Milton Abbas

According to William of Malmesbury (GP, p. 186), Milton abbey was founded by King Æthelstan for the soul of his (half-)brother Eadwine, who was driven from England in 933 and who was drowned in a storm at sea; cf. Folcwin, Gesta abbatum S. Bertini, ch. 107 (Whitelock, EHD, no. 26).  The abbey appears to have become the repository for a substantial part of King Æthelstan’s famous collection of relics, including those of St Samson of Dol and of St Brangwalator; indeed, William of Malmesbury has occasion to mention elsewhere that a letter of Radbod, prior of St Samson’s at Dol, to King Æthelstan, accompanying a gift of relics, was found at Milton in a shrine (GP, pp. 399-400; Whitelock, EHD, no. 228).  In 964 the secular canons were driven from Milton by King Edgar, and replaced with monks, under Abbot Cyneweard (ASC, MS. A); an Ælfhun, abbot of Milton, attested charters of King Æthelred in the 990s.  By the end of the Anglo-Saxon period the abbey had accumulated a respectable endowment, of the order of 120 hides in Dorset (GDB 78r, 82r). 

The charters of Milton abbey were destroyed by fire on 2 September 1309; see Registrum Simonis de Gandavo, Diocesis Saresbiriensis, A.D. 1297-1315, ed. C. T. Flower and M. C. B. Dawes, 2 vols., Canterbury and York Soc. 40 (1934), i. 272-3 and 343-4.  On 1 October 1309 an inquisition was set up to establish what lands and privileges were held by the abbey before the fire (Cal. Pat. R., 3 Edw. II, p. 244); and on 3 September 1311 the lands were duly confirmed to the abbot and convent (Cal. Pat. R., 5 Edw. II, p. 389).  The charter of 1311 distinguishes between those estates held by the gift of King Æthelstan, and those held by gift of others; the greater part of the Domesday endowment is credited to Æthelstan.  The muniments of Milton abbey were assigned to the king following the abbey’s dissolution in 1539 (see the Deed of Surrender, in Traskey, pp. 225-6); the abbey and its lands were soon afterwards purchased from Henry VIII by John Tregonwell (ibid., pp. 227-30).

The only recorded cartulary of Milton abbey appears to have been compiled in the fourteenth century (Davis 668).  The cartulary is reported to have been in the office of Thomas Fanshawe, King’s Remembrancer, in 1587.  It was still there in the first half of the seventeenth century, when more or less substantial excerpts from it were made by at least three antiquaries:

• Richard James transcribed the introductory section in the Milton cartulary and made excerpts from it and other cartularies ‘in Scaccario’ (Oxford, Bodleian Library, James 23 (SC 3860), pp. 46-57; ptd B. Fosset Lock, ‘Registrum Abbathiæ de Middeltone in Scaccario’, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club 30 (1909), pp. 196-202, with translation, pp. 203-11, and discussion, pp. 212-14);

• Roger Dodsworth transcribed the first chapter and the Latin text of King Æthelstan’s charter from the fourth (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Dodsworth 66 (SC 5008), fols. 120 + 122);

• either Dodsworth or Dugdale transcribed the introductory section and the first four chapters of the cartulary, subsequently printed in the Monasticon (Mon. Angl. i. 193-6).

• See Davis: Winchester College, chest 2, 170 and Sydling I.1.

The introductory section comprises a very fanciful account of Æthelstan’s birth and of the circumstances leading to his foundation of Muchelney and Milton (based in part on William of Malmesbury’s GR).

‘Ch. I’ is a narrative of King Æthelstan’s reign (based in part on the same source), from his accession in 924 (‘824’ in the Monasticon) to the foundation of Milton abbey in the ‘10th’ year of his reign;

‘Ch. II’ comprises the vernacular text of a purported foundation charter in King Æthelstan’s name (S 391), dated ‘843’ in the Monasticon;

‘Ch. III’ concerns the relics gathered by Æthelstan from Rome, from Brittany, and from elsewhere, and given by him to Milton abbey for the soul of his brother Eadwine, and for that of his mother (buried at Milton);

‘Ch. IV’ contains the text of a purported inspeximus charter of King Henry, incorporating a variant (Latin) version of King Æthelstan’s charter, dated ‘943’ in Dodsworth 66, 122rv, and ‘843’ in the Monasticon. 

The charter of King Æthelstan is plainly spurious.  It should be noted, for example, that the hidations of the various estates given by Æthelstan to the abbey correspond closely to the hidations in the confirmation charter of 1311, against the hidations recorded in Domesday Book; in effect, the charter supplies the ‘evidence’ for Æthelstan’s grants as reconstructed at Milton after the loss of its original muniments in the fire of 1309.

Mon. Angl. i. 193-6; Not. Mon. (Dorset), no. XVIII; Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) ii. 344-54; VCH Dorset ii. 58-62 and iii. 44; MRH, p. 70; HRH, p. 56.  <J. H. Bettey, ‘Sir John Tregonwell of Milton Abbey’, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society 90 (1968-9), pp. 295-302.>  See also J. P. Traskey, Milton Abbey: a Dorset Monastery in the Middle Ages (Tisbury, 1978).  <Relics of Sts Samson and Brangwalator at Milton: see D. Rollason, in ASE 7, pp. 66, 81, 93.  Robinson, TSD, p. 74.>

Royal diploma.  391.