Beverley

Towards the end of his life, John, bishop of Hexham (687-706) and bishop of York (706 - ?714), retired to the monastery which he had founded at Inderauuda (‘In Silua Derorum’, presumably Beverley), and died there in 721; see Bede, HE v. 2-6.  The minster is said to have been destroyed by the Danes in the ninth century; and it was allegedly refounded by King Æthelstan, as a secular college for seven canons.  It emerges from Archbishop Oswald’s memorandum on the York estates (S 1453: Robertson, Charters, no. 54) that Archbishop Oscytel had purchased 3 hides at Bracken from King Edgar, ‘who booked it to him for St John’s’; unfortunately, the charter does not survive.  In the early 1060s King Edward the Confessor issued a writ authorising Ealdred, archbishop of York (1061-9), to draw up a privilegium ‘for the lands that belong to St John’s minster at Beverley’ (S 1067); and in the late 1060s King William the Conqueror authorised Ealdred to do the same (Regesta i. 31a (Farrer, no. 88)), and soon afterwards (it seems) confirmed the privileges which the minster had previously enjoyed (Regesta i. 31 (Farrer, no. 89)).  The Canons of St John’s are said to have adduced a sigillum (presumably a sealed writ) of King Edward and of King William in their dispute with Drogo (see S 1873), but it is not clear whether this refers to an otherwise unrecorded writ of Edward, or to S 1067.  According to the Domesday survey, the Canons of St John’s held their land at Beverley ‘free from the king’s geld’, under the archbishop of York (GDB 304r).

The principal authority for our knowledge of the minster at Beverley is a magnificent volume produced there towards the end of the fourteenth century (Davis 49).  The manuscript belonged in 1586 to William Wray, of Ripon, and was transcribed in BL Harley 560 (itself copied in BL Cotton Otho C. xvi, fols. 65-102).  It was afterwards in the collections of Sir Thomas Phillipps (MS. 23875) and H. L. Bradfer-Lawrence (MS. 3), and was purchased by the British Library in 1981; it is now BL Add. 61901.  For an account of the manuscript, see Morris and Cambridge, ‘Beverley Minster’, Appendix I, pp. 20-1; a list of its contents is provided ibid., Appendix II, pp. 22-7.  The volume begins with a copy of the eleventh-century Life of St John of Beverley written by Folcard of Saint-Bertin at the request of Archbishop Ealdred (see Life of Edward, ed. Barlow, pp. liii-lix).  The Life is followed by a collection of miscellaneous texts pertaining to the minster’s history and privileges, introduced with the rubric ‘Libertates ecclesie sancti Iohannis de Beuerlik cum priuilegiis apostolicis et episcopalibus quas magister Alueredus sacrista eiusdem ecclesie de anglico in latinum transtulit’ (60v).  The first is a (Latin) tract, said to have been compiled by ‘Magister Alueredus’, containing details of the privileges allegedly granted to the minster by King Æthelstan, ‘cognomento niger’, and his successors (60v-69r); printed (from Harley 560) in Sanctuarium Dunelmense et Sanctuarium Beverlacense, [ed. Raine], pp. 97-108.  A text of S 451 (the curious rhyming charter of King Æthelstan, which seems to have been concocted in the early fourteenth century) occurs on 69rv, followed directly by a Latin text of S 1067 (69v-70r), by a Latin text of S 1160 (70r), and thereafter by a series of post-Conquest charters; an Inspeximus charter of Richard II incorporates a vernacular text of S 1067 (87v-88r).  It should be noted that S 1160, a writ of King Edward granting rights to Archbishop Ealdred, was edited and discussed by Harmer (Writs, no. 119) as if it were from the York archive.

<Who compiled the volume?  Check refs. in Mon. Angl.  Æthelstan charter is dated 925; and ref. to his charter dated 938; also ref. to Alveredus, ‘historicus sacrista & thesaurarius Beverlaci’, who wrote a history ‘de rebus Anglicis’, apparently at about the time of the Norman Conquest.  See Gransden i. 212, citing Aluredi Beverlacensis Annales, ed. T. Hearne (Oxford, 1716).>

Charters of Beverley

Edition: Charters of Northern Houses, ed. D. A. Woodman (forthcoming)

Royal diploma.  451.

Writs.  1067; 1160.  See also 1873.

Select bibliography

Mon. Angl. i. 169-72; Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) ii. 127-30; VCH Yorks. iii. 353-9; MRH, p. 421.

• W. Farrer, ed., Early Yorkshire Charters I (Edinburgh, 1914), pp. 85-107;
• Harmer, Writs, pp. 135-8;
• A. F. Leach, Memorials of Beverley Minster, 2 vols., Surtees Society 98 and 108 (London, 1898-1903), i. xiii-xxxiii (on the early history of Beverley), and ii. 280-7 (for S 451);
• R. Morris and E. Cambridge, ‘Beverley Minster before the Early Thirteenth Century’, Medieval Art and Architecture in the East Riding of Yorkshire, ed. C. Wilson, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 9 (1989), pp. 9-32;
• G. Oliver, History and Antiquities of the Town and Minster of Beverley (Beverley, 1829);
• G. Poulson, Beverlac (London, 1829); [J. Raine, ed.], Sanctuarium Dunelmense et Sanctuarium Beverlacense, Surtees Society 5 (London, 1837).

Page maintained by SDK

October 2011