Buckfast

Buckfast abbey was founded by Ealdorman Æthelweard, probably the son-in-law of Ealdorman Æthelmær ‘the Fat’ (son of Ealdorman Æthelweard of the western provinces); the foundation was confirmed in 1018, by charter of King Cnut.  It was also in 1018 that Ealdorman Æthelweard gave a (tenth-century) manuscript of Bede’s In Apocalypsin and of St Augustine’s De adulterinis coniugiis (London, Lambeth Palace, MS. 149) to a ‘monastery of St Mary’.  Unfortunately, the name of the abbey in question was obliterated in the inscription which records the donation (138v), presumably in connection with the subsequent removal of the manuscript from one place to another; but one might choose to suppose that it was to Buckfast that the manuscript had been given in the first instance.  Æthelweard was involved in a conspiracy of some kind against King Cnut, and was exiled by the king in 1020 (ASC); nothing is heard of him thereafter.  An abbot Ælfwine ‘on Bucfæsten’ occurs among the witnesses to a (Sherborne) lease issued at a meeting of the shire-court at Exeter in the mid-1040s (S 1474); and the abbey retained a modest endowment in 1066 and 1086 (GDB 103v-104r).  King Stephen granted the ‘ecclesia de Bucfesten’ to the abbot of Savigny in 1136 (Regesta iii. 800), so that it could be re-founded as a Cistercian abbey.  It was claimed in the 1270s that the abbot of Buckfast held the manor of Zeal Monachorum, Devon, ‘in perpetuam elemosinam de dono regis Cnud’ (Rot. Hund. i. 75 (no. 25)).

<Cf. Bodleian, Bodley 311 (Ker, Catalogue, no. 307): partially erased inscription at the top of 1r, in Square minuscule, apparently recording presentation of the book to a church of St Mary.>

Fragments of an early-fourteenth-century cartulary of Buckfast abbey, now in Buckfast Abbey Library (Davis 85), were discovered among a quantity of waste parchment and paper, bought c. 1890 by Mr James Pearse of Exeter; see Hingeston-Randolph, Register of John de Grandisson, iii. 1563 and 1565-1610.  The fragments are from ‘Tercia Pars’ of the cartulary; and a foliation reveals that the missing ‘Prima Pars’ and ‘Secunda Pars’ occupied fols. 1-58.  The loss of the first two sections of the cartulary, and of substantial parts of the third, is much to be regretted; for it is apparent that a number of Anglo-Saxon charters were preserved in the abbey’s archives, and copied in its cartulary. 

Following the surrender of the abbey, in 1539, some of its estates (and muniments) passed into the hands of Sir William Petre (c. 1505-72), of Devon and Ingatestone Hall, Essex.  An original charter of King Edgar, granting an estate at Sorley in Devon to a thegn called Æthel[her]e (S 704 (BAFacs. no. 6)), which came to light among the muniments of the Petre family at Thorndon Hall, West Horndon, Essex, in 1922, was evidently derived ultimately from the archives of Buckfast abbey; it is now in the Essex Record Office.  An enquiry into Sir William Petre’s rights in Brent Moor, Dartmoor, was held in 1557, and in this connection a copy was made of the report of an earlier enquiry into the abbey’s rights in South-holne Moor, Buckfastleigh Moor, and South Brent (Exeter, Devon Record Office, Petre archive, 123 M/E 1019).  The report of the earlier enquiry, drawn up by one John Fitz in 1446-7, began by citing (though not in extenso) three pre-Conquest charters from the ‘White Register Boke’ of Buckfast abbey: two were charters of King Edgar in favour of persons unnamed, dated ‘957’ and 959 (S (Add.) 1605b-c), and apparently constituted title-deeds for the abbey’s land at South Brent; the third was a charter of Cnut, dated 1018, confirming the foundation of Buckfast abbey ‘at instans of Aylwarde Duke’ (S (Add.) 1605d).  In 1608 the steward for Lord Petre’s estates compiled a book of the customs of the manors of South Brent and Churchstow (BL Add. 37640 (Davis 86)), drawing material for this purpose from ‘the Ledger Book of Buckfaste Abbey’ and from various other sources; the contents of the book are described by Chanter, ‘Extracts from the Leger Book’, but unfortunately do not include anything of relevance to the abbey’s history in the pre-Conquest period.  If the Buckfast cartulary still existed among the muniments of the Petre family in the early seventeenth century, there must be a reasonable chance that the missing parts of it may yet come to light, or that extracts from it are awaiting identification in the papers of antiquaries and others who saw the cartulary in the early modern period.

Charters of Buckfast

Royal diploma.  704.  See also S (Add.) 1605b, 1605c, 1605d.

Select bibliography

Mon Angl. i. 792; Not. Mon. (Devonshire) no. VII; Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) v. 384-7; VCH Devon i. 432-3; MRH, p. 61; HRH, p. 128. 

• J. F. Chanter, ‘Extracts from the Leger Book and other ancient documents of the abbey of Buckfast’, Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association 45 (1913), pp. 152-68;
• F. G. Emmison, Tudor Secretary: Sir William Petre at Court and Home (Chichester, 1970);
• Finberg, ECDC Suppl., pp. 23-5 and 29-30;
• F. C. Hingeston-Randolph, The Register of John de Grandisson, Bishop of Exeter (A.D. 1327-1369), pt iii (London and Exeter, 1899), pp. 1563-1610;
• S. Keynes, ‘Cnut’s Earls’, The Reign of Cnut, King of England, Denmark and Norway, ed. A. R. Rumble (Leicester, 1994), pp. 43-88, at 67-70;
• J. Stéphan, A History of Buckfast Abbey from 1018 to 1968 (Bristol, 1970).

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October 2011