday ‘satellite’ known as ‘Bath A’ (CCCC MS. 111, pp. 128-9), representing an early stage in the processing of the information on the abbey’s estates incorporated in ExonDB and in GDB; for an edition and discussion of this text, see DBSom., pp. 381-5.

<A second copy of S 1034 was added s. xiii on p. 127, in space originally left blank; not listed in S, but ptd Hunt, i. 65-6.>

London, Lincoln’s Inn, MS. Hale 185 (Davis 25), is a register of Bath priory, compiled in the thirteenth century; its contents are calendared by Hunt (pt II), pp. 1-187.  The item calendared as no. 532 in this register is the tract known as Historiola de primordiis episcopatus Somersetensis, which incorporates Bishop Giso’s account of his efforts to restore the endowment of the bishopric of Wells (below, pp. 000-00).  Item 808 (ptd Hunt, pp. 152-3) records how the monks and benefactors of Bath were commemorated, and supplies details in this connection of lands given to the abbey by Kings Æthelstan, Eadwig, Edgar, Æthelred and Cynewulf.  The details differ in certain respects from the information represented by the charters in CCCC MS. 111; it should be noted, for example, that King Edgar is said to have restored certain estates given by King Æthelred, presumably Æthelred I of Wessex (865-71).

The last of the pre-Conquest abbots of Bath was Wulfwold (also abbot of Chertsey), who appears to have been assisted at one time or another by abbots Ælfwig, Sæwold, Wulfward and Ælfsige; he died in 1084.  Ælfwig was the abbot in whose name the estate at Tidenham was leased to Archbishop Stigand (S 1426).  Sæwold and Wulfward are named in Exon Domesday, with Wulfwold, as abbots holding the abbey’s estates in 1066 (ExonDB, 185r-187r).  Of Sæwold it is known that he went to Flanders in the aftermath of the Conquest, and subsequently donated over thirty books to the church of Saint-Vaast, Arras, some of which (including a manuscript containing B.’s Vita S. Dunstani, now Arras, Bibliothèque municipale, 1029) he had evidently liberated from Bath; see Grierson, ‘Les livres de l’abbé Seiwold de Bath’, and Lapidge, ‘Surviving Booklists from Anglo-Saxon England’, pp. 58-62.  Abbot ‘Wulfward’ may, of course, be an error for Wulfwold.  Abbot Ælfsige features prominently in the records entered in the blank spaces and pages of a copy of the West Saxon translation of the Gospels (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 140, + MS. 111, pp. 7-8 and 55-6; see Ker, Catalogue, no. 35), itself written at Bath in the first half of the eleventh century.  The records include a series of manumissions (CCCC MS. 140, 1rv, and CCCC MS. 111, p. 8), ptd Earle, Handbook, pp. 268-71 (and calendared by Pelteret, nos. 73-7 and 79-85, leaving aside three presumed to be pre-Conquest); an agreement of confraternity (c. 1077) between the communities of Evesham, Chertsey, Bath, Pershore, Winchcombe, Gloucester and Worcester (CCCC MS. 111, pp. 55-6), calendared by Pelteret, no. 78; and three lists of relics found at or given to Bath (CCCC MS. 111, p. 7), calendared by Pelteret, nos. 70-2.  Several other records (presumably manumissions) were erased on CCCC MS. 140, 1r and 1v (the erasure on 1v making space for the insertion of an early-twelfth-century agreement of confraternity, calendared by Pelteret, no. 86), and on CCCC MS. 111, p. 8.  Some of the manumissions referring to Abbot Ælfsige may have been entered earlier than the one manumission which refers to Abbot Sæwold (Earle, p. 271, no. 12), itself entered before or at the same time as the two which refer to Abbot Ælfwig (Earle, p. 271, nos. 9 and 10, though the abbot’s name is misprinted as ‘Ælfsige’).  Ælfsige was acting as abbot of Bath in 1077, and did not die until 1087; but we could hardly discount the possibility that Ælfsige had acted in that capacity before the Conquest, and that Sæwold and Ælfwig continued to act in the same capacity for a while thereafter.  Whatever the case, the manumissions usefully complement the evidence of the charters in affording a view of the abbey’s relationship with local society in the second half of the eleventh century.

<NB list of monks of Bath, in 1077 confraternity.  BL Add. 4559: Madox transcript of all material from Corpus mss.>

Charters of Bath

Edition: Charters of Bath and Wells, ed. S. E. Kelly (Oxford, 2007).

Royal diplomas.  51; 265; 414; 476; 508; 593; 610; 627; 643; 661; 664; 692; 694; 711; 735; 777; 785; 854; 1034.

Writ.  1427.

Miscellaneous.  1167; 1168; 1426; 1555.

Will.  1538.

Boundary-clause.  (Add.) 1569a.

Select bibliography

WM, GP, pp. 194-5; Mon. Angl. i. 184-6; Not. Mon. (Somerset), no. V; Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) ii. 256-73; VCH Somerset ii. 69-81; MRH, p. 59; HRH, pp. 27-9.

• P. Davenport, ‘Bath Abbey’, Bath History 2 (1988), pp. 1-26;
• Edwards, Charters of the Early West Saxon Kingdom, pp. 209-27;
• P. Grierson, ‘Les livres de l’abbé Seiwold de Bath’, Revue bénédictine 52 (1940), pp. 96-116;
• Harmer, Writs, pp. 133-5;
• W. Hunt, Two Chartularies of the Priory of St. Peter at Bath, Somerset Record Society 7 (1893);
• S. Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. M. Lapidge and H. Gneuss (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 143-201, at 159-65;
• M. Lapidge, ‘Surviving Booklists from Anglo-Saxon England’, Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. M. Lapidge and H. Gneuss (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 33-89;
• P. Sims-Williams, ‘Continental Influence at Bath Monastery in the Seventh Century’, Anglo-Saxon England 4 (1975), pp. 1-10;
• C. S. Taylor, ‘Bath, Mercian and West Saxon’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 23 (1900), pp. 129-61.

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October 2011