Wells

These notes originated in the early 1990s. See now Charters of Bath and Wells, ed. S. E. Kelly, Anglo-Saxon Charters 13 (Oxford, 2007).

The church of St Andrew at Wells is reputed to have been founded in the early eighth century, by Ine, king of Wessex; but little is known of its history in the eighth and ninth centuries. When the diocese of Sherborne was divided, c. 910, Wells became the new episcopal see for Somerset. Among the bishops of Wells in the eleventh century were the Lotharingians Duduc (1033-61) and Giso (1061-88), both of whom had served as royal priests, in the households of Cnut and Edward the Confessor respectively. Giso found the church in a state of poverty, and set about restoring its fortunes; but his audacious attempt to impress his authority over the abbeys of Athelney and Muchelney was effectively countered by the abbot of Glastonbury (above, p. 000). Giso was succeeded by Bishop John de Villula, to whom King William II granted St Peter’s abbey, Bath, in 1088, for the augmentation of the bishopric and so that John could re-establish his episcopal see there (Regesta i. 314-15). The Anglo-Saxon cathedral of Wells was demolished towards the end of the twelfth century, to make way for a much grander structure; in the thirteenth century the church recovered cathedral status, and the bishopric was re-named that of ‘Bath and Wells’.

A tract known to modern scholarship as the Historiola de primordiis episcopatus Somersetensis, written (it seems) by a canon of Wells in the 1170s, is preserved in a cartulary of Bath priory (London, Lincoln’s Inn, MS. Hale 185, 96r-99r; above, p. 00); printed (with translation) in J. Hunter, Ecclesiastical Documents, Camden Soc. (London, 1840), pp. 9-28. The tract incorporates an account of the measures taken by Giso to recover and to increase the endowment of the church, which purports to have been written by Giso himself so that his successors would know which estates belonged to the canons and which to the bishops (Hunter, pp. 15-20). It emerges from this account that Duduc had been given certain properties by King Cnut, including ‘the monastery of St Peter in the city of Gloucester’, with all its appurtenances, as well as Congresbury and Banwell in Somerset (known to have belonged formerly to Asser, bishop of Sherborne); that during the reign of King Edward the Confessor, Duduc gave or bequeathed these properties (with his other effects, including ‘very many books’) to the church of Wells; and that Duduc’s good intentions were frustrated by Earl Harold, who appropriated the lands, and by Archbishop Stigand, who managed to persuade King Edward to give ‘the aforesaid monastery’ (i.e. of St Peter, in Gloucester) to him. It emerges further that on his own appointment to the bishopric of Wells, Giso set about repairing the situation as he found it, initially with the co-operation of King Edward and Queen Edith; that after Edward’s death King Harold promised to restore what he had previously taken away, and even to make new grants; and that William I was also disposed to help, not least by promising to give Giso ‘the monastery of Oswald’, as soon as the opportunity arose. (For the ‘monastery of St Peter’, Gloucester, presumably St Oswald’s, see above, pp. 00-0.) The tract itself warrants further investigation (cf. Green, ‘Earl Harold and Bishop Giso’, and Gransden, ‘History of Wells Cathedral’, p. 33); suffice it to say in the present context that it conveys a striking impression of Bishop Giso’s strenuous efforts on behalf of the see of Wells, which accords in a convincing way with the range of documentation preserved in the archives of the church. Two later accounts of the bishops of Wells, known as the Historia Minor and the Historia Major, occur in ‘Liber Albus II’ (see below), 296rv and 296v-302r; they are edited by J. A. Robinson in Palmer, Collectanea, pp. 54-71, with discussion of the relationship between all three works, pp. 48-53.

The surviving muniments of the Dean and Chapter of Wells are described in detail by J. A. Bennett, in HMC Report on the Manuscripts of Wells Cathedral (London, 1885), and by W. H. B. Bird, in HMC Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Dean and Chapter of Wells, 2 vols. (London, 1907-14). The principal cartularies from an Anglo-Saxonist’s point of view are Wells, D. & C., ‘Liber Albus I’ (Davis 1003; see Bennett, pp. 1-130, and Bird, i. 1-304), and Wells, D. & C., ‘Liber Albus II’ (Davis 1006; see Bennett, pp. 151-222, and Bird, i. 305-528). ‘Liber Albus I’ was compiled c. 1240, and contains an important group of writs in the vernacular and in Latin, bearing directly on the activities of Bishop Giso: the vernacular writs (supplied with Latin translations) comprise five of King Edward (S 1111-13, 1115-16), two of ‘the lady’ Edith (S 1240-1), one of King Harold (S 1163), and one of King William (Pelteret, no. 29), and the Latin writs comprise one of King William (Regesta, no. 160) and one of Queen Matilda (unpublished). The vernacular writs were printed as a group by George Hickes, Institutiones Grammaticae Anglo-Saxonicae et Moeso-Gothicae (Oxford, 1703), pp. 160-4 (with a facsimile of S 1112 as it appears in ‘Liber Albus I’, opp. p. 144); Wanley lists them in his Catalogus (p. 285) as if each still existed in its original form, but it is clear that his entry was confected from Hickes’s edition. The text of one other writ of King Edward for Bishop Giso (S 1114) is preserved only in the fourteenth-century ‘Liber Fuscus’ (Davis 1005); but this appears to be no more than a later copyist’s version of S 1113.

‘Liber Albus II’ was compiled c. 1500, and contains a rather different selection of pre- and post-Conquest charters. A text of S 1114 occurs in a part of the cartulary copied directly from the ‘Liber Fuscus’; but none of the writs entered in ‘Liber Albus I’ is included, perhaps because the originals no longer survived. The compiler of the ‘Liber Albus II’ did, however, see fit to transcribe the texts of six royal diplomas, not included in ‘Liber Albus I’. Four were of direct interest to the church: a charter of King Cynewulf of Wessex for the minster of St Andrew’s, Wells (S 262); a charter of King Edward the Elder granting land in Somerset to Asser, bishop of Sherborne (S 380), preserved here because the land in question subsequently passed to Wells; a charter of King Edgar granting land at Manworthy in Milverton, Somerset, to a layman (S 709), preserved here because Milverton was subsequently given to Wells by Queen Edith (see S 1240); and a charter of Edward the Confessor for the bishopric of Wells (S 1042). The charter of Edward the Confessor is of singular diplomatic interest as an example of a pancarte, covering the entire endowment of the bishopric in 1065: the king is said to have authorised the gathering together, ‘in armariolo unius cartule’, of all the grants represented ‘in multis chirographis regum priorum’ (some of which had almost disintegrated), and given its unusual form it is only appropriate to find that the charter was drawn up by Bishop Giso himself (see Keynes, ‘Regenbald’, pp. 203-4). It is more difficult to account for the presence at Wells of the two other pre-Conquest diplomas copied in ‘Liber Albus II’: one (S 527) is a charter of King Eadred granting land at Hankham, Sussex, to a layman, and the other (S 579) is a charter of King Eadred granting land at Old Swinford, Worcestershire, also to a layman. Another tenth-century royal diploma, not copied in the cartularies, survives at Wells in its original form: it is a charter of King Edgar granting land at Staunton on Arrow, in Herefordshire, to a layman (S 677), and like S 527 and 579 has no obvious relationship to the endowment of St Andrew’s church. One possible explanation for the preservation of S 527, 579 and 677 at Wells is that they relate in one way or another to Duduc’s bequest, which in the event was frustrated; but of course the charters could have entered the archive under a variety of other circumstances.

The effort expended by Bishop Giso in restoring the fortunes of his impoverished church is demonstrated well enough by the privilege he secured from Pope Nicholas II soon after his appointment (still extant in its original form (Wells Cathedral Library, D. & C., Charter 2); see also EHD II, no. 76), by the remarkable series of writs running in the names of King Edward, Queen Edith, King Harold, King William and Queen Matilda (copied in ‘Liber Albus I’), and by the pancarte which he drew up in the name of King Edward the Confessor (copied in ‘Liber Albus II’). There are two other documents in ‘Liber Albus II’ which bear on Giso’s activities after the Conquest, and which should not be overlooked in the context of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ diplomatic. One is the charter by which King William restored land at Banwell (Somerset) to Bishop Giso in 1068 (Regesta i, no. 23; Pelteret, no. 11), drawn up in the manner of a pre-Conquest royal diploma, probably by Giso himself (Keynes, ‘Regenbald’, pp. 219-20). The second is the singularly interesting vernacular record of the sale of land at Combe St Nicholas (Somerset) by Azur, son of Thorthr, to Bishop Giso (Pelteret, no. 56); Azur was the registered holder of the estate in the Confessor’s reign (GDB 89r), and the transaction was conducted at Wilton in 1072, in the presence of ‘the lady’ Edith and numerous other (English) witnesses. The file of documentation concerning Bishop Giso’s affairs finds no equal in other archives for the great variety of its nature; in its own day, of course, it might not have been quite so unusual. According to the Historiola (Hunter, p. 21), Giso and his predecessor Duduc were buried respectively to the north and south of the altar. When the Anglo-Saxon cathedral was demolished, towards the end of the twelfth century, their bones were re-entombed in the new church; the contents of the tombs (and those of the other pre-Conquest bishops of Wells) were examined in 1979, and so it is, remarkably, that one is able to gaze upon the reconstructed mortal remains of Bishop Giso himself (Rodwell, p. 20, Plate 10).

The existence at Wells of one tenth-century original (S 677) suggests that we should not discount the possibility that other pre-Conquest charters from the archive survived in single-sheet form into the early modern period. A single-sheet copy of S 262 may underlie the variant text of this charter preserved in certain manuscripts of the Prise-Say register (e.g. Winchester Cathedral, MS. XXB, p. 94); it was this text which was printed by F. Godwin, De presulibus Angliæ commentarius (London, 1616), pp. 413-14 (whence Mon. Angl. i. 186-7). The case of S 1042 is perhaps especially significant. The (unprinted) copy in ‘Liber Albus II’ (241r-242r) was taken from what must be presumed to have been the ‘original’, ostensibly produced at Windsor, on 24 May 1065, by Bishop Giso himself. It would appear, however, that a version of the charter still existed in single-sheet form in the seventeenth century: a transcript headed ‘A true copy of ye charter of Edw: ye Confessor unto ye Bishop and church of Welles’ (BL Cotton Tiberius E. viii, pt i, 218rv; copied in London, College of Arms, MS. WE, 121r-123r) is the source of the text published by Dugdale in 1655 (Mon. Angl. i. 187); and the variants suggest the possibility that the transcript represents a discarded draft. The curious history of S 553, by which King Eadred confirmed land at Pucklechurch, in Gloucestershire, to Glastonbury abbey, should be noted in the same connection. The ‘original’ of this charter appears to have passed from Glastonbury to Wells in the early thirteenth century, when ownership of the estate was transferred from the abbey to the bishopric; the charter remained at Wells until c. 1860 (and was transcribed in that context by Sir Thomas Duffy Hardy), but it passed thereafter into the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, from whom it passed to the Public Record Office and thence to the Somerset Record Office (see Abrams, ‘A Rediscovered Anglo-Saxon Royal Diploma’, and BAFacs. no. 32).

Charters of Wells

Royal diplomas. 262; 380; 527; 579; 677; 709; 1042. See also 553 (from Glastonbury).

Writs. 1111; 1112; 1113 (+ 1114); 1115; 1116; 1163; 1240; 1241.

Select bibliography

WM, GP, pp. 193-6; Mon. Angl. i. 186-7; Not. Mon. (Somerset), no. XLII; Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) ii. 274-96; VCH Somerset ii. 162-9; MRH, p. 442.

L. Abrams, ‘“Lucid Intervals”: a Rediscovered Anglo-Saxon Royal Diploma from Glastonbury Abbey’, Journal of the Society of Archivists 10.2 (1989), pp. 43-56;
Wells Cathedral: a History, ed. L. S. Colchester (Shepton Mallet, 1982);
Edwards, Charters of the Early West Saxon Kingdom, pp. 259-61;
A. Gransden, ‘The History of Wells Cathedral c. 1090-1547’, Wells Cathedral, ed. Colchester, pp. 24-51;
J. R. Green, ‘Earl Harold and Bishop Giso’, Proceedings of the Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural History Society 12 (1865), pp. 148-57;
Harmer, Writs, pp. 270-86;
T. F. Palmer, Collectanea I: a Collection of Documents from Various Sources, Somerset Record Soc. 39 (1924);
C. A. Ralegh Radford, ‘The Church in Somerset Down to 1100’, Proceedings of the Somersetshire Archaeological & Natural History Society 106 (1962), pp. 28-45;
J. A. Robinson, The Saxon Bishops of Wells: a Historical Study in the Tenth Century, British Academy Supplemental Papers 4 (London, 1918);
W. Rodwell, ‘The Anglo-Saxon and Norman Churches at Wells’, Wells Cathedral, ed. Colchester, pp. 1-23.

<W. J. Rodwell, ‘From Mausoleum to Minster: the Early Development of Wells Cathedral’, The Early Church in Western Britain and Ireland, ed. S. M. Pearce, British Archaeological Reports, British Series 102 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 49-59; W. J. Rodwell, ‘The Origins of Wells Cathedral’, Antiquity 56 (1982), pp. 215-18.>

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