Wilton

The legendary origins of Wilton abbey lie in the early ninth century, but are recorded in a form which inspires little confidence (see further below).  There is no reason to doubt, however, that a community of religious women already existed at Wilton in the first half of the tenth century, and every reason to suppose that the community enjoyed especially close relations, in one way or another, with the ranks of the West Saxon aristocracy.  Ælfflæd, second wife of Edward the Elder, is said to have been buried at Wilton, together with her daughters Eadflæd and Æthelhild (both of whom appear to have been associated with the community, one as a nun and the other as a lay recluse); see WM, GR i. 136-7.  In 937 King Æthelstan granted an estate at Burcombe in Wiltshire to the ‘venerabili collegio Christicolarum in illo celebri loco qui dicitur Wiltun, ad ecclesiam sancte Marie matris domini’, for his own sake and for that of his (half-) sister Eadflæd (S 438).  It would appear that members of this collegium Christicolarum were able to hold land in their own right, for in 944 King Edmund granted land at Rollington in Wiltshire to Ælfgyth, ‘sancte conversationis monialis femina’ (S 493), presumably the Ælfgyth, ‘sanctimonialis in Wiltunensi monasterio degens’, to whom King Eadred granted land in Somerset on payment of 120 solidi of gold (S 563, dated 955 and preserved at Glastonbury); but one should add that the charter by which King Eadwig granted a large estate to the ‘venerande sanctimonialium congregationi in monasterio quod dicitur Wiltun’, also issued in 955, was attested by the same Ælfgyth, styled ‘magistra prefati monasterii’ (S 582).  King Eadred is known to have bequeathed 30 pounds each to Winchester (Nunnaminster), Wilton and Shaftesbury (S 1515); and in 962, during the reign of King Edgar, Ælfgar, ‘the king’s kinsman in Devon’, died and was buried at Wilton (ASC, MS. A).  The Lives of St Wulfhild of Barking and of St Edith of Wilton, written soon after the Conquest by Goscelin of Saint-Bertin’s, provide valuable information on the history of the abbey in the second half of the tenth century, reinforcing the impression that it was, first and foremost, a community for the well-born women of Wessex; see further below.  The abbey seems to have retained its special relationship with the West Saxon aristocracy until the end of the Anglo-Saxon period.  Queen Edith, daughter of Earl Godwine and wife of Edward the Confessor, is said to have been brought up and educated at Wilton (VEdR [2nd ed.], pp. 22, 36 and 70), and it was to Wilton (or Wherwell, according to ASC) that she briefly returned, following Edward’s triumph over Godwine in 1051 (VEdR, pp. 36 and 44); Edith was subsequently responsible for re-building the church at Wilton in stone, and is said to have bestowed on the abbey ‘new gifts worthy of her royal highness’ (VEdR, pp. 70-4).  In 1072, a sale of land in Somerset by a certain Azor to Giso, bishop of Wells, was conducted ‘on the upper floor in the stone church at Wilton’, in the presence of Queen Edith and her retinue (above, p. 000 <Wells>). 

It is instructive to approach the Wilton charters in the light of a summary of the abbey’s legendary or semi-legendary past.  According to the traditions enshrined in the fifteenth-century Chronicon Vilodunense (BL Cotton Faustina B. iii), a church at Wilton was founded in the early ninth century by ‘Erle Wolstonus’ (Weohstan, ealdorman of Wiltshire), in commemoration of his father-in-law ‘Seynt Alquimound’ (Alhmund), said to have been killed in battle against Ethelmund, ‘king of Mercia’, in 800 (ed. Hortsmann, lines 318-39; cf. ASC, s.a. 802).  In 830 the church was converted into a nunnery by King Egberht, at the request of his sister ‘Elburga’, Wolston’s wife (lines 130-53 and 340-57); and in 890 King Alfred started building a new church, which was completed within two years and re-established as a house for 26 nuns, under Abbess Radgund, daughter of Æthelstan, ‘earl of Wiltshire’ (lines 598-629).  The bulk of the Chronicon is inevitably no more than a re-telling of the legend of St Edith; and the poet’s list of his sources (ed. Horstmann, pp. 112-13) does little to encourage the hope that he might have made use of authoritative material.  It would appear, however, that the poet had consulted the abbey’s charters, for he says of King Æthelstan, ‘And meche gode he dede to †at place, As in your Mynymentys fynd ye may’ (lines 696-7); a reference to King Cnut towards the end of the poem - ‘& meche gode he gaff †is abbay of Wyltone to, & confermede alle thyng †e wheche was y-geue †erto byfore’ (lines 3639-40) - conceivably points in the same direction.

With Goscelin we should be on much firmer ground.  He was a monk of Saint-Bertin’s, in Saint-Omer (Flanders), who at the instigation of Bishop Herman (bishop of Sherborne, 1058-78) had taken up residence in England in the early 1060s; he seems to have been based for a while at Sherborne, and may have acted as chaplain to the nuns of Wilton.  According to the Vita S. Wulfhildae (written in the late 1080s), Wulfhild was a nun at Wilton, who attracted the unwanted attentions of King Edgar.  She had narrow escapes, at Wherwell in Hampshire and in the cloisters at Wilton, after which the king abandoned his quest, making her abbess of Barking (in Essex) and giving her the abbey of Horton (in Dorset) as well; the king then turned his attention towards her cousin, Wulfthryth.  According to the Vita S. Edithe (written c. 1080), Wulfthryth was the daughter of a ‘royal duke’.  In her case Edgar’s efforts were not in vain; but following the birth of their daughter Edith, at Kemsing (in Kent), Wulfthryth decided to enter the nunnery at Wilton, and presently became its abbess.  Edith herself was brought up by her mother at Wilton abbey.  Her claim to sanctity appears to have arisen from her determination to remain a nun; in 975, for example, she is said to have refused to be made queen following the death of her half-brother, Edward the Martyr.  Edith died, aged 23, on 16 September 984.

None of the pre-Conquest charters of Wilton abbey has survived in its original form, but the extant cartulary of the abbey (BL Harley 436 (Davis 1035)), written at the beginning of the fourteenth century, provides an almost monotonously reliable series of mainly tenth-century royal diplomas.  It should be noted that Harley 436 provides a good example of the value of understanding the contents of a cartulary in relation to the physical construction of the manuscript itself.  In its present form, the manuscript is made up of nine quires of eight leaves apiece (fols. 1-72), followed by a final group of leaves (fols. 73-91) in which the regularity of construction breaks down.  It seems that the scribe began her work with the text of S 531, on fols. 1-3, and proceeded for quire after quire thereafter; but it is apparent from the impressions made by coloured initials on adjacent leaves, and from other details, that she decided as an afterthought to place texts of S 582 and 799 at the beginning of the manuscript, on ten added leaves, presumably because these charters (which concern the abbey’s vast estate at Chalke, in Wiltshire) struck her as being of special importance.  The added leaves were subsequently displaced, and are now fols. 81 + 83-91.  It is also apparent that the manuscript is defective at what would once have been its end: fols. 73-4 + 82 are all that remain from the middle of one quire, and fols. 75-80 seem to represent another quire of eight leaves, lacking the outer bifolium.

<S 706 possibly from Wilton?>

The compiler of the Wilton cartulary made no attempt to capitalise on the opportunities which must have been presented by the abbey’s distinguished past, and thus seems at first sight to have been moving in a world far removed from the traditions recorded in ‘literary’ sources.  She assembled 33 royal diplomas (but no writs or wills), ranging in date from 892 to 1045, and organised them in a roughly topographical manner; <plus chirograph dated 1208>.  Seven of the 33 diplomas are cast directly in favour of the abbey, and of these at least two may represent texts ‘improved’ or adapted to suit a particular purpose (doubtless a long time before the cartulary itself was compiled): King Æthelstan’s grant of North Newnton to Wilton (S 424), and King Edgar’s grant of privileges and land to Abbess Wulfthryth (S 799).  One of King Edgar’s charters concerns a scattered group of estates which he had previously granted to Wulfthryth temporaliter (on lease?), now granted in perpetuity to the nuns of Wilton abbey (S 766).  The remaining 26 charters constitute an impressive series of title-deeds for estates which came into the abbey’s possession.  One is a charter by which King Eadwig granted Kemsing in Kent to his kinswoman Ælfswith, matrona, probably in 956 or 957 (S 662); Edith was not then born, but the charter tends to confirm that the place was at the time in the hands of someone who might well have been entrusted with a royal birth, while the charter’s presence in the archive simply reflects the subsequent acquisition of the place by the abbey itself.  <Charters in same world as the legends reported by Goscelin.>

A seal-matrix inscribed ‘± SIGILL[UM] EADGYÎE REGAL[IS] ADELPHE’ (‘± Seal of Edith, royal sister’) was used in the thirteenth century (and in the sixteenth century) for sealing charters issued by abbesses of Wilton; see F. Douce, ‘Some Remarks on the Original Seal belonging to the Abbey of Wilton’, Archaeologia 18 (1815), pp. 40-54; VCH Wilts. iii. 242; and T. A. Heslop, ‘English Seals from the Mid Ninth Century to 1100’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 133 (1980), pp. 1-16, at 4.  The matrix itself does not survive; but to judge from the extant impressions it would appear to have been made in the second half of the tenth century, and can thus be identified as the seal of Edith, daughter of King Edgar and (half-) sister of King Edward the Martyr and of King Æthelred the Unready.  It existence suggests that Edith had some use for a personal seal, presumably in the period between her father’s death in 975 and her own in 984; perhaps she was not quite as reclusive as her legend implies. The word adelpha, 'sister', corresponds to the word adelphus, 'brother', a grecism employed by Frithegod of Canterbury (DMLBS, fasc. I, p. 27); it is striking that adelphus is used of Edgar, in relation to Eadwig, in S 505 (Abing 52) and S 597 (Abing 55).

Following the dissolution of Wilton abbey in 1539, its buildings and estates were acquired by Sir William Herbert (1506-70), 1st Earl of Pembroke; see Survey of the Lands of William First Earl of Pembroke, ed. C. R. Straton, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1909) I, pp. xvii-xxxviii.  The abbey’s cartulary was among the muniments which passed into Sir William’s hands, at Wilton House; it was still in the possession of the Earl of Pembroke in 1658 (Mon. Angl. ii. 857-67), but by c. 1700 it belonged to George Hickes, who presented it in 1707 to Sir Robert Harley.  The Wilton charters in Harley 436 were published as a group in Registrum Wiltunense, ed. J. I. Ingram, et al. (London, 1827), of which 100 copies were printed at the expense of Sir Richard Colt Hoare Bt, of Stourhead, Wilts.  This magnificent volume (which incorporates an engraving of Edith’s seal) was dedicated to the then Earl of Pembroke, and represents a landmark in the study of Anglo-Saxon charters.  It is usually bound with Chronicon Vilodunense; sive De Vita et Miraculis Sanctæ Edithæ, ed. G. H. Black (London, 1830), also limited to 100 copies and also published at Hoare’s expense.

<Check Bodl. Phillipps-Robinson b. 73 (SC 50728): manuscript of Hoare’s edition, apparently suggesting that he did the work.>

Charters of Wilton abbey

Edition: Charters of Wilton Abbey (in preparation).

Royal diplomas.  348; 364; 368; 424; 438; 458; 468; 469; 492; 493; 519; 531; 543; 582; 586; 609; 612; 631; 642; 647; 662; 666; 685; 719; 766; 767; 784; 789; 799; 870; 881; 1010; 1811.

Select bibliography

WM, GP, pp. 188-91; Mon. Angl. i. 191; Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) ii. 315-32 and 857-67; VCH Wilts. iii. 231-42; MRH, pp. 267-8; HRH, pp. 222-3.

J. E. Nightingale, Memorials of Wilton and other Papers, ed. E. Kite (Devizes, 1906).  The principal ‘literary’ sources are edited as follows: S. Editha sive Chronicon Vilodunense, ed. C. Horstmann (Heilbronn, 1883); M. Esposito, ‘La vie de sainte Vulfilde par Goscelin de Cantorbéry’, Analecta Bollandiana 32 (1913), pp. 10-26; and A. Wilmart, ‘La légende de Ste Édith en prose et vers par le moine Goscelin’, Analecta Bollandiana 56 (1938), pp. 5-101 and 265-307.  For Goscelin and the cult of St Edith, see Barlow, Life of King Edward, pp. 133-49, and Ridyard, Royal Saints, pp. 37-44 and 140-75.

<SDK 1995>