Westminster

According to Westminster traditions of uncertain authority, a church on the site which came to be occupied by Westminster abbey was founded in the early seventh century by Sæberht, king of the East Saxons, at the instigation of Mellitus, bishop of London (604 - c. 617).  Its benefactors in the eighth century are said to have included Offa, king of Essex, and Offa, king of Mercia.  The site (on Thorney Island, in the river Thames) subsequently came into the hands of King Edgar, and passed from him to Archbishop Dunstan; the monastery was refounded c. 960, and maintained a relatively inconspicuous existence for some time thereafter.  In the 1040s King Edward the Confessor appears to have adopted St Peter’s church at Westminster as the particular object of his favour, and as his intended burial-place (see VEdR, ed. Barlow, pp. 44-6); a new church was constructed, and was dedicated on 28 December 1065 (ASC, MSS. CD), shortly before Edward’s death on 5 January 1066 and in time for his burial on the following day.

Some of the records which purport to represent the circumstances of the abbey’s refoundation and endowment in the second half of the tenth century survive in contemporary form (S 670, 1451, and 1450, MS. 1); other documents pertaining to the endowment of the abbey in the pre-Edwardian period include royal diplomas (S 702, 753, 805, 903; see also S 645), wills (S 1487, 1522), and a record of a lawsuit (S 1447).  This interesting body of evidence has, however, been largely eclipsed by the elaborate tales and forged charters produced by members of the community in the later eleventh and first half of the twelfth century, for the gratification of their collective ego (and related purposes).  An account of the history of the abbey is given by Sulcard, a monk of Westminster writing c. 1080; see Scholz, ‘Sulcard of Westminster: Prologus de Construccione Westmonasterii’.  The process was soon taken further, finding expression in the forgery of numerous charters, and in the production (in the 1130s) of a Vita beati Eadwardi regis Anglorum, by Osbert de Clare, prior of Westminster; it has been suggested, moreover, that Osbert was also responsible for the production of at least some of the charters.  The Westminster forgeries include one charter in the name of King Offa (S 124), two in the name of St Dunstan (S 1293 and 1295), one in the name of King Edgar (S 774), one in the name of King Æthelred (S 894), and several in the name of Edward the Confessor (S 1011, 1039-41 and 1043, not to mention a large proportion of his Westminster writs).  Of these, S 774, 1011, 1041, 1043 and 1293 are regarded as the work of Osbert de Clare.  S 894 incorporates a list of purportedly tenth-century acquisitions (cf. the related list in S 1293), and has significant affinities with S 895, from Sherborne; S 124 (MS. 1) appears to represent the (not unimpressive) activities of an eleventh-century forger; S 1039 and 1040 seem to be variations on the theme of S 1043; and S 1295 covers a particular estate among those covered by S 1293.  Needless to say, there would have been many different pretexts for resorting to the fabrication of charters, and as many different forgers at work.  The monks of Westminster may well have felt a need to compensate for the fact that Edward had died before issuing a grand charter of re-foundation (VEdR, ed. Barlow, p. 45, and n. 1), on any of the occasions after the Conquest when the abbey’s entitlement to its lands and privileges was at stake; they would also have wished to provide evidence for their own (developing) conception of the earlier history of their church and its endowment, and, in the twelfth century, to make a properly documented case for Edward’s canonization (Chaplais, p. 95).  Many of the forgeries still survive in their ‘original’ form, on single sheets of parchment; and the archive in general affords a good opportunity for the further investigation of the forger’s craft in all its aspects.

Extensive series of the Latin diplomas and vernacular writs of Westminster abbey were copied in two cartularies.  London, BL Cotton Faustina A. iii (Davis 1011), originally compiled in the late thirteenth century, began with the text of Sulcard’s Prologus de Construccione Westmonasterii, on fols. 11r-16v; a different, but contemporary, scribe commenced his work with texts of S 774, 1293, 1043, 1011 and 1041 on fols. 17r-37v (giving them a collective identity which makes sense in terms of their association with the activities of Osbert de Clare), and ended it with a substantial series of Edward the Confessor’s writs, on fols. 103r-112r; a copy of S 1039 was added in the fifteenth century, on fols. 113v-120r.  The Westminster ‘Domesday’ (London, Westminster Abbey, Muniment Book 11 (Davis 1013)), was compiled in the early fourteenth century, but provides texts which appear to be independent of (and generally superior to) those in Faustina A. iii.  The collection begins with a series of papal bulls; it continues with copies of the five ‘pre-Conquest’ charters associated with Osbert de Clare (on fols. 35r-43r), followed by S 1039 (fols. 43v-45v) and by a group of three writs of King Edward granting judicial and financial rights to the abbey (S 1125-7, on fol. 46r); texts of the abbey’s post-Conquest charters are copied thereafter, and this section of the compilation concludes with a further group of pre-Conquest (or purportedly pre-Conquest) texts (S 670, 1450, 894, 903 and 1040), on fols. 75v-79r.  The rest of the cartulary is organised at first on a topographical basis, and latterly by obedientaries; copies of the abbey’s charters relating to particular estates are scattered throughout these sections, and include a number of Latin diplomas as well as numerous vernacular writs.  A few of the Westminster charters also occur in some of the abbey’s later cartularies: for example, the group of Latin diplomas in Faustina A. iii are found in BL Cotton Titus A. viii (Davis 1012), fols. 5v-13v, and S 1141-2 recur in the ‘Liber Niger Quarternus’ (Westminster Abbey, Muniment Book 1 (Davis 1015)), fol. 12rv. 

The majority of the charters still extant in their ‘original’ form remain among the muniments of Westminster abbey.  At least one (S 1522) appears to have been sold off in the early eighteenth century, and others may have escaped at about the same time.  Thomas Madox printed texts of S 1487, 1117 and 805 in his Formulare Anglicanum (London, 1702), pp. ii, 36, and 174-5, from single sheets at Westminster; the text of S 805 is not preserved in any other context.  See also Wanley, Catalogus, p. 303.  The abbey recently recovered the ‘original’ of Edward the Confessor’s ‘First’ Charter (S 1043, MS. 2), at a price (see BAFacs. no. 38).

Charters of Westminster

Royal diplomas.  124, MSS. 1 and 2; 645; 670; 702; 753; 774; 805; 894; 903; 1011; 1031; 1039; 1040; 1041; 1043, MSS. 1 and 2.

Writs.  1117; 1118; 1119; 1120; 1121; 1122; 1123; 1124; 1125; 1126; 1127; 1128; 1129; 1130; 1131; 1132; 1133; 1134; 1135; 1136; 1137; 1138; 1139; 1140, MS. 1; 1140, MS. 2; 1141; 1142; 1143; 1144; 1145; 1146; 1147; 1148; 1149; 1150.

Miscellaneous.  1248; 1293; 1295; 1447; 1450, MS. 1; 1450, MS. 2; 1451.  For 1248, see also under Barking.

Wills.  1487; 1522.

Boundary clause.  1551.

Select bibliography

WM, GP, pp. 141, 178; Mon. Angl. i. 55-62; Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) i. 265-330; VCH London, i. 433-57; MRH, pp. 79-80; HRH, pp. 76-7.  Harmer, Writs, pp. 286-372; Edwards, Charters of the Early West Saxon Kingdom, pp. 306-8.

• P. Chaplais, ‘The Original Charters of Herbert and Gervase, Abbots of Westminster (1121-1157)’, reptd in his Essays in Medieval Diplomacy and Administration (London, 1981), pp. XVIII 89-110 + Add;
• B. Harvey, Westminster Abbey and its Estates in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1977);
• Westminster Abbey Charters 1066 - c. 1214, ed. Emma Mason, London Record Society Publications 25 (London, 1988);
• G. Rosser, Medieval Westminster 1200-1540 (Oxford, 1989);
• S. Keynes, ‘The “Dunstan B” Charters’, Anglo-Saxon England 00 (1900), pp. 000-00;
• B. W. Scholz, ‘Sulcard of Westminster: Prologus de Construccione Westmonasterii’, Traditio 20 (1964), pp. 59-91.  

For an account of the surviving cartularies, see J. A. Robinson and M. R. James, The Manuscripts of Westminster Abbey (Cambridge, 1909), pp. 93-102; see also L. E. Tanner, ‘The Nature and Use of the Westminster Abbey Muniments’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 4th ser. 19 (1936), pp. 43-78.

On the Westminster forgeries, see Harmer, Writs, pp. 289-92 and 337-9; Chaplais; and Westminster Abbey Charters, ed. Mason, pp. 8-11.