Athelney | Kemble

Athelney abbey was founded, some time between 878 and 893 (perhaps in 888), by King Alfred the Great, at the place where the king had sought refuge from the vikings during their invasion of Wessex in 877-8 (Asser, Vita Alfredi regis, ch. 92). Alfred appointed John the Old Saxon as abbot, and populated the monastery with men recruited from overseas (ibid., chs. 92-4); a plot hatched against Abbot John by a priest and a deacon of Gallic origin was foiled, and the plotters were put to death (ibid., chs. 96-7). Our knowledge of the abbey’s history in the tenth and eleventh centuries is meagre; but while (like its neighbour at Muchelney) the abbey must have struggled to thrive in the shadow cast by the greater house at Glastonbury (below, pp. 00-00), there is no reason to doubt that religious life was maintained at Athelney throughout this period. William of Malmesbury, who appears to have visited the abbey in the early twelfth century, remarks on the particular reverence of the monks for their patron, St Æthelwine, brother of Cenwealh, king of the West Saxons.

The only recorded cartulary of Athelney abbey (Davis 15) was last sighted in the eighteenth century. It is said by Dugdale to have belonged in 1662 to Wadham Wyndham (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Dugdale 48, 60v), and it was in the hands of Sir William Wyndham Bt (1687-1740) in September 1735, when excerpts from it were made by the Revd. George Harbin (d. 1744). A ‘Regist. Abbat. de Athelney, MS.’, cited quite extensively by John Collinson in his History and Antiquities of the County of Somerset (1791), was evidently the same cartulary; unfortunately, Collinson does not indicate to whom it belonged at the time, and it is possible that he had only seen a transcript. In the absence of the cartulary itself, we have to depend on information supplied by those who had the opportunity to examine it in the eighteenth century, and in particular on the abstract made by George Harbin. This abstract exists in separate parts: ‘Pars prima’ (pp. 1-32) is in the form of two gatherings of loose sheets; ‘Pars secunda’ (pp. 33-224) and ‘Pars tertia’ (pp. 225-47) are in the form of two quarto notebooks. The loose sheets which comprise ‘Pars prima’ of Harbin’s abstract are preserved among the papers of Thomas Carew (1702-66), of Crowcombe Court, Somerset, now deposited in the Somerset Record Office; see Keynes, ‘George Harbin’s Transcript’. The notebooks which comprise ‘Pars secunda’ and ‘Pars tertia’ of the abstract were among the quantity of Harbin’s literary effects purchased by Sir Thomas Phillipps in 1831, from Harbin’s descendant Sir Alexander Malet, and became Phillipps MSS. 4810-11; they were sold at Sotheby’s on 19 February 1947 (Lot 539), and were acquired by Dr David Rogers. A calendar of the charters and other records in the second and third parts of Harbin’s abstract was published in Two Cartularies, ed. Bates, pp. 126-201; for a calendar of the charters and other records in the first part of the abstract, see Vincent (forthcoming). It should be emphasised that Harbin’s abstract may fall some way short of giving a complete account of the contents of the lost cartulary. In the context of his attempt to reconstruct the succession of abbots of Athelney, Collinson (i. 87-8) remarks that he finds the name of Abbot John ‘mentioned A.D. 888, 890, and 892’, and states that ‘Athelward was abbot in 1016’; if we may assume that this information was based on charters copied in the cartulary, it would follow that Harbin himself had not been concerned to provide a comprehensive digest of its contents.

<Leland, Coll., iv. 69ff. on foundation-dates of monastic houses (giving 888 for Athelney); ancient Rochester MS., presumably Harley 261, 106v-107v.>

It would appear on the basis of Harbin’s abstract that the lost cartulary of Athelney abbey was compiled in the mid-fifteenth century; and while the texts of the abbey’s pre-Conquest charters are transmitted in a condition which leaves much to be desired, they constitute an archive of considerable historical and diplomatic interest. By the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, the abbey’s endowment in Somerset comprised estates at Ilton and Ashill (8 + 2 hides), Long Sutton (10 + 2 hides), Seavington (2 hides), Hamp (1 hide), Lyng (1 hide), and Bossington (1 hide) (GDB 91r, 97r). Most if not all of these estates were represented in the cartulary by charters cast directly in favour of the abbey: Long Sutton, by a charter of King Alfred (S 343, dated ‘852’; cf. Harbin, p. 211 (Bates, p. 191), where the same grant is assigned to the ‘8th’ year of Alfred’s reign, i.e. 878-9); Lyng, by a charter of King Æthelstan (S 432), dated 937; Ilton, by a charter of King Edgar (see S (Add.) 1605a); Hamp, by a charter of King Æthelred to Abbot Ælfric (S 921), dated 1009; and Seavington, by an undated charter of King Cnut to Abbot Æthelwine (S 979). The estate at Hamp was also represented in the cartulary by a charter of King Eadwig for his thegn Ceolward (S 652), dated ‘958’; a charter of King Beorhtric for his prefectus Wigfrith (S 267), dated 794, precedes S 652 and 921 in the cartulary, and relates to a larger estate in the same area. <Three other charters.> The cartulary also included a record of a grant by a certain Maenchi comes, son of Pretignor, of land at Lanlawren in Cornwall to ‘St Heldenus’ (apparently a church dedicated to St Hyldren, perhaps at Lansallos, Cornwall), said to have been made at Athelney during the reign of King Æthelstan, in the presence of Abbot Seignus (S 1207); see Padel, ‘Two New Pre-Conquest Charters for Cornwall’, and ‘The Text of the Lanlawren Charter’ (from Harbin). Among the other items in Harbin’s abstract of the cartulary, we find a text of ‘the king’s oath on the day of his coronation’ (Harbin, pp. 33-4 (Bates, p. 126)), derived from a version of the Second Ordo; an account of the abbey’s estates in Somerset (Harbin, pp. 102-6 (Bates, p. 151)), derived from Domesday Book; and a list of kings of England, with details of their places of burial (and gifts to the abbey), extending from Ecgberht to Henry V (Harbin, pp. 202-8 (Bates, pp. 188-90)).

The textual history of the charter purporting to record King Alfred’s grant of 10 hides at Long Sutton (S 343) is particularly interesting. There would appear to have been a copy of the charter in the sixteenth-century Prise-Say register (above, pp. 00-0), best represented in this case by Oxford, Bodleian Library, Eng. hist. c. 241, 53v-54r, and BL Lansdowne 447, 59rv. The charter was printed from an unspecified source in Reyner, Apostolatus Benedictinorum in Anglia, tract. 2, p. 132 (whence Mon. Angl. i. 202-3, and BCS 545), omitting the bounds and the witness-list; a text of the charter was also incorporated, apparently from the same unspecified source, by Thomas Gerard in his ‘Survey of Somerset’ (see The Particular Description of the County of Somerset, ed. Bates, pp. 216-17, from Northampton, Northamptonshire Record Office, MS. Finch-Hatton 113, fols. 367-9), omitting the bounds. The texts in the representatives of the Prise-Say register, and in Reyner and Gerard, agree with each other against Harbin’s abstract; for example, the representatives of the Prise-Say register supply a marginally ‘better’ version of the bounds, and (with Gerard) a marginally ‘better’ version of the witness-list. It would thus appear that these texts derive from a source other than the lost cartulary, perhaps in single-sheet form (though evidently not a putative original).

For a series of documents relating to the abbey’s suppression in 1539, see W. A. J. Archbold, The Somerset Religious Houses (Cambridge, 1892), esp. pp. 29-33, 50-1, 80-2 and 217-24.

Charters of Athelney

Royal diplomas. 267; (Add.) 342a; 343; (Add.) 343a [formerly 1605]; 432; 652; (Add.) 879a; 921; 979. See also (Add.) 1605.

Miscellaneous. 1207.

Select bibliography

WM, GP, p. 199; Mon. Angl. i. 202-3; Not. Mon. (Somerset), no. I; Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) ii. 402-9; VCH Somerset ii. 99-103; MRH, p. 59; HRH, pp. 26-7.

Two Cartularies of the Benedictine Abbeys of Muchelney and Athelney in the County of Somerset, ed. E. H. Bates, Somerset Record Society 14 (1899);
The Particular Description of the County of Somerset, drawn up by Thomas Gerard of Trent, 1633, ed. E. H. Bates, Somerset Record Society 15 (1900);
J. Collinson, The History and Antiquities of the County of Somerset, 3 vols. (Bath, 1791);
R. W. Dunning, ‘The Abbey of the Princes: Athelney Abbey, Somerset’, Kings and Nobles in the Later Middle Ages, ed. R. A. Griffiths and J. Sherborne (Gloucester, 1987), pp. 295-303;
Edwards, Charters of the Early West Saxon Kingdom, pp. 262-4;
T. Hugo, ‘Athelney Abbey’, Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society 43 (1897), pp. 94-165;
S. Keynes, ‘George Harbin’s Transcript of the Lost Cartulary of Athelney Abbey’, Somerset Archaeology and Natural History 000 (1993), pp. 00-00;
O. J. Padel, ‘Two New Pre-Conquest Charters for Cornwall’, Cornish Studies 6 (1978), pp. 20-7;
O. J. Padel, ‘The Text of the Lanlawren Charter’, Cornish Studies 7 (1979), pp. 43-4;
C. Reyner, Apostolatus Benedictinorum in Anglia (Douai, 1626);
N. Vincent, ‘A Calendar of the Charters in the First Part of George Harbin’s Excerpts from the Lost Cartulary of Athelney Abbey’, Somerset Archaeology and Natural History 000 (199x), pp. 00-00.

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October 2011