Crowland

Crowland abbey is said to have been founded by Æthelbald, king of Mercia (716-57), in honour of St Guthlac, a Mercian nobleman who had settled there c. 700 and who had given comfort to Æthelbald during his period of exile.  It is the case, however, that there is no suggestion of the existence of a monastery at Crowland at the time when Felix wrote his Life of the saint in the 740s (see Colgrave, Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac, p. 7), and it remains uncertain whether any monastic community was established there in the early Anglo-Saxon period.  The abbey was (re)founded apparently in the early 970s by Thurketel, kinsman of Archbishop Osketel of York and abbot of Bedford (ASC MSS. BC, s.a. 971; Orderic, ed. Chibnall, ii. 340-2).  <Domesday Book (Ca, Hu, Np, Le, Li).  Fire during abbacy of Ingulf (Orderic, ed. Chibnall, ii. 346).  Cult of Waltheof.>

<Guthlac Roll.> Benefactions recorded by Orderic.  The early history of Crowland abbey is presented pictorially in the famous ‘Guthlac Roll’ (BL Harley Roll Y. 6), which was produced in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century; see Morgan, Survey, no. 22, and Age of Chivalry, no. 37.  Information on benefactors; see Memorials of Saint Guthlac, ed. Birch, pp. lii-liii and plate opp. p. 62, and Warner, The Guthlac Roll, pp. 15-16 and Plate XVIII. Hill's portrait of Humfrey Wanley. The history of the Guthlac Roll prior to its appearance in the Harley library is considered obscure (Diary of Wanley, ed. Wright, i. p. lxi). The roll would appear to have belonged in the 1630s to Sir Edward Coke (above, p. 000).

<Gough, 2nd App. pp. 290–8 Guthlac Roll, ref. ‘Cottonian’ collection, Y.6>

It is yet to be established when and under what circumstances the monks of Crowland set about the task of providing themselves with a portfolio of pre-Conquest charters, and what material they might have used for this purpose.  Orderic appears to have seen a version of a charter of King Æthelbald (ed. Chibnall, ii. 338).  Certain of the Crowland charters appear to have existed in single-sheet form in the early seventeenth century.  The first entry in an early-seventeenth-century memorandum headed ‘A Noate of such Evidences as belong to the Towne which was delivered to William Wyche’ (ptd Gough, History and Antiquities of Croyland-Abbey, Appendix, no. LXIV, p. *135) is ‘In the long box, the great charter with Ethelbaldus his charter’, presumably with reference to King Æthelbald’s purported foundation charter for Crowland abbey (S 82, dated 716); there follows a reference to ‘the goulden charters’, kept with other charters in a black box.  King Æthelbald’s charter still existed in its ‘original’ form in the late seventeenth century, when it belonged to ‘a certain gentleman of quality’; it was discussed at this time in correspondence between Thomas Smith and Humfrey Wanley, in July 1697 (see Letters of Eminent Literary Men, ed. Ellis, pp. 249-54, with Letters of Wanley, ed. Heyworth, pp. 65 and 65-6).  Its owner was apparently the physician Dr Thomas Guidot of Bath (see Hickes, Dissertatio Epistolaris, p. 64); and the latter part of the charter was engraved for Hickes’s Dissertatio Epistolaris, Tabula D, on which basis Wanley dismissed it as a forgery ‘not much older (if any thing at all) than K. Henry the 2ds time’ (Letters of Wanley, ed. Heyworth, pp. 218-19).  The charter was exhibited at the Society of Antiquaries in 1734, at which time it belonged to Robert Hunter, of Croyland; see Searle, pp. 56-8.  The imitative script depicted in Hickes’s plate could be of any date (not necessarily as early as s. xii).  The charter of King Æthelbald (S 82), and the charter of King Eadred (S 538), certainly existed by the end of the fourteenth century.  Both were confirmed by Inspeximus charter(s) dated 7 July, 10 Richard II (1386), and 17 July, 17 Richard II (1393); Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Ashmole 1831 (SC 25204) is a contemporary exemplification of the original Inspeximus charter.

<Ashmole 1831 not yet seen; perhaps some confusion about date.>

A series of ten royal diplomas and two ‘miscellaneous’ records occurs in the Historia Croylandensis (Graves 2163).  The work purports to have been written by Abbot Ingulf (c. 1085-1109), who describes how he took the Saxon charters to London, to get them confirmed by King William I (Bohn, pp. 170-5); and he/continuator gives an account of the fire in 1091 which destroyed all of the charters in the muniment room, though some duplicates were kept elsewhere for purposes of teaching palaeography (Bohn, pp. 200-1).  The HC was first printed in Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores Post Bedam, ed. Savile (1596), fols. 484-520, reptd (1601), pp. 850-915; printed from a different manuscript in Rerum Anglicarum Scriptorum Veterum Tom. I, ed. W. Fulman (Oxford, 1684), pp. 1-132.  Some of the charters ptd Mon. Angl., from Savile 1596.  The principal manuscripts used by Savile and Fulman are not known to exist.  Arundel 178 is a late copy of Ingulf; Lansdowne MS. 207c is a set of extracts from Ingulf, made in the seventeenth century; and Oxford, The Queen’s College, MS. 368, contains merely extracts from Fulman’s printed edition.  Existence of Savile’s edition ensured that Ingulf was accorded particular attention by antiquaries in the seventeenth century.  But Ingulf’s chronicle has long since been exposed as a ‘forgery’, probably compiled in the fifteenth century; see Searle, Ingulf and the Historia Croylandensis, esp. pp. 206-8, and Gransden, Historical Writing ii. 490-1.  The charters are among the most disreputable in the entire corpus (see Searle, pp. 153-92), but they deserve attention nonetheless as curious manifestations of the forger’s craft.

<Copy of S 82 in Holkham Hall, MS. 677, fol. 29rv; full text, but no indication of source.  Fulman’s texts to be added in revd S?  Also in Gough, Appendix, pp. *1-24, etc., apparently from Fulman.>

S 1189-92 are no less disreputable texts, representing (undated) donations registered in the Guthlac Roll, but re-cast in charter form and assigned to the first half of the ninth century.  A text of S 1189 occured the manuscript of the Historia Croylandensis printed by Fulman; but S 1190-2 occur only in Crowland cartularies.  One cartulary was compiled in the mid-fourteenth century (Davis 294).  It passed from Crowland into the hands of Richard Ogle, clerk to the court of the abbots of Crowland in 1538, and belonged thereafter to William Cecil; later at Wrest Park, whence sold in 1922 and passed into the library of the Gentleman’s Society, Spalding.  May be significant that this cartulary does not include any of the purportedly pre-Conquest royal charters; the only ‘pre-Conquest’ texts are S 1191-2, both later additions.  A register compiled in the fifteenth century is now Oxford, All Souls College, MS. 32 (Davis 295); bears an inscription to the effect that it was given to the college by Daniel Prince, bookseller, in 1755.  The register begins with a quire containing texts of four of the royal diplomas (S 82, 189, 538, 741), derived from a text of the Historia Croylandensis; also contains texts of S 1190-1.  There is evidence for the existence of at least one other cartulary, now lost (Davis 296).  Dugdale printed texts of S 1190-1 from a manuscript penes John Oldfrid (Oldfield), of Spalding (Mon. Angl. ii. 853 (rev. ed. ii. 109)); it is clear that this manuscript was the cartulary which belonged in the early eighteenth century to Maurice Johnson, of Spalding (Tanner), and from which extensive excerpts were made by Cole in 1772 (BL Add. 5485, fols. 18-108; Add. 5887; Gough, Preface, p. vi, n.; Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) ii. 105-6, note g).

<Notes on MSS.> Extracts from Crowland cartularies in Harley MSS. 294, 604, and 5855; see Gough.> <Wanley’s Memorandum Book, p. 428: ‘Sr. Rob. Davers ha’s a Book at one of his manors in Lincolnshire, wherein are Registred certain Charters of Coenwulf King of the Mercians’ (above, p. 000); but seems unlikely that this was from Croyland.> <Calendar with royal obits in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce 296 (SC 0000); see Keynes, ‘Crowland Psalter’, and Gerchow, pp. 228-30 and 331.>

Charters of Crowland

Royal diplomas.  82; 135; 162; 189; 200; 213; 538; 741; 965; 1049.  Pseudo-Ingulf’s Historia Croylandensis also contains versions of S 92 and 314, probably derived from William of Malmesbury, and of S 787 (from Peterborough); see also S 797 (related to S 796, from Malmesbury).

Miscellaneous.  1189; 1190; 1191; 1192; 1230; 1294.

Select bibliography

WM, GP, pp. 321-2; Mon. Angl. i. 163-9 and ii. 853; Not. Mon., XV Lincs., no. XIX; Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) ii. 90-126; VCH Lincs. ii. 105-18; ODCC, p. 361; MRH, p. 63; HRH, pp. 41-2.

• R. Gough, The History and Antiquities of Croyland-Abbey in the County of Lincoln (London, 1783 [recte 1784]), with A Second Appendix to the History of Croyland (London, 1797)
• Memorials of Saint Guthlac of Crowland, ed. W. de Gray Birch (Wisbech, 1881)
• W. G. Searle, Ingulf and the Historia Croylandensis: an Investigation Attempted (Cambridge, 1894)
• G. Warner, The Guthlac Roll (Oxford, 1928)
• The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. M. Chibnall, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1968-80) II, pp. xxv-xxviii;
• B. Colgrave, Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 4-15
• Harmer, Writs, pp. 577-8
• S. Keynes, ‘The Crowland Psalter and the Sons of King Edmund Ironside’, Bodleian Library Record 11.6 (1985), pp. 359-70
• F. M. Page, The Estates of Crowland Abbey: a Study in Manorial Organisation (Cambridge, 1934)
• N. Pronay and J. Cox, The Crowland Chronicle Continuations: 1459-1486 (London, 1986)
• S. Raban, The Estates of Thorney and Crowland (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 8-12
• D. Roffe, ‘The Historia Croylandensis: a Plea for Reassessment’, EHR 110 (1995), 93–108
• Alfred Hiatt, The Making of Medieval Forgeries: False Documents in Fifteenth-Century England (London, 2004), esp. pp. 36-69 (on Crowland forgeries)

<Note.  ? For S (Add.), purported writ of Edward the Confessor, appointing Abbot Wulfgeat (Savile, p. 896).  Vitæ abbatum Croylandiæ (s. xv?) ptd Gough, App. pp. *137-42, from Cotton Vespasian B. xi, beg. ‘Kenulphus quidam …’.  ‘Croyland’s Chronicle’, ptd Second App., pp. 223-37 (uses charters, etc.): written s. xvi by Sir John Harrington; trans. into English by Sir Thomas Lambert, 28 July 1607; transcribed by Robert Jackson, 15 Nov. 1607, for Robert Wich, bayliffe of Croyland; and collated by me, M. Johnson, 1722.  Copy of Gough in ULC has Searle’s notes.  Pronay & Cox have strong views on Fulman’s MS. of HC.>

Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica 11; A. S. Canham, Notes on history, charters and ancient crosses of Crowland, Fenland N&Q 11 (1894), 249; Stocker, in Lindsey book.

Cartulary at Wrest Park: HMC 2nd R, p. 4 no. 6.  Sotheby’s, 19/21 June 1922, Lot 590.

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October 2011