Burton (on Trent)

The principal cartulary of Burton abbey is BL Loans MS. 30 (Davis 91), compiled in the 1230s. This cartulary begins with four pre-Conquest charters, all of which relate directly to the abbey: King Æthelred’s confirmation of the foundation (S 906); the will of Wulfric Spot (S 1536); and two charters of King Æthelred in favour of Abbot Wulfgeat (S 920 and 930).

It is salutary that in the case of Burton we can tell to what extent the cartularist has selected particular charters from the far greater quantity of material at his disposal in the abbey’s archive; for not long after the cartulary had been compiled, a member of the Burton community copied the texts of no fewer than thirty-eight charters into a gathering of twelve leaves headed ‘Incipiunt carte antique’, now Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth 390 (Davis 93), fols. 173-84 (pp. 345-68). The charters are arranged in chronological order, and appear to have been copied more for their interest as ‘ancient charters’ than for any utilitarian purpose; it is likely, therefore, that they represent the total number of pre-Conquest charters preserved in the archives in the mid-thirteenth century. The great majority of the charters in the Burton archive are thus seen to have been royal diplomas in favour of laymen, issued in the tenth and early eleventh centuries (with one outlier, issued in 1048). Approximately one-third of the charters were title-deeds (direct or indirect) for Burton abbey estates; of the others, some may relate to estates which had some connection with the abbey now unknown, but it is likely that a number of them were simply deposited at the abbey for safe-keeping, by local landowners or by members of families especially associated with the abbey.

Another Burton cartulary, containing significantly fuller texts of some of the royal diplomas otherwise known only from Peniarth 390, was known to antiquaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but is now lost or untraced. For further information, see Keynes, 'Anglo-Saxon Charters: Lost and Found', pp. 61-5, for S 545 (Burt 10) and S 863 (Burt 25). Excerpts made by Robert Glover from S 917 (Burt 30), which also add significantly to the text transmitted in Peniarth 390, were presumably derived from the same lost cartulary.

After the dissolution of the abbey in 153<x>, the abbey’s estates were acquired by Sir William Paget. Loan MS. 30. A group of five single sheets from the Burton archive (S 602, 768, 878, 879 and 922) came to light among the effects of a descendant of an agent for the Paget estates, and were presented in 1941 to the William Salt Library, Stafford; two other single sheets (S 623, and S 906 + 1536) remained among the muniments of the Paget family (Marquesses of Anglesey), and were transferred in 19xx to the Burton-on-Trent Museum.

The presumed single-sheet original of a charter of King Eadred for his thegn Ælfheah (S 554) passed into the hands of the antiquary William Burton (1575-1645), and was given by him to Sir Edward Coke (Lord Coke). The charter was printed by Burton, ‘out of the originall’, in his The Description of Leicestershire (London, 1622), pp. 209-10, and is evidently to be identified one of the four pre-Conquest charters listed in the catalogue of Coke’s library, c. 1630 (above, p. 000).

There was a copy of S 906 in a manuscript at Lichfield; see Anglia Sacra i. 445.

The charter by which King Edgar granted land at Breedon and elsewhere in Leicestershire to Bishop Æthelwold (S 749) seems out of place in the Burton archive. Breedon had an ancient association with Medeshamstede, and one might have expected the charter to represent an exercise in empire-building (cf. S 782); but if Æthelwold’s Peterborough had any interest in Breedon, the lands might subsequently have been transferred to Burton, perhaps during the period when Burton was ruled by Abbot Leofric of Peterborough. <Perhaps far-fetched; cf. Sawyer on Tonge.>

In one of his contributions to the meetings of the Elizabethan ‘Society of Antiquaries’, Arthur Agarde makes the following remark (Curious Discourses, i. 247-8): ‘And yet I sawe at Burton uppon Trent this somer, the monument of Ulricus Spot, father to the earles Algar and Morcar, who was the founder of that abbeye before the Conqueste, whereon lyeth his figure cross-legged, armed with his shielde, swerde, and spurres, but without any epitaph or inscription. The preservation of this monument I think came by this means. The first lord Paget, who had the same abbaye geven him uppon the dissolution, removed this monument out of the chauncel, first into an isle, and afterwards into the churche.’

Charters of Burton

Edition: Charters of Burton Abbey, ed. P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters 2 (London, 1979).

Royal diplomas. 224; 392; 395; 397; 479; 484; 545; 548; 549; 554; 557; 569; 576; 599; 602; 623; 628; 707; 720; 739; 749; 768; 853; 863; 878; 879; 906; 917; 920; 922; 923; 924; 928; 929; 930; 1017; 1606.

Will. 1536.

Select bibliography

Mon. Angl. i. 265-76; Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) iii. 32-51; VCH Staffs. iii. 199-213; MRH, p. 61; HRH, pp. 30-1.

Hart, ECNE, pp. 153-252.
<Add reviews of Sawyer.>
S. Keynes, 'Anglo-Saxon Charters: Lost and Found', Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters, ed. J. Barrow and A. Wareham (2008), pp. 45-66
C. Insley, 'The Family of Wulfric Spott: an Anglo-Saxon Mercian Marcher Dynasty?', The English and their Legacy, 900-1200, ed. D. Roffe (2012), pp. 115-28

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October 2011