Selsey | Kemble

When Bishop Wilfrid came to the pagan kingdom of the South Saxons, in the early 680s, King Æthelwealh gave him an estate ‘to be an episcopal see, adding to it afterwards 87 hides in Selsey’; Wilfrid founded a monastery there, and its endowment was soon afterwards increased by Cædwalla, king of the West Saxons (Vita S. Wilfridi, chs. 41-2, in Colgrave, Life of Bishop Wilfrid, pp. 80-4; HE iv. 13). In the early eighth century it was decided to establish a diocese for the kingdom of the South Saxons, and Eadberht, abbot of Selsey, became the first bishop (HE v. 18). The bishopric of Selsey maintained a precarious existence thereafter, first in relation to the local rulers of Sussex, and subsequently in relation to successive Mercian and West Saxon overlords. It seems to have absorbed some part of the endowments of the several lesser minsters which it came to control; but in the tenth century the bishopric struggled to defend its rights against the encroachments of greater secular and ecclesiastical powers. Its prospects must always have been compromised by its exposed position on the Selsey peninsula; and in 1075 the see was transferred to Chichester.

A number of pre-Conquest charters constituting the muniments of the Anglo-Saxon monastery and see of Selsey were evidently transferred from Selsey to Chichester in the late eleventh century; only two have survived in their original single-sheet form (S 43, 1184), but copies of over twenty ‘Selsey’ charters were entered in later medieval cartularies, whether of the see of Chichester or of the Dean and Chapter. There is evidence that the muniments of the Chapter were considered to be in a poor state in the early seventeenth century; and further disruption was caused when the parliamentary forces of Sir William Waller ransacked the cathedral and its precincts in 1642 (Mercurius Rusticus, pp. 156-60), prompting William Nicolson to write in 1697 that ‘the prime Antiquities of this See (before the Episcopal Throne was removed from Selsey to this Place, and for some Ages afterwards) are either wholly lost, or in such private Hands, as have hitherto very injuriously detain’d them from their right Owners’ (Nicolson, English Historical Library ii. 125-6). In the eighteenth century, the original charter of Oslac (S 1184) was kept with other documents in the ‘Chapter House Chest’, or the ‘long Box’ (presumably the long wooden chest now on display in the cathedral Treasury); it was among the twenty-five original (but otherwise post-Conquest) charters which resurfaced ‘in a drawer in the canons’ vestry’, c. 1890. The muniments are deposited in the West Sussex Record Office, Chichester.

<‘Chronological Index of Grants, Ordinances, &c’ (cited by Poole, p. 187, n. 1, as MS. II, p. 3); presumably a vol. of Clark’s collectanea, but not found in WSxRO. List by Canon William Clark (1696-1771), cited in Ancient Charters of the Dean and Chapter of Chichester, 689-1674, 2nd ed. Chichester, 1976), = Cap. I/1/5, pp. 298 and 311; no mention of any other AS documents.>

The earliest surviving cartulary is that designated ‘Liber Y’ (Ep. VI/1/6) (Davis 248), compiled in the middle of the thirteenth century (with later additions); see Poole, pp. 188-93, and Chartulary of Chichester, ed. Peckham, pp. vii-x and 1-210 (calendar of contents). In its original state the cartulary began with a small group of pre-Conquest charters (fols. 72-5), comprising King Æthelstan’s charter for Bishop Beornheah (S 403), the alleged foundation-charter of King Cædwalla (S 232), a purported charter of King Æthelberht of the South Saxons (S 47), and four other tenth-century texts (S 872, 1291, 506, 616); the series of mainly eighth- and early-ninth-century charters copied later in ‘Liber B’ (see below) was thus omitted, perhaps because the charters were not to hand at the time, or were not considered by the compiler to be germane to his purposes. The text of S 403 includes two vernacular boundary-clauses, a full witness-list, and an important vernacular endorsement; it cannot be far removed from the original single sheet. The text of S 232 appears to have been derived from a copy in single-sheet form (though not the purported ‘original’); S 47 is copied in such a way as to suggest that it may have been written on the dorse of the same single sheet. The texts of S 872 and 1291 (both incorporating vernacular bounds and full witness-lists) were possibly copied from single sheets; the different treatment accorded to S 506 and 616 suggests that these texts may have been taken from an earlier cartulary, now lost, in which the bounds were omitted.

During the episcopate of Bishop William Reed (1368-85), the attempt was made to bring the muniments of Chichester into good order. The first in a series of cartularies compiled under Reed’s direction is that known as ‘Liber A’ (Ep. VI/1/1 (Davis 236)), which in its extant form appears to represent the disordered remnants of a once much larger volume. The heading ‘Quatuor carte illust. principum regum Anglie ante conquestum eiusdem de diuersis <terris et libertatibus episcopis Seleseye concessis over erasure>’ (23r) introduces the texts of S 1291, 616, 232 and 403, followed directly by post-Conquest charters. There is no reason to believe that ‘Liber A’ ever contained any pre-Conquest texts apart from these four; it should also be noted that in transcribing them, the scribe seems to have depended on the texts in an existing cartulary (perhaps ‘Liber Y’ itself), rather than on any originals or copies in single-sheet form, and that various alterations were soon made to his texts, as if they were considered in need of correction. It was perhaps in view of the perceived inadequacies of the work represented by the surviving portions of ‘Liber A’ that attention was redirected towards the production of ‘Liber B’ (Ep. VI/1/2) (Davis 235). In its treatment of Chichester’s pre-Conquest charters, the new cartulary certainly marked a distinct improvement. The first quire comprises fols. 16-23, in the modern foliation: the heading ‘Carte regum, episcoporum et ducum Saxonicorum de terris donatis per eosdem episcopis Selisiensis ante monarchiam Anglie et post, sed longe ante conquestum Anglie per Normannos’, on 16r, introduces a series of about twenty pre-Conquest charters pertaining in one way or another to the see of Selsey, on 16r-20v, arranged in what was evidently intended to pass for chronological order; 21r-23r were left blank, and the quire ends with the beginning of a series of post-Conquest texts on 23v. It should be noted, however, that this quire seems itself to have replaced an earlier state of the opening section in ‘Liber B’, which lead into the continuation of the post-Conquest texts on 24r. The first of the pre-Conquest texts is S 232, here edited, in effect, from what was regarded as the ‘original charter’ and from something identified as ‘another copy’ (whether in single-sheet form or in a cartulary); and the series continues with a number of ‘early’ charters which had not been included in ‘Liber Y’ or ‘Liber A’, apparently copied from a group of single sheets (originals, or ‘improved’ copies). The texts of the group of tenth-century charters (S 403, 506, 616, 1291, 872) may have been taken (for convenience, or by necessity) from existing cartulary-copies; and the series ends with two undated charters (S 1206 and 46), again derived (it seems) from single sheets. After his text of S 46, on 20v, the scribe listed (but unfortunately did not copy) ‘.vi. carte per totum scripte in lingua Saxonica de antiqua fundacione’, representing what remained in the fourteenth century of the miscellaneous documents in the vernacular which had presumably accumulated in the Selsey archive before the Conquest; see Poole, pp. 180-1, and Gardiner, ‘Some Lost Anglo-Saxon Charters’. ‘Liber E’ (Ep. VI/1/4 (Davis 238)), also compiled under the auspices of Bishop William Reed, incorporates a ‘Catalogue’ of the bishops of Selsey and Chichester (fols. 169-72; see Peckham, pp. 275-82), which serves at best to suggest how little was known in the fourteenth century of the pre-Conquest bishops of Selsey; a copy of S 232 occurs on 175v, apparently derived from one or other of the extant cartularies. One should add in this connection that Dugdale prints a series of charters ‘Ex Registro Eccl. Cath. Cicestr. penes Decanum & Capit. Ibid. A. 1640’ (Mon. Angl. iii. 115-27); the register in question was judged by Poole (pp. 179-80 and 188) to be a late and corrupt cartulary, now lost, but Peckham (pp. xiv-xv) considered Dugdale’s source to have been merely a poor transcript of ‘Liber B’, with some extraneous texts intruded for good measure.

The archive otherwise provides an interesting instance of the use of an Anglo-Saxon charter in the context of a sixteenth-century dispute over the rights of the bishop of Chichester. In 1524 the Earl of Arundel was informed by some of his servants that he could claim the right of distraining cattle found in a certain part of Manwood Hundred. When the matter was brought to the bishop’s attention, a day was appointed for hearing the case at the Hundred Court; whereupon the bishop produced the charter of Cædwalla, which ‘expressly stated the circuit of the liberties of the Manwooda’. The matter was unresolved when the earl died; and in 1525 the bishop took it up with the earl’s son. At a meeting held ‘in an empty barn’, in the presence of 300 men (including the inhabitants of Donnington), the earl’s learned counsel was given a second opportunity to peruse the bishop’s muniments, and to compare them with certain ‘books of antiquities’; after some discussion, the counsel conceded that the earl had no rights in the matter, and warned the inhabitants of Donnington not to pursue it further. A note reciting the bounds of the liberties of Manwood, added opposite the text of S 232 in ‘Liber B’ (15v), pertains to the first stage of these proceedings (in 1524), and ends as follows: ‘This inquest agrees with ancient title-deeds, barely legible from the letters having faded, which were then produced and read, under the seal of Ceadwalla King of Sussex, founder of the church of Chichester, true copies of which, then compared, agree with all the Bishop’s Registers’ (Peckham, ‘Ceadwalla’s Charter and the Hundred of Manwood’). A record of the settlement of the dispute in 1525 was added in ‘Liber B’, 42rv; see Peckham, Chartulary of Chichester, pp. 232-3. It is good to learn that the Bishop of Chichester was able to confound the Earl of Arundel in 1525 by producing in court the ‘original’ charter of King Cædwalla (S 232, known to have contained a vernacular boundary-clause); and it is a pleasant irony that neither of the parties concerned was to know that the charter itself was a forgery, fabricated in connection with an earlier challenge to the rights of the bishop of Selsey.

The (interpolated) texts of two ‘South Saxon’ charters occur in the archives of Christ Church, Canterbury. S 50 is a charter of King Ealdwulf granting land at Stanmer (and elsewhere) in Sussex to comes Hunlaf, with a confirmation by King Offa; land at Stanmer was later held by the canons of Malling, under the archbishop of Canterbury (GDB 16v), and it was presumably in this connection that the charter came to Christ Church. S 108 is a charter of King Offa granting land at Bexhill to Bishop Oswald, for the building of a monastery, with reversion to the bishopric of Selsey; the land was taken from Selsey soon after the Norman Conquest (GDB 18r), and was subsequently recovered, but it is unclear whether the charter passed to Canterbury in this or some earlier connection.

Charters of Selsey

Edition: Charters of Selsey, ed. S. Kelly, with contributions by N. Brooks and S. Keynes (forthcoming)

Royal diplomas. 42; 43; 44; 45; 46; 47; 48; 49; 158; 232; 403; 506; 616; 872; 1173; 1178; 1183; 1184.

Miscellaneous. 1172; 1206; 1291; 1435.

Select bibliography

WM, GP, pp. 204-7; Mon. Angl. i. 153 (Selsey), and iii. 115-27 (Chichester); Not. Mon. (Sussex), nos. X and XXXVI; Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) ii. 52 (Selsey) and vi. 1159-71 (Chichester); VCH Sussex ii. 47-51 (Chichester); MRH, p. 438.

W. Nicolson, The English Historical Library, 3 vols. (London, 1696-9);
B. Colgrave, The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus (Cambridge, 1927);
D. P. Kirby, ‘The Church in Saxon Sussex’, The South Saxons, ed. P. Brandon (Chichester, 1978), pp. 160-73;
W. D. Peckham, ed., The Chartulary of the High Church of Chichester, Sussex Record Society 46 (Lewes, 1946);
W. D. Peckham, ‘Ceadwalla’s Charter and the Hundred of Manwood’, Sussex Notes and Queries 1 (1926-7), pp. 233-4;
M. Gardiner, ‘Some Lost Anglo-Saxon Charters and the Endowment of Hastings College’, Sussex Archaeological Collections 127 (1989), pp. 39-48;
J. Munby, ‘Saxon Chichester and its Predecessors’, Anglo-Saxon Towns in Southern England, ed. J. Haslam (Chichester, 1984), pp. 315-30;
M. Welch, Early Anglo-Saxon Sussex, 2 pts, British Archaeological Reports, British Series 112(i)-(ii) (Oxford, 1983), pt ii, pp. 323-31;
H. Edwards, Charters of the Early West Saxon Kingdom, pp. 291-9
S. Kelly, ‘The Anglo-Saxon See of Selsey’, Chichester Cathedral Essays, ed. M. Hobbs (Chichester, forthcoming).
H. L. Rogers, on the Oslac Charter (S 1184) <available as a .pdf file on internet>

For a detailed account of the Chichester muniments as a whole, see R. L. Poole in HMC Various Collections I (London, 1901), pp. 177-86 (Bishop of Chichester) and 187-204 (Dean and Chapter of Chichester); see also F. W. Steer and I. M. Kirby, A Catalogue of the Records of the Bishop, Archdeacons and Former Exempt Jurisdictions (Chichester, 1966), esp. pp. 162-4 (for the cartularies), and F. W. Steer and I. M. Kirby, A Catalogue of the Records of the Dean and Chapter, Vicars Choral, St Mary’s Hospital, Colleges and Schools (Chichester, 1967), pp. 12-17.

<Re-order bibliography.>

To be deleted:

Page maintained by SDK

October 2011