Waltham

The early history of Waltham abbey is related in the tract De inventione Sanctae Crucis nostre, written at Waltham towards the end of the twelfth century.  According to this work, a stone crucifix was discovered at Lutgaresbury (Montacute) in Somerset, during the reign of Cnut.  The discovery was revealed to the owner of the estate, Tovi the Proud, who took the crucifix to Waltham in Essex, and there founded and endowed the church of the Holy Cross.  Tovi is known from other sources to have been a man of some standing during the reign of Cnut (e.g. S 1462), and was still active in the early 1040s (S 1490; he married Gytha, daughter of Osgod Clapa, in 1042, but had probably been married before).  On Tovi’s death, the properties which pertained to his office as ‘staller’ are said to have passed to his son Æthelstan, father of Asgar the staller; but Æthelstan possessed none of his father’s abilities, and presently lost Waltham, which was given by King Edward to Earl Harold (De inventione, ch. 14).  Harold refounded the church for a dean and 12 canons, and increased its endowment (ibid., chs. 15-16); the foundation was confirmed in 1062, by charter of King Edward the Confessor (S 1036).  The author of the De inventione insists that Harold was buried at Waltham following his death at the battle of Hastings (ch. 21), and evidently did so to counter other stories then circulating about the king’s fate (see Vita Haroldi, ed. Birch).  Waltham was refounded by Henry II for Augustinian canons, in 1177.  Excavations at Waltham abbey have revealed traces of a sequence of earlier (pre-Conquest) churches under the site of the present building. 

<Check standing of Vita Haroldi in relation to stories about H’s death.  Fleming, Kings and Lords, p. 57 n.; art. in Harlaxton volume, on relic-list.>

According to the author of the tract on Waltham, King Edward the Confessor’s charter was written ‘in golden letters’ (De inventione, ch. 18); it still existed in single-sheet form (again, said to have been written in gold letters) in 1204, when it was listed among the relics at Waltham (see Early Charters, ed. Ransford, pp. 3 (no. 1) and 435 (no. 637)).  The charter was given pride of place in Waltham’s earliest surviving cartularies: BL Harley 391 (Davis 989), written c. 1220, has the better text; BL Cotton Tiberius C. ix (Davis 990), written c. 1230, is more corrupt.  In addition, a copy of the charter was entered (with several other Waltham charters) on Cartae Antiquae Roll 12; the exemplar was probably the single sheet itself, for the orthography is close to what may be presumed to have been original, and the names in the witness-list are given in five discrete columns.  Other copies of Edward’s charter occur in two sixteenth-century Waltham cartularies (BL Harley 3739 (Davis 992), 1r-3v, and BL Add. 37665 (Davis 993), 6r-9r).

CHARTERS OF WALTHAM

Edition: to be included in Charters of Barking Abbey (in preparation).

Royal diploma.  1036.

Select bibliography

Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) vi. 56-68; VCH Essex ii. 166-72 and v. 155-73; MRH, p. 178; HRH, p. 188. 

• The Foundation of Waltham Abbey: the Tract ‘De Inventione Sanctae Crucis Nostrae in Monte Acuto et de Ductione eiusdem apud Waltham', ed. W. Stubbs (Oxford, 1861)
• Vita Haroldi: the Romance of the Life of Harold King of England, ed. W. de G. Birch (London, 1885)
• The Cartae Antiquae Rolls 11-20, ed. J. Conway Davies, Pipe Roll Society ns 33 (London, 1960 [for 1957]), pp. 35-8
• P. J. Huggins, ‘The Excavation of an 11th-Century Viking Hall and 14th-Century Rooms at Waltham Abbey, Essex’, Medieval Archaeology 20 (1976), pp. 75-133; ‘Waltham Abbey’, Current Archaeology 11.5 (1991), pp. 224-6; P. J. Huggins, ‘<check title>’, London Archaeologist 6.11 (1991), pp. 292-300 
• S. Keynes, ‘Regenbald the Chancellor (sic)’, Anglo-Norman Studies X, ed. R. A. Brown (Woodbridge, 1988), pp. 185-222, at 201-3
• The Early Charters of the Augustinian Canons of Waltham Abbey, Essex, 1062-1230, ed. R. Ransford, Studies in the History of Medieval Religion 2 (Woodbridge, 1989)
• The Waltham Chronicle: an Account of the Discovery of Our Holy Cross at Montacute and its Conveyance to Waltham ['De Inventione Sanctae Crucis'], ed. L. Watkiss and M. Chibnall (Oxford, 1994)
• Robin Fleming, on Harold, in ODNB (2004)

Orderic.  Thacker on Harold at Chester.  Durham in 1070s (HDE iii.23).