Muchelney

A monastery appears to have been founded at Muchelney during the reign of Ine, king of Wessex (688-726), under Abbot Froda.  The house was still in existence during the reign of Cynewulf, king of Wessex (757-86), under Abbot Eadwald.  Nothing is known of its history thereafter, until we reach the time of its (alleged) re-foundation in the 930s.  According to William of Malmesbury, Muchelney was one of the two houses founded by King Æthelstan for the soul of his brother Eadwine (cf. S 455); the other was Milton abbey in Dorset (above, p. 000).  The development of Glastonbury abbey from c. 940 onwards must have impeded the further growth of the less well-connected houses at Muchelney and Athelney.  According to King Edgar's charter confirming the abbey’s privileges (S 729), Ælfwold, bishop of Sherborne (or Crediton), had taken charge of a community of monks established at Muchelney, and that the community were to be free to elect their own abbot after the bishop’s death; but the authenticity of this charter cannot be taken for granted.  The fortunes of the abbey were put on a secure footing by King Æthelred the Unready, who confirmed its possessions in a charter dated 995 (S 884, extant in its original form), though the abbey may latterly have become dependant in some way on Glastonbury (above, p. 000).  Muchelney had a modest endowment of about 50 hides in Somerset at the time of the Domesday survey (GDB 91r). 

The abbey surrendered to Henry VIII in 1539.  At least some part of the muniments passed into the hands of Edward Seymour, earl of Hertford and duke of Somerset (the Protector), and by descent to the Marquesses of Ailesbury, of Sturmy House, Savernake Park, Wiltshire.  Two ‘ancient breviaries’ containing various additions relating to Muchelney abbey were lent by Lord Charles Bruce, son of Thomas Earl of Ailesbury and Elizabeth Seymour, to Thomas Hearne, who printed excerpts from them in his Adami de Domerham Historia de Rebus Gestis Glastoniensibus I, pp. (xxiii-xxv and) lxvii-xcvii; the manuscripts in question were the two volumes of the ‘Muchelney Breviary’ (now BL Add. 43405-6), and the additions (pertaining mainly to the abbey’s history in the fourteenth century) are printed in Muchelney Memoranda, ed. Schofield, pp. 1-119.  The Breviary also contains a calendar, ptd ibid., pp. 128-39, and discussed by Robinson, ‘Essay on Somerset Mediæval Calendars’.  The original charter of King Æthelred for Muchelney Abbey (S 884), and a thirteenth-century cartulary (Davis 685), came to light at Sturmy House in the late nineteenth century.  The charter is now in the Somerset Record Office, Taunton (BAFacs. no. 11).  The contents of the cartulary are described, and the pre-Conquest charters printed, in Two Cartularies of the Benedictine Abbeys of Muchelney and Athelney, ed. Bates, pp. 28-111; the cartulary itself was sold at Christie’s on 16 December 1970 (Lot 17), and is now BL Add. 56488.  Five preliminary leaves (fols. 1-5), described by Davis as ‘from a 12th-13th cent. breviary’, appear in fact to constitute a fragment of a breviary written probably in the first half of the eleventh century, in Anglo-Caroline minuscule; as such, they are of considerable interest from a liturgical point of view.

<Christies cat. refers to table of contents on 6v-7r, ‘including as its first item a copy of Edgar’s charter (which is no longer in the volume)’; but no such first item in the table.  Ailesbury MSS: HMssC, 15th R., 18-21 and App. VII, 152-306; but apparently nothing further from Muchelney.  Now in WiltsRO.  Calendar includes St Æthelwine and St Edwold; see Robinson, pp. 148, 155ff, 169.>

The published edition of the Muchelney charters is not readily accessible, and it may be true to say that W. H. Stevenson’s discouraging comments on the authenticity of the texts in their received form have deflected attention from a most interesting archive.  The cartulary begins with seven pre-Conquest texts (S 249, 455, 729, 884, 240, 261, 740) on fols. 8-14, and otherwise comprises a series of mainly thirteenth-century documents; two further pre-Conquest texts (S 1176, 244) occur at the end of this series (69v-70r), apparently appended as an afterthought.  The initial group of pre-Conquest charters serves quite well to cover the abbey’s endowment as it stood at the close of the Anglo-Saxon period.  S 240, dated 693, seems to be a record made under the auspices of Bishop Hæddi to the effect that King Ine had granted 37 hides east and 3 hides west of the river Isle to Abbot Froda, at the request of ‘Usibuc’, the king’s patricius.  S 249 is a charter of Ine, dated 725, granting 20 hides at Ilminster to Abbot Froda and Muchelney abbey; it is closely related to S 251 (King Ine for Glastonbury abbey), and was probably forged at Glastonbury in connection with Muchelney’s recovery of the land at Ilminster in 995.  S 261 is a charter of King Cynewulf, dated 762, granting 8 hides between the rivers Earn and Isle (at Isle Abbots) to Abbot Eadwald and Muchelney abbey.  S 455, a text apparently derived from an entry in a gospel-book, purports to record King Æthelstan’s grant to the abbey of half of the land at ‘Curry’ (apparently at Drayton), adding 5 hides at Stowey (in Fivehead) and a sixth hide which belonged to a layman called Muda.  The two charters of King Edgar (S 729 and 740) are of special interest in so far as they reflect a situation when the abbey was under the control of Bishop Ælfwold; the former is a general confirmation of the abbey’s privileges under this dispensation, and the latter is a specific grant of 10 hides at Isle (Abbots) to Bishop Ælfwold himself.  Finally, S 884 shows how the abbey managed to secure its position in the 990s, during the abbacy of Leofric, who seems to have enjoyed a prominent position at the royal court during the reign of King Æthelred the Unready.  One of the abbey’s principal estates, at Ilminster, is said to have been leased (‘foolishly’) to some other parties, who had then contrived to steal the title-deed itself; but the charter was subsequently found, and duly annulled.  Another estate, at Camel, had been purchased by Abbot Leofric; to which were added 4 hides of adjoining land given to the monastery by Æthelmær, the king’s satrapa (otherwise associated with Cerne abbey in Dorset, and Eynsham abbey in Oxfordshire).  The two charters appended after the series of thirteenth-century documents seem to be miscellaneous survivals from the earliest stage of the abbey’s endowment: one (S 1176) records a grant by a certain Bealdhun to Abbot Froda, and the other (S 244) records a grant by King Ine to Beganus, apparently a member of the community.

Among a series of fourteenth-century additions to the cartulary we find the vernacular text of a boundary-clause pertaining to the bishop of Wells’ estate at Kingsbury Episcopi (S 1570), on 70v.  The vernacular text of an agreement between Ealdulf, abbot of Muchelney, and Hearding, son of Eadnoth, concerning land at Dillington (ptd Bates, pp. 106-7, though not included in Pelteret, Catalogue), was added on 76v; Hearding was a significant figure in the west country before and after the Norman Conquest (Robertson, Charters, p. 489).

Charters of Muchelney

Royal diplomas.  240; 244; 249; 261; 455; 729; 740; 884.

Miscellaneous.  1176.

Boundary clauses.  1570.

Select bibliography

WM, GP, pp. 199-200; Mon. Angl. i. 197; Not. Mon. (Somerset), no. XXXII; Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) ii. 355-61; VCH Somerset ii. 103-7; MRH, p. 71; HRH, pp. 56-7.

Bates, E. H., ed., Two Cartularies of the Benedictine Abbeys of Muchelney and Athelney in the County of Somerset, Somerset Record Society 14 (1899); Edwards, Charters of the Early West Saxon Kingdom, pp. 197-208; Hearne, T., ed., Adami de Domerham Historia de Rebus Gestis Glastoniensibus, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1727); Hugo, T., ‘Muchelney Abbey’, Somersetshire Archæological and Natural History Society Proceedings 8 (1858), pp. 76-132; Robinson, J. A., ‘An Essay on Somerset Mediæval Calendars’, Muchelney Memoranda, ed. Schofield, pp. 143-79; Schofield, B., ed., Muchelney Memoranda, Somerset Record Society 42 (1927).  For documents relating to the suppression of the abbey in 1539, see W. A. J. Archbold, The Somerset Religious Houses (Cambridge, 1892), pp. 64-5 and 68-70.

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October 2011