Ramsey

The earliest circumstantial account of the foundation of Ramsey abbey is given by Byrhtferth of Ramsey, in his Vita S. Oswaldi (written between 997 and 1005). <All references to be updated, citing Byrhtferth of Ramsey, ed. Lapidge.> Not long after taking up office as bishop of Worcester (961), Oswald had directed his former companion Germanus, then resident at Fleury, to return to England, whereupon Oswald entrusted him with the task of teaching his young followers about the monastic life (Vita S. Oswaldi, ed. Raine, pp. 422-3). (Germanus was a native of Winchester, whose association with Oswald had probably originated in the 940s, when Oswald appears to have obtained charge of a monastery there (ibid., pp. 410-11).) A group of clerks (clerici) congregated around Oswald for instruction, and presently the bishop established a small house for them at Westbury, in Gloucestershire (ibid., pp. 423-4); one of their number is said to have been a certain Eadnoth, and Germanus was presumably another. It came to pass (c. 965) that Oswald asked King Edgar for a more suitable place for his group, and was offered a choice of St Albans, Ely, or Benfleet (ibid., p. 427); but at about the same time Oswald chanced to meet Æthelwine, son of Ealdorman Æthelstan ‘Half-King’, at a funeral, and when the bishop remarked (in effect) that he was looking for a safer place for his monks, Æthelwine responded that he had a suitable place where, as it happened, three men eager to become monks were already living (ibid., pp. 429-30). Oswald visited the isle of Ramsey, and thereafter instructed Eadnoth to make arrangements for the move from Westbury to the new location. Byrhtferth proceeds to explain that Oswald founded two monasteries: one at Worcester (over which Oswald presided himself), and another at Winchcombe (of which Germanus, styled ‘dean’ of Ramsey, was consecrated abbot); some of the monks who remained at Ramsey were placed under a certain wise man called Æthelnoth, and others were moved to Worcester, where they were placed under the priest Wynsige (ibid., p. 435). In the disturbances which followed the death of King Edgar, in 975, Abbot Germanus and his monks were expelled from Winchcombe (ibid., p. 443), and appear to have taken refuge at Ramsey. Both Oswald and Æthelwine naturally maintained a close interest in their foundation at Ramsey; in addition to various other gifts, the latter promised to give the abbey ‘200 hides (mansae)’, apparently to take effect after his death (ibid., p. 467). Germanus is said to have promised to remain at Ramsey for the duration of Æthelwine’s lifetime, and may have come to be regarded as its abbot; for when Æthelwine expressed his belief that Germanus would wish to leave Ramsey after his death, he added that in this event the monks would do best to choose a new abbot from among their own number (ibid., p. 468). Archbishop Oswald and Ealdorman Æthelwine died within a few weeks of each other, the one on 29 February and the other on 24 April 992; Byrhtferth brought his narrative to a close with an account of their respective obsequies.

<Oswald at Winchester (ed. Raine, pp. 410-11); ? New Minster. Funeral at which Oswald met Æthelwine was at Glastonbury, according to Liber benefactorum (p. 30); ? of Æthelstan Half-King. Relations between Ramsey and Ely. Check cross-refs. under Westbury; Winchcombe; Cholsey.>

<Germanus was styled ‘abbot of Ramsey’ in a charter issued in July 993 (S 876); not long afterwards he was made abbot of Cholsey, and was succeeded at Ramsey by Eadnoth iunior (latterly bishop of Dorchester, 1007 x 1009 - 1016). In theory, Ælfwold should or could not have been abbot of Winchcombe while Germanus was still ‘abbot [of Winchcombe resident] at Ramsey’ (S 876); but Byrhtferth (writing during abbacy of Eadnoth, later regarded as ‘first’ abbot) appears content to imply that Germanus acted as abbot of Ramsey, from post-975 to c. 992; see also Liber Vitae of the New Minster. Abbo of Fleury; and Byrhtferth. Abbot Wulfsige killed at Assandun. Troubles during reign of Cnut. Etc. etc.>

Single sheets at Ramsey abbey

An inventory of the muniments which existed at Ramsey in the fourteenth century (Hart and Lyons, i. 80-112) contains references to the presumed single-sheet ‘originals’ of only four purportedly pre-Conquest charters: S 1110 (no. 64), S 1109 (no. 108), S 1030 (no. 115) and S 798 (no. 122). In fact there is reason to believe that these four charters had a special identity in the archive, as products of a campaign of ‘forgery’ conducted in the first half of the twelfth century. The diplomas of King Edgar (S 798) and King Edward the Confessor (S 1030) belong to the series of spurious charters identified on various grounds as the work of Osbert de Clare (Chaplais 1981c, pp. 91-5); and the two vernacular writs of King Edward the Confessor (S 1109-10) have been shown to have links with forged writs from Westminster (Harmer, Writs, p. 256). The ‘original’ charter of King Edgar still existed in the 1530s, when it was displayed in the pulpit of the parish church and also examined by one of the king’s commissioners, but it is now lost; the ‘original’ charter of King Edward the Confessor, on the other hand, belonged by c. 1630 to Sir Edward Coke, as one of his collection of four Anglo-Saxon charters which he seems to have valued essentially as curiosities, and remains to this day at Holkham Hall (MS. 262, found too late for inclusion in BAFacs.). A charter of King William I for Ramsey (Regesta i, no. 95; Charters of William I, ed. Bates, no. 220), which also survives in its ‘original’ form (BL Add. Ch. 74436), proves to have been written by a Westminster scribe, and to have been sealed with the (forged) ‘First Seal’ of King William; so there can be no doubt that it was a Westminster production (Bishop and Chaplais, pp. xx-xxiii; Bates, pp. 702-3). If we assume, on this basis, that the three Latin diplomas cast in the names of King Edgar, King Edward and King William were forged at Westminster towards the middle of the twelfth century, we must presume that information about the abbey’s history and benefactors was supplied to Westminster by the monks of Ramsey, on the basis of other documentation available in the abbey’s archives. The charters of Edgar and Edward the Confessor thus represent a relatively ‘early’ form of the abbey’s traditions about its history, benefactors and privileges, and deserve attention not least for that reason. <Compare Chaplais and Bates on charter of William, in relation to the ‘original’ of S 1030 at Holkham. S 1030 is in pseudo-minuscule; Bates 220 is in Caroline.>

The Ramsey Liber benefactorum

Our knowledge of the pre-Conquest history of Ramsey abbey is greatly extended by the work known at the abbey itself as the Liber benefactorum (otherwise known as the Chronicon Abbatiæ Rameseiensis, ed. Macray), a form of chronicle-cartulary apparently compiled in the second half of the twelfth century. The Liber benefactorum exists in two versions, representing significantly different stages in the transmission of the text; a reference to ‘Liber benefactorum huius ecclesiæ’ in a <medieval> catalogue of the library at Ramsey (Macray, p. 360; <Library Catalogues of the Minor Benedictine Houses, p. 000>) may relate to the (lost) original, or to either of the extant later copies. The version in PRO, E 164/28, fols. 132-61, copied in the early fourteenth century, now forms part of a fourteenth-century cartulary of Ramsey abbey (Davis 788), though it is apparent on palaeographical and codicological grounds that the text of the Liber benefactorum had a separate origin from the material with which it has been preserved. It emerges from the Preface (Macray, pp. 3-5) that the Liber benefactorum was compiled after the death of Abbot Walter (1133-60), in order to protect the abbey in the future from the kind of depredations it had suffered during the reign of King Stephen. The work itself is divided into three parts. Part I (Macray, pp. 7-45) is an account of the circumstances leading up to the abbey’s foundation, placed in the wider context of the monastic reform movement of the tenth century; it is based to a considerable extent on the Vita S. Oswaldi, with some variation and addition of detail. Part II (Macray, pp. 46-108) is an account of the abbey’s history and its benefactors (including King Edgar, Bishop Oswald, and Ealdorman Æthelwine himself) from its foundation to the deaths of Oswald and Æthelwine in 992; narrative details were developed from the Vita S. Oswaldi, but extensive use was also made of documents preserved in the abbey’s archives. Part III (Macray, pp. 109-80) is an account of the abbey’s further history and endowment, from the deaths of its founders in 992 to the Norman Conquest in 1066; the compiler was now left largely to his own historical devices, and it is perhaps in this context that we should judge (for example) his conception of Eadnoth iunior as the ‘first’ abbot of Ramsey, his presentation of Ramsey’s relations with neighbouring religious houses, and his account of the tensions which arose between the native population and Danish settlers during the reign of Cnut. The text of the Liber benefactorum finishes in PRO, E 164/28, 161v, with a statement by the compiler to the effect that he had decided to end the third part at this point, and to wait for his strength to recover before continuing with a fourth (Macray, p. 180); the rest of the page was left blank (apart from the addition of a short section which the scribe had accidentally omitted from its proper place in Part II (Macray, p. 57)), and one has to infer that the scribe’s exemplar did not include the projected fourth part. A separate account of Abbot Walter, and of his dealings with Geoffrey de Mandeville during the Civil War, was then copied (by the same scribe) on 162r-164r (Macray, pp. 325-36), in a manner which suggests that it was regarded as complementary in some way to the Liber benefactorum; in effect, it enlarges on the circumstances which had led to the compilation of the work, as described in the Preface.

The version of the Liber benefactorum preserved in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson B. 333, fols. 1-53 (Davis 790), written in the late thirteenth century, comprises the Preface (1r), a slightly modified text of Parts I-III (1r-23r), and a fourth part (23v-53r). This fourth part seems at first sight to represent the fulfillment of the compiler’s intention to complete the task when his strength returned. It should be noted, however, that Part IV starts with a lengthy recapitulation of Parts I-III (on fols. 23v-35v, incorporating some additional material (including a text of King Edgar’s charter (S 798) on 25r-26r)), and may therefore have been intended to form a self-contained work; fols. 35v-53r represent the breaking of new ground, beginning with the charter of William I and continuing thereafter with charters and documents, but no connecting narrative, down to the last decade of the twelfth century. The text of Part IV ends on 53r (Macray, p. 322, line 19); but a copy of the account of Abbot Walter occurs on 56r-58r, again as if it were considered complementary to the Liber benefactorum itself. Clearly, the circumstances of the composition and subsequent transmission of the Liber benefactorum would repay further investigation. Parts I-III may have been compiled c. 1170, using materials which extended as far as the Norman Conquest, but Part IV may have been compiled by a different person, working some time later in the twelfth or early thirteenth century. Whatever the case, it is important to note that Macray’s edition is in itself a conflation of the two versions: the Preface and Parts I-III are edited from PRO, E 164/28 (Macray, pp. 3-180), and Part IV is edited from Rawlinson B. 333 (Macray, pp. 181-322).

For present purposes, the most interesting aspect of the Liber benefactorum arises from the compiler’s extensive use of the vernacular records which had accumulated in the archives of his abbey; and it is only to be regretted that the compiler had felt the need to translate these records into Latin. Working in the wake of the disturbances during the reign of King Stephen, his avowed intentions were to protect the abbey against any further attempts to encroach upon its endowment, and to preserve the memory of its benefactors (Macray, pp. 4 and 46-7); to this end he perused the charters and ‘chirographs’ in the archive (pp. 56 and 65) - stating latterly that he had made use of them all (pp. 176-7) - but he clearly considered that translation was essential if his purposes were to be met (p. 161). The compiler appears to have taken an intelligent interest in the records for their own sake, observing of the documents pertaining to gifts received during King Edgar’s reign that they were invariably in the vernacular, and were never sealed (p. 65), and remarking elsewhere on the use of seals for the writs of Edward the Confessor (p. 161). Indeed, one gets the impression that the compiler valued the explicit testimony provided by the vernacular records above the less overtly relevant evidence of any royal diplomas which might have been preserved in the archives as separate title-deeds for the abbey’s estates; certainly, he did not see fit to include any such diplomas, though it is difficult to believe that there were none in the archive, not least because he remarks on the duration of Ealdorman Æthelstan’s career in a way which suggests that he had had an opportunity to examine the witness-lists in a series of tenth-century charters (pp. 12-13). Passages in the Liber benefactorum which profess to be direct translations of (vernacular) ‘chirographs’ or royal writs were duly registered in Professor Sawyer’s catalogue of Anglo-Saxon charters; other passages based explicitly on the contemporary records to which the compiler had access, but not given in extenso, have been listed as S (Add.) 1503a, 1806b, 1810a and 1810b. One imagines that written evidence in one form or another underlies much of the rest; for a calendar of the land transactions thus registered in the Liber benefactorum, see Hart, ECEE, pp. 231-42, with valuable discussion.

Ramsey cartularies

The (forged) charters of King Edgar and King Edward the Confessor (S 798, 1030) were given pride of place at the beginning of a cartulary compiled in the second half of the thirteenth century (BL Cotton Vespasian E. ii (Davis 787)); but unfortunately the compiler of this cartulary did not trouble to include any other pre-Conquest title-deeds which might have been preserved in the archive. The same two charters were among those transcribed for presentation to the Exchequer in the late thirteenth century (PRO, E 132 1/1 (Davis 789)). In 1334 the abbey submitted what it presumably considered to be its principal charters to King Edward III, for ‘inspection’ and confirmation. BL Add. Ch. 33658 and BL Add. Ch. 33659 are copies in single-sheet form of the Inspeximus charter of Edward III which began with the charter of King Edgar (S 798), followed by a series of charters granted to the abbey by post-Conquest kings; cf. PRO, Ch.R. 8 Edw. III, no. 28. Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire County Record Office, SM27/465 (Acc. 2244), on loan to Ramsey Abbey School, is seemingly the original Inspeximus charter of Edward III which began with the charter of King Edward the Confessor (S 1030), followed by two vernacular writs (S 1110 and 1109) and another series of charters granted to the abbey by post-Conquest kings; cf. PRO, Ch.R. 8 Edw. III, no. 29. Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire County Record Office, SM27/465 (Acc. 970) is a copy of the same Inspeximus of Edward III, on four sheets. Copies of S 798, 1030 and 1109-10 recur in the fourteenth-century cartularies of the abbey (PRO, E 164/28 (Davis 788), and BL Cotton Otho B. xiv (Davis 795)), derived from the Inspeximus charters of Edward III; the main contents of the PRO cartulary are edited in Cartularium Monasterii de Rameseia, ed. Hart and Lyons. The pre-Conquest charters were still considered to serve a useful purpose in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: BL Add. Ch. 33686 begins with a text of the charter of King Edgar (S 798), followed by texts of several of the abbey’s post-Conquest charters (incorporating further inspeximus versions of S 1030, 1110 and 1109), all copied on a vast sheet of parchment in the form of a petition addressed to King Henry VII (1485-1509). <Not yet checked: BL Add. Chart. 39264-5: original Inspeximus charters of 1488 (3 Hen. VII) and 1510 (1 Hen. VIII)?>

<‘Dr. Abr. Wright a Physician near Soho, ha’s a Chartulary of Ramsey.’ (Wanley’s Memorandum Book, p. 431).> <17.viii.94. Notes on history of the foundation, in Add. 33450, 3v; from annals. Extracts from a leiger book, in Add. 33465; from PRO cartulary.>

The Ramsey computus

The Ramsey obits

The antiquary John Leland recorded a series of obits of Ramsey’s benefactors, incorporating details of their respective donations, ‘ex libello de anniversariis in ecclesia Ramesiensi observatis’. The obits are printed from Leland’s notes in Mon. Angl. i. 239-40, and Collectanea, ed. Hearne, ii. 587-8; see also Gerchow, pp. 276-9 and 342-3. Unfortunately, the calendar from which the obits were derived does not itself survive. A series of annals specifying the years in which the abbey’s pre-Conquest benefactors died occurs in one of the Ramsey cartularies (PRO, E 164/28, fol. 267v), presumably derived in a similar way from an earlier form of record. The annals are printed in Mon. Angl. i. 231-2, and Hart and Lyons, iii. 165-7. The information which can be extracted from these sources is valuable, if not always wholly reliable; but the Ramsey obits and annals show how some of the knowledge about the abbey’s benefactors was transmitted to posterity, and bear comparison in this respect with similar material from other religious houses.

The dissolution of Ramsey Abbey

The buildings and estates of Ramsey abbey passed after the abbey’s dissolution in 1539 into the hands of Sir Richard Williams, alias Cromwell; material from the buildings was sold off and used for the construction of Cambridge colleges (including King’s and Trinity). The site of the abbey was converted into a manor house c. 1600, by Sir Henry Cromwell (grandfather of the Protector); and the bulk of the abbey’s muniments appear to have remained thereafter at Ramsey Abbey House, through successive changes of ownership. The muniments were still at Ramsey in the eighteenth century (Macray, pp. xvi-xviii), and were acquired by the British Museum in the 1890s (see BL Add. 33445-469; Add. Chart. 33047-933; and Add. Chart. 39039-941); this material includes several of the abbey’s Inspeximus charters, in single-sheet form (as noted above). A note on the flyleaf of the abbey’s principal surviving cartulary (PRO, E 164/28) indicates that it was delivered by Sir Henry Cromwell into the keeping of the King’s Remembrancer, Exchequer, on 28 January 1583, in the course of a suit heard in that court. A manuscript containing the later recension of the Liber benefactorum belonged in the early seventeenth century to Sir Henry Spelman; some other Ramsey muniments, including the ‘original’ charter of William I (Regesta i, no. 95) and a fifteenth-century register (Davis 800), passed into the hands of the Hare family, of Stow Hall, Stow Bardolph, Norfolk.

Charters of Ramsey abbey

Royal diplomas. 798; 1030.

Writs. 996; 997; 1106; 1107; 1108; 1109; 1110. See also (Add.) 1810a.

Miscellaneous. 1231; 1371; (Add.) 1481a; 1493; 1518; (Add.) 1806b; 1807; 1808; 1809; 1810; (Add.) 1810b. It is evident that a substantial number of other documents, in Latin and in the vernacular, were available to the compiler of the Liber benefactorum (see above). A ‘better’ text of (Add.) 1481a occurs in the cartulary of Thorney abbey.

Wills. (Add.) 1503a.

Boundary clauses. 1563.

Select bibliography

WM, GP, pp. 318-20; Mon. Angl. i. 231-42; Not. Mon. (Hunts.), no. V; Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) ii. 546-92; VCH Hunts. i. 377-85 and ii. 191-4; MRH, p. 73; HRH, pp. 61-3.

Harmer, Writs, pp. 245-65
C. Hart, ‘Eadnoth, First Abbot of Ramsey and the Foundation of Chatteris and St Ives’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 56-7 (1964), pp. 61-7, reptd in The Danelaw, pp. 613-23
C. Hart, ‘Æthelstan “Half-King” and his Family’, ASE 2 (1973), pp. 115-44, reptd in The Danelaw, pp. 569-604
C. Hart, ‘The Ramsey Computus’, English Historical Review 85 (1970), pp. 29-44
C. Hart, ‘The Foundation of Ramsey Abbey’, Revue Bénédictine 00 (1994), pp. 00-00 <supply details>
W. H. Hart and P. A. Lyons, ed., Cartularium Monasterii de Rameseia, 3 vols., Rolls ser. (London, 1884-93)
T. Hearne, ed., Joannis Lelandi Antiquarii De Rebus Britannicis Collectanea, 2nd ed., 6 vols. (London, 1774) ii. 587-8
M. Lapidge, ‘Abbot Germanus, Winchcombe, Ramsey and the Cambridge Psalter’, Words, Texts and Manuscripts, ed. M. Korhammer (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 99-129, reptd in his Anglo-Latin Literature 900-1066 (London, 1993), pp. 387-417, on the status of ‘Abbot’ Germanus
Chronicon Abbatiæ Rameseiensis, ed. W. D. Macray, Rolls ser. (London, 1886)
J. A. Raftis, The Estates of Ramsey Abbey (Toronto, 1957), pp. 1-21
J. Wise and F. M. Noble, Ramsey Abbey (Huntingdon, 1881).
S. B. Edgington, et al., Ramsey Abbey's Book of Benefactors, Part I: The Abbey's Foundation (Huntingdon, 1998)
S. B. Edgington, et al., Ramsey Abbey's Book of Benefactors, Part II: The Early Years (Huntingdon, 2002)
S. Keynes, 'Anglo-Saxon Charters: Lost and Found', Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Brooks, ed. J. Barrow and A. Wareham (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 45-66, at pp. 50-1 (charters of Edgar and Edward the Confessor) and 60 n. 82 (S 1030)

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