Rouen, St Ouen

<Merovingian abbey, refounded in the first half of the tenth century; reformed from Fécamp, c. 1006.  Enlarge on particular importance of the abbey.>  The church of Saint-Ouen held an estate of 20 hides at (West) Mersea, in Essex, TRE and TRW (LDB 22r).  The priory of SS. Peter and Paul, West Mersea, was dependent on Saint-Ouen until c. 1420, when it was sold to Henry Chichele, archbishop of Canterbury, and his brother, and given to the secular college which they founded at Higham Ferrers, Northants. 

A large number of Norman charters pertaining to the abbey of Saint-Ouen survive in their original form, but the earliest of the extant cartularies date from the latter part of the fifteenth century.  S 1015 is a charter, dated 1046, by which King Edward the Confessor granted land at Mersea to Saint-Ouen, ‘just as I held it intact for two days after (by the grace of God) I became head of the kingdom’.  The original charter was preserved at Rouen until c. 1420, when the estate at Mersea was sold by the monks of Saint-Ouen to Henry Chichele, archbishop of Canterbury (Matthew, pp. 129-30).  A copy of the charter was entered with a number of other charters for Saint-Ouen in a roll produced in connection with a plea held c. 1325, perhaps at Colchester; and it was printed from this source (now Colchester, Essex Record Office, D/D Cm. 218/1) by Morant, History and Antiquities of the County of Essex, i. 426, note F.  A significantly better copy of the charter was made at Rouen in the early fifteenth century (shortly before the original was given to Archbishop Henry Chichele), and is now Rouen, Archives de Seine-Maritime, 14 H 145; printed by Matthew, pp. 143-9.  For further discussion, see Hart. <Check: does DM or CRH have copy of Rouen MS.?  Any reference in s. xvii inventories?>

Royal diploma.  1015.

Select bibliography

Neustria Pia, pp. 1-64; Round, Calendar, pp. 29-31.  See also Matthew, Norman Monasteries, pp. 5-6, 24-5 and 129.  For Mersea, see Mon. Angl. i. 552; Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) vi. 991-2; MRH, p. 94.

Hart, C., ‘The Mersea Charter of Edward the Confessor’, Essex Archaeology and History 12 (1980), pp. 94-102.  Morant, Philip, The History and Antiquities of the County of Essex, 2 vols. (London, 1768).

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October 2011