Thorney

Early minster at Ancarig was a colony of Peterborough?  Tancred, Torhtred and Tova.  Relics at Thorney.  Thorney abbey was founded in the early 970s by Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester (Wulfstan, Vita S. Æthelwoldi, ch. 24).  Godeman, Æthelwold’s chaplain, took over as abbot after Æthelwold’s death (in 984); attests charters 990-1013.  Endowment.  S 1377 (Peterborough).

Thorney Abbey was suppressed in 1539.  Fate of the muniments.  The principal surviving cartulary of Thorney abbey is the ‘Red Book’ (Cambridge, University Library, Add. 3020-1 (Davis 964)), compiled in the fourteenth century.  It is possible that the ‘Red Book’ was acquired in the first instance by Thomas Mildmay, or by his son, Sir Walter Mildmay (1520-89), of Apethorpe, near Peterborough (Northants.), both of whom profited from the suppression of monasteries.  Mary, daughter and heir of Sir Walter’s son, Sir Anthony Mildmay (d. 1617), married Francis Fane, 1st Earl of Westmorland (d. 1628).  In 1621 the ‘Red Book’ had been promised by Sir Francis Fane to Sir Robert Cotton, and another ‘Liber Thorney’ was in the hands of Sir Robert Wingfield (BL Harley 6018, fol. 150v, reproduced in Tite, Manuscript Library of Cotton, p. 18).  The ‘Red Book’ remained thereafter in the hands of Mildmay Fane, of Apethorpe, 2nd Earl of Westmorland (d. 1666), and was used extensively by antiquaries.  Dodsworth/Dugdale used the ‘Red Book’ in 1638, penes the Earl of Westmorland; cf. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Dugdale 21 (SC 6511).  In August 1640 Sir Symonds D’Ewes made extracts from the ‘Red Book’, penes Mildmay, Earl of Westmorland (BL Harley 258, fols. 136v-143r).  Used by Dodsworth on 12 September 1640, penes Mildmay, Earl of Westmorland (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Dodsworth 85 (SC 5026)).  Other extracts from the ‘Red Book’, penes Thomas, Earl of Westmorland, occur in a volume of the collections of Bishop White Kennett (1660-1728) (BL Lansdowne 994, fols. 72r-115v, at 94rv).  In fact the ‘Red Book’ remained in the possession of the Earls of Westmorland, at Apethorpe, until the sale of the family muniments in 1887-93.  Sotheby’s, 13 July 1887, Lot 1034.  It was acquired by the Cambridge University Library; see The Letters of Frederic William Maitland, ed. C. H. S. Fifoot (Cambridge, 1965), p. 88.  The charters were first printed from the ‘Red Book’ by Hart, ECEE, pp. 146-209.>

<CUL 3020-1: Micro MS. 8090-1.  In 1930 Whitelock printed S 1523 from Add. 5937, with a statement to the effect that the ‘Red Book’ was penes Earl of Westmorland, and inaccessible; in fact it had by then been in the CUL for 40 years.>  <Westmorland papers: HMC 1885.  See HMC Guide.  Sotheby’s, 13 July 1887.  Christies, 16 July 1892.  Puttick & Simpson, 27 July 1893.>  <Harley 258: RB ii.148.  Lansdowne 994: RB ii.149.>

<Transcripts of or extracts from a number of the Thorney charters, said to have been written on 21 October 1593, ‘Ex Registro de Thorney’, occur in a volume of genealogical collections of James Strangeman and Sir Richard St George (BL Add. 5937, fols. 131r-133v).  These extracts were published by ‘M’ (Sir Frederic Madden), in Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, iv (1837), pp. 54-9, and were for a long time the main source of knowledge of the texts.  The extracts follow the order in which the charters appear in the ‘Red Book’, but it is not certain whether or not they were derived from the ‘Red Book’ itself.  A further set of extracts from a Thorney cartulary (including the OE bounds of S 556, 595 and 943, and texts of S 1523 and (Add.) 1481a, all written in facsimile ‘Anglo-Saxon’ script) occur in a notebook kept by Sir Robert Cotton (Cambridge, Cambridgeshire Record Office, 588/Z3).  The script used for the vernacular texts, and many of the readings, seem to reflect Cotton’s use of an exemplar different from the ‘Red Book’ itself, though it would appear from marginal references (which correspond to the folios of the ‘Red Book’) that he did have access at some point to the extant cartulary (see above).  The vernacular texts as copied in BL Add. 5937 seem to be related more closely to Cotton’s exemplar than to the ‘Red Book’.  Clearly, the relationship between the extant cartulary and the extracts in Add. 5937 and by Cotton requires further investigation.  One possibility is that the extracts in Add. 5937, and Cotton’s notes, were derived from the lost Cotton Vitellius D. v, fols. 175-201 (Davis 965), described by Smith as a ‘Registrum chartarum Monasterii de Thorney in insula Eliensis’, which might itself have been related in some way to the ‘Red Book’; unfortunately, Vitellius D. v was destroyed in the fire of 1731.>

<Add. 5937: RB ii.147.>

<The ‘Red Book’ begins with a series of royal charters on fols. 12r-28r (with a continuation on 28v-40).  The pre-Conquest texts (12r-18r) are numbered I to X.  Nos. I and II are both copies of King Edgar’s charter for Thorney (S 792), presumably derived from different exemplars.  The first copy (12r-13v) is the ‘later’ version (Hart’s ‘A’), incorporating material arising from the troubles which followed King Edgar’s death, and also incorporating a note of a particular agreement with Peterborough abbey; the same version is found at Peterborough (in the ‘Book of Robert of Swaffham’), and was the subject of a later Inspeximus charter (whence many later copies).  The second copy (13v-15r) is the ‘earlier’ version (Hart’s ‘B’), representing Thorney’s rights and endowment before King Edgar’s death.  There follow copies of seven royal diplomas (III-IX) and one vernacular will (X); the texts are generally of good quality, with vernacular bounds, though the copyist has abbreviated the witness-lists.  One for Thorney (S 948), and the vernacular will of Mantat (S 1523); Conington title-deed preserved at Winchester (see Hart’s discussion).  Royal diplomas for laymen.  Three ‘indirect’ title-deeds for laymen (S 437, 556, 595).  Three with no known connection (S 931, 847, and 943); of these, S 847 apparently transferred from Eynsham, and possible that S 931 and 943 were ‘strays’ from the same archive.  The continuation by a different hand includes a copy of Edward II’s Inspeximus of S 792 (28v-29v), and the curious pair S 936 (33v-34r) and 983 (34v), given numbers (XI, XII) as if following on from main series of pre-Conquest charters.  S 936 is apparently the product of an incompetent attempt to construct a charter in the name of King Æthelred on the basis of S 983 (in the name of King Cnut).  Links between Peterborough and Thorney (S 1377), and between Ramsey and Thorney (S (Add.) 1481a).>

<Other materials.  The monks of Thorney kept careful records of the names of those who entered into confraternity with their house, constituting a Liber Vitae.  These records are preserved in a gathering of 12 leaves which precedes an early-tenth-century gospel-book of continental origin (BL Add. 40,000, fols. 1-12).>

<A set of Thorney annals covering years from 1092 to 1412 was removed by Sir Robert Cotton from Oxford, St John’s College, MS. 17, and is now BL Cotton Nero C. vii, fols. 80-4; ptd Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.), ii. 611, and Hart, ‘Thorney Annals’.  Fourteenth-century ‘Gesta Abbatum’ at the end of the ‘Red Book’ (CUL, Add. 3021, fols. 414v-461v, with continuations).>

<Letter from Laud to Cotton, 22 November 1622, demanding back the Bede MS. lent to him from St John’s College (Cott. Julius C. iii, fol. 232r).  N. R. Ker, ‘Membra Disiecta’, British Museum Quarterly 12 (1938), pp. 130-5, on St John’s 17.  Tite, Manuscript Library, p. 107.>

Charters of Thorney

Royal diplomas.  437; 556; 595; 792; 847; 931; 936; 943; 948; 983.  For S 792, see also under Peterborough.

Miscellaneous.  (Add.) 1481a (also preserved at Ramsey).

Wills.  1523.

Select bibliography

WM, GP, pp. 326-9; Mon. Angl. i. 242-51; Not. Mon. Cambs., no. XXVI; Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) ii. 593-613; VCH Cambs. ii. 210-17; MRH, p. 78; HRH, pp. 73-5.

Hart, C., ‘The Thorney Annals’, Peterborough’s Past: the Journal of the Peterborough Museum Society 1 (1982-3), pp. 15-34; Raban, S., The Estates of Thorney and Crowland: a Study in Medieval Monastic Land Tenure (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 6-20; Warner,  R. H., The History of Thorney Abbey (Wisbech, 1879).

<Clark, C., on T, T and T in Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 00 (19xx), pp. 00-00.>  <On the ‘Liber Vitae’, see Whitelock, D., ‘Scandinavian Personal Names in the Liber Vitae of Thorney Abbey’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society for Northern Research, xii (1940), pp. 127-53; Clark, C., ‘British Library Additional MS. 40,000, ff. 1v-12r’, Anglo-Norman Studies VII, ed. R. A. Brown (Woodbridge, 1985), pp. 50-68; Clark, C., ‘The Liber Vitae of Thorney Abbey and its “Catchment Area”’, Nomina, ix (1985), pp. 53-72; and Gerchow, pp. 186-97 and 326-8.>  <Hart, C., ‘The Ramsey Computus’, English Historical Review 85 (1970), pp. 29-44.>

<London, College of Arms, MS. 218 (Augustine Vincent, Genealogical Commonplace Book, c. 1610-20), pp. 37-8, list of locations of cartularies, etc., with additions by John Vincent.  See Tanner: ref. to ‘Green Book of Thorney’.>  <London, College of Arms, MS. 63 (Augustine Vincent, Extracts from Records), p. 17, from the ‘red book’ of Thorney.>