Fécamp

The abbey of Fécamp was founded c. 990, and enjoyed a close association with the dukes of Normandy. King Æthelred is said to have visited the abbey during his period of exile in Normandy (1013-14); see Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale xxvi. 13 <(Nuremburg, 1483) [TCL VI.17.15]> (and Neustria Pia, pp. 213-14).  The abbey appears to have served as a ducal chancery in the 1020s and 1030s. Edward the Confessor’s involvement with Fécamp originated during his period of exile in Normandy (1016-42): Duke Robert’s expedition to invade England on behalf of the æthelings Edward and Alfred set off from Fécamp in 1033, and both of the æthelings attest charters apparently produced at Fécamp at about the time of the fleet’s departure (Keynes 1991, pp. 187-8 and 193-4); original charter of Duke Robert I for Fécamp, also issued in early 1030s, attested by ‘King Edward’ (ibid., pp. 188-90).  Abbot John visited England in 1054, to inspect the abbey’s possessions; etc. The abbot of Fécamp held an estate of 20 hides at Rameslie (Rye, Sussex) TRE and TRW; further estates, at Steyning (81 hides) and Bury (16 hides), also in Sussex, held TRE by Earl Harold and Countess Goda respectively, were in the abbot’s hands by the time of the Domesday survey (GDB 17r).

A number of early ducal charters for Fécamp survive in single-sheet form (see C. H. Haskins, Norman Institutions (Cambridge, Mass., 1918), pp. 250-64, and plates), and the archive is also represented by two cartularies.  A particularly important cartulary, said to have been compiled in the early twelfth century and known to have existed in the eighteenth century, is now lost.  Some of the texts entered in this lost cartulary, including several ‘early’ charters for the abbey, were transcribed or printed by scholars who had access to the manuscript before its disappearance; see, for example, Fauroux, nos. 4, 31, 70-2, 93-4, 139 and 145, some of which depend on copies made by Dom Jacques Lenoir (1721-92), on whom see de Mathan, ‘L’abbaye de Fécamp dans les cahiers de Dom Lenoir’.  The lost cartulary also contained a composite record of the abbey’s interests near Hastings in East Sussex (S 982 + 949); printed, from Lenoir’s notes (Paris, Bibliothèque National, coll. Moreau, vol. 21, pp. 18-19), by Haskins, ‘A Charter of Canute for Fécamp’.  The record seems to be a conflation of extracts from documents pertaining to a number of originally distinct acts: (1) a grant to the abbey by King Cnut, of an estate at Bretda (Brede); (2) another grant to the abbey by King Cnut (1017 x 1032), of an estate at Rammesleah (Rye), with its harbour, in fulfillment of a promise previously made by King Æthelred; (3) a grant by King Cnut to Abbot John (1028 x 1035), of two-thirds of the toll in the harbour of Winchelsea; and (4) a confirmation of one or more of Cnut’s grants made by King Harthacnut (1040 x 1042).  The composite record was probably drawn up in its received form by the monks of Fécamp, but it may well have been based ultimately on documents produced in England.

<Lenoir’s extracts from lost cartulary of Fécamp in Paris, BN, coll. Moreau, MS. 341, fols. 1-190; ?used for chronological sequence in coll. Moreau, MS. 21, pp. 18-19.>  <NB King Æthelred had previously given Rye to Eynsham abbey (S 911).>

There is good reason to believe that Fécamp was given its important estate at Steyning, in West Sussex, during the reign of Edward the Confessor.  The text of S 1054, a vernacular document announcing Edward’s grant of Steyning to the abbey, after the death of Bishop Ælfwine (bishop of Winchester, 1032-47), is preserved only in a thirteenth-century Cartae Antiquae roll. The document is anomalous in the sense that it does not conform to the conventions of a royal writ; but it is seemingly eleventh-century in origin, and there is no obvious reason why it should not be accepted as a genuine record. It should be noted in this connection that a ‘cartula Eduardi, Regis Anglorum’, which would appear to have been a version of the same document, was formerly preserved in the archives at Fécamp (see Neustria Pia, p. 223); and one shoud add that a charter of King William for Fécamp, issued between 1072 and 1078 (see below), contains a reference to what would appear to have been a sealed writ of Edward granting Steyning to the abbey. <Check context in the charter roll.>

A manuscript (presumably from Fécamp) which belonged in the seventeenth century to the Bigot family of Rouen, but which does not survive to this day, contained certain texts which throw further light on the abbey’s interests in England before the Conquest.  (For the present location of other manuscripts from the Bigot collection, sold in 1706, see Delisle, Bibliotheca Bigotiana manuscripta; see also Nortier, ‘Les bibliothèques médiévales des abbayes bénédictines de Normandie, I: Fécamp’.)  The first of these texts (printed in Neustria Pia, p. 223) is an account of a visit to England made in 1054 by John de Ravenna, abbot of Fécamp (1028-78); see Matthew, p. 20, and Barlow, Edward the Confessor, p. 205.  We are told that Abbot John came to inspect the lands which were under his control in England, and to do what he could to set them in order; he was then received honorifice by King Edward, and prevailed upon the king to give him the church of Eastbourne (Sussex), plus land for one plough at Lamport (in Eastbourne), land with meadow at Horsey (also in Eastbourne), and land at Caestra (? Hastings), with salt-pans and 12 houses - all of which lands were held in alms by two priests, called ‘Leuigar’ (Leofgar) and ‘Eggard’ (? Ecgheard).  The second text (also printed in Neustria Pia, p. 223) is a note to the effect that before his departure for England (in 1066), Duke William promised to give Steyning and its apurtenances to the abbey, ‘per unum cultellum’, and to restore other lands which had been unjustly appropriated by Godwine and his sons (Regesta i. 1).  It is difficult to judge the status of these texts by any of the principles of diplomatic criticism which can be applied in other cases; both are clearly exceptional in origin and form, but both contain circumstantial information of a kind which carries conviction.

We emerge with the impression that Fécamp had enjoyed the patronage of English kings from Æthelred to Edward the Confessor, and had received quite extensive lands and privileges in both the western and eastern parts of Sussex; but it would also appear that the abbey suffered the loss of some of its lands at the hands of Earl Godwine and Earl Harold.  The later documentation relating to Fécamp’s estate at Steyning illustrates the difficulties which the abbey seems to have faced in securing its interests, both before and after the Conquest.  According to Domesday Book, Steyning was in Earl Harold’s hands ‘in fine regis .E.’, as if he had only acquired it towards the end of Edward’s reign, and as if it were known that it properly belonged to another party.  It is not clear, however, precisely when King William fulfilled the promise which he had made in 1066 to restore Steyning and other lands to the abbey.  A charter for Fécamp, datable between 1072 and 1078 (Regesta i. 112 + 253), purports to represent the king’s confirmation of land at Steyning and Bury.  The charter is doubtless spurious in this form (Haskins, pp. 263-4); but the version of the text in Neustria Pia, pp. 223-4, apparently derived from the manuscript which had belonged to the Bigot family in the seventeenth century, is significantly different, and deserves further consideration.  It is a grant to Fécamp of the lands ‘quas dominus & antecessor meus Eduardus rex concessit prædictæ ecclesiæ: quod quidem non solummodo multorum relatione didici, sed etiam litteris eius caractere sigillatis’; the land in question was Steyning, ‘cum omnibus omnino appenditiis eius, legibus, & consuetudinibus, & sacca & socca’, and there is no mention of Bury.  It is said that King Edward, ‘dominus meus’, wished the land to be given to God, and that King William now did so for his own soul, for Edward’s soul, and for the souls of all William’s predecessors and successors.  Another charter of King William, dated 1085 and preserved at Fécamp in its original form (Regesta i. 206; Chaplais, ‘Une charte originale de Guillaume le Conquérant pour l’abbaye de Fécamp: la donation de Steyning et de Bury (1085)’), is evidently the definitive confirmation of King Edward’s gift of Steyning; but it also indicates that there had been some doubt whether the abbey had ever managed to take possession of the land during Edward’s reign.  It was by the same charter of 1085 that King William gave the manor of Bury to the abbey, in consideration of the monks’ claim to certain unspecified interests which they had in Hastings in Edward’s reign (perhaps those acquired at the time of Abbot John’s visit to England in 1054).

Royal diplomas.  949 + 982; 1054.

Select bibliography

Neustria Pia, pp. 193-258; Mon. Angl. ii. 971-3; Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) vi. 1053 and 1082-3; Round, Calendar, pp. 37-53.  See also L’Abbaye bénédictine de Fécamp, 3 vols. (Fécamp, 1959-63), and Matthew, Norman Monasteries, pp. 5 and 19-22.

Chaplais, P., ‘Une charte originale de Guillaume le Conquérant pour l’abbaye de Fécamp: la donation de Steyning et de Bury (1085)’, Fécamp i. 93-104 and 355-7, reptd with an important addendum in his Essays in Medieval Diplomacy and Administration (London, 1981), no. XVI.  Chibnall, M., ‘Fécamp and England’, Fécamp i. 127-35 and 375-8.  Delisle, L., Bibliotheca Bigotiana manuscripta (Rouen, 1877).  Douglas, D., ‘The First Ducal Charter for Fécamp’, Fécamp i. 45-56 and 337-9.  Haskins, C. H., ‘A Charter of Canute for Fécamp’, English Historical Review xxxiii (1918), pp. 342-4.  Herval, R., ‘Un moine de l’an mille: Guillaume de Volpiano, Ier abbé de Fécamp (962-1031)’, Fécamp i. 27-44 and 321-2.  de Mathan, B., ‘L’abbaye de Fécamp dans les cahiers de Dom Lenoir’, Fécamp ii. 255-74 and 387.  Musset, L., ‘La contribution de Fécamp à la reconquête monastique de la Basse-Normandie (990-1066)’, Fécamp i. 57-66 and 341-3.  Nortier, G., ‘Les bibliothèques médiévales des abbayes bénédictines de Normandie, I: Fécamp’, Revue Mabillon 47 (1957), pp. 6-33.  Musset, L., ‘La vie économique de l’abbaye de Fécamp sous l’abbatiat de Jean de Ravenne (1028-1078)’, Fécamp i. 67-79 and 345-9.

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October 2011