St Albans | Kemble

The monks of St Albans could claim on good authority to be the guardians of a shrine which had originated in the earliest days of Christianity in Britain. During one of the persecutions of Christians in the third century, a certain cleric (unnamed, though subsequently ‘identified’ as Amphibalus) was given refuge by Alban, a heathen who under the cleric’s influence soon became a Christian; Alban gave himself up to the authorities in order to protect the cleric, and was put to death on the top of a hill near an arena, not far outside the city of Verulamium. When peaceful times returned, ‘a church of wonderful workmanship’ was built at Verulamium (Uæclingacæstir) in honour of Alban’s martyrdom, and the place was still renowned for miracles in the early eighth century (Bede, HE i. 7). Bede’s account would have been enough to ensure a continued interest in the cult of St Alban; but according to later tradition, the saint’s burial-place was miraculously revealed to Offa, king of Mercia, who proceeded to found the abbey in 793 (under a priest called Willegoda), initiating a process of endowment duly continued by Offa’s son, Ecgfrith (who died in 796). It is difficult to trace the fortunes of the abbey in the ninth century, or for much of the tenth; but it seems that the abbey was taken under the wing of the monastic reformers and began to flourish again as a Benedictine community in the 970s. The abbey appears thereafter to have attracted the particular attention of King Æthelred the Unready, presumably acting at the behest of Archbishop Ælfric (abbot of St Albans c. 970 - c. 990, bishop of Ramsbury from c. 991, archbishop of Canterbury 995-1005), and his brother Leofric (abbot of St Albans c. 990 - 1007+). The abbey continued to flourish in the last decades before the Norman Conquest, notably under Abbot Leofstan; it can be seen, for example, that the community received a number of benefactions, and that it enjoyed good relations with local landowners. The abbey was apparently one of the several which had fallen into the hands of Archbishop Stigand by 1066; but it is difficult to penetrate the fog of confusion which surrounds the abbey’s history at this time. In the twelfth century (if not before) the abbey developed the pretensions commensurate with its origins, and there is reason to believe that the abbey’s conception of its past was first articulated in a (lost) history of the abbey prepared under the auspices of Adam the Cellarer, monk of St Albans c. 1140 - c. 1175. It was, however, in the writings of Roger Wendover, and in the writings and drawings of Matthew Paris, both monks of St Albans in the thirteenth century, that the abbey’s traditions found expression in their most familiar and compelling form.

<Eadmær: reformed under Oswald. S (Add.) 0000a [<allit. charter. of King Edmund] implies monks at St Albans in 940s??>

The earliest cartulary of St Albans abbey was probably compiled during the course of the twelfth century. The cartulary in question was formerly ‘± MS. 73’ in the library of the Bollandists at Antwerp; the manuscript itself appears to have been lost or destroyed during the misfortunes which befell the Bollandists and their library in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, but its contents can be recovered from a seventeenth-century transcript (Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, MS. 7965-73 (3723), fols. 151-216). The cartulary began with a group of about fifteen pre-Conquest charters, followed by some writs and charters of William I, William II and Henry I, and by an extensive collection of twelfth-century papal privileges for the abbey and its dependencies elsewhere. The texts of the pre-Conquest royal diplomas were given in full, with vernacular boundary-clauses (as well as any other passages in the vernacular), and the cartulary also contained both Latin ‘abstracts’ and vernacular texts of several non-royal documents in the archive. The charters which run in the names of King Offa and King Ecgfrith are not likely to be authentic in their received form, and may represent a process initiated in the late tenth century by which the monks of St Albans began to consolidate their control over what they had reason to regard as their ancient endowment. Curiously enough, the charters of Offa, Ecgfrith and Æthelred were copied twice in the cartulary, suggesting that a ‘duplicate’ set (or ‘improved’ versions) of the charters had been produced at some stage, presumably in connection with the prosecution of further claims or litigation.

The principal source for a connected history of the abbey before and after the Norman Conquest is naturally the first part of Matthew Paris’s Gesta abbatum, written in the 1240s (see below). A note written by Matthew himself in the upper margin of the opening leaf of the autograph manuscript of the Gesta (BL Cotton Nero D. i, 30r; Gesta Abbatum, ed. Riley, i. 3, n. 2) indicates that he had been able to draw information from an ‘ancient roll of Bartholomew the clerk, who for a long time had been with Adam the Cellarer, as his servant, and who kept this roll for himself, choosing it alone from among his writings’; the most likely interpretation is that the roll had been compiled under the auspices of Adam himself (see Vaughan, Matthew Paris, pp. 182-4). Adam is known to have been active on the abbey’s behalf in the litigation which arose over the abbey’s estates in the middle decades of the twelfth century, and he appears also to have played a part in securing some of the abbey’s papal privileges. It seems especially significant, under these circumstances, that versions of a distinctively detailed document pertaining to the revenues received by the monks’ kitchen from the abbey’s estates should occur both in the Gesta abbatum and in the lost cartulary (Keynes, ‘Lost Cartulary’, pp. 268-9); and it might follow that the cartulary itself had been compiled under the auspices of Adam the cellarer, reflecting another aspect of his activities in securing the abbey’s title to its lands and privileges (ibid., p. 262).

The recognition that Adam the Cellarer may have played a role not only in the production of a proto- Gesta abbatum, but also in the compilation of the abbey’s first cartulary, helps to put the far greater contribution made by Matthew Paris in its proper perspective. Matthew’s work on the legendary history of his own house is best represented by the collection of material in Dublin, Trinity College, MS. 177, covering the Life of St Alban, the Invention and Translation of the relics, and the foundation of the abbey by King Offa; see Lowe and Jacob, Illustrations to the Life of St Alban, and Colker, Descriptive Catalogue, i. 339-43. The final illustration in the series depicts King Offa placing a charter on the altar, and is followed by texts of the charters of King Offa (S 136, 138) and King Ecgfrith (S 150-1) (MS. 177, fols. 63-6), <probably copied direct from the lost cartulary>. Attention otherwise focusses upon the collection of material generally known as the Liber Additamentorum (BL Cotton Nero D. i), examined in detail and to great effect by Vaughan, Matthew Paris, pp. 78-91; see also Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, no. 87. The first component of this book (as originally conceived) was the text of Matthew’s Vitae Duorum Offarum, a work of considerable interest in its own right, with illustrations (most unfinished) depicting the exploits of King Offa as king of the Mercians and as founder of the abbey of St Albans (Nero D. i, fols. 2-26); ptd Matthæi Paris, ed. Wats, [Vitæ …] pp. 1-32. The second component was a collection of charters and papal privileges, under the heading ‘Antiqua et primitiva munimenta ecclesie Sancti Albani Anglorum protomartyris’ (now Nero D. i, fols. 149-61 (Davis 831)). The charters (ptd from this source in Matthew Paris: Chronica Majora, ed. Luard, vi. 1-33; see also Matthæi Paris, ed. Wats, [Vitæ … ] pp. 237-44) appear to have been copied by Matthew direct from the lost cartulary, but it is immediately apparent that he abbreviated the texts in certain respects, notably by omitting all passages in the vernacular. The third component was the first part of the Gesta abbatum, covering the history of the abbey from its foundation to the death of Abbot William in 1235 (Nero D. i, fols. 30-63); ptd in Matthæi Paris, ed. Wats, [Vitæ …] pp. 35-145, and, from the later recension of the work in BL Cotton Claudius E. iv, in Gesta Abbatum, ed. Riley. <References to charters; including a vernacular chirograph registered as S (Add.) 0000a.> The fourth component was Matthew’s illustrated treatise on the various items of jewellery given to the abbey (Nero D. i, fols. 144-6, though it originally followed fol. 63); ptd Matthew Paris: Chronica Majora, ed. Luard, vi. 383-8. The treatise is of interest not least because it includes an account (with illustration) of the (late Antique) sardonyx cameo engraved with the figure of an emperor, inscribed on the back of its silver mount with the names of its owner (St Alban) and donor (King Æthelred the Unready). Matthew Paris can no longer be credited with assembling the collection of charters incorporated in the Liber Additamentorum; but <he provides a wealth of information about the abbey’s past>, and it is reassuring to know that he seems to have respected the foundations which had been laid by his predecessors in the twelfth century.

A short list of the abbey’s pre-Conquest benefactors, said to have been taken from an ‘old book’, is given in BL Cotton Nero D. i, 63r (and 167v); ptd Gesta Abbatum, ed. Riley, i. 507-8. A far more elaborate Liber de benefactoribus monasterii Sancti Albani, or Catalogus benefactorum, compiled in the late fourteenth century, occurs in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 7, pp. 203-22 (Davis 845) and in BL Cotton Nero D. vii (Davis 844); ptd (from CCCC MS. 7) in Trokelowe, ed. Riley, pp. 427-64, and (from Nero D. vii) in Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) ii. 209-10 and 217-23. Riley (pp. xlii-xliv) gave priority to CCCC MS. 7, regarding Nero D. vii as a revised and augmented version of the Liber de benefactoribus produced in the early fifteenth century; but Davis treats CCCC MS. 7 as an early-fifteenth-century abridgement of Nero D. vii. These lists of benefactors include references to the donations represented by charters in the (lost) cartulary of St Albans; but they also contain a number of references to other evidently pre-Conquest grants (e.g. Riley, pp. 441 and 444-5), for which corresponding documentary evidence appears to be lacking.

Charters of St Albans

Edition: Charters of St Albans, ed. J. Crick (forthcoming)

Royal diplomas. 136; 138; 150; 151; 220; 888; 900; 912; 916. See also S (Add.) 0000a.

Miscellaneous. 1228; 1235; 1425. See also S (Add.) 0000a.

Wills. 1497; 1517; 1532.

Select bibliography

WM, GP, pp. 316-17; Mon. Angl. i. 176-84; Not. Mon. (Herts.), no. I; Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) ii. 178-255; VCH Herts. iv. 367-416; MRH, pp. 74-5; HRH, pp. 64-7.

M. L. Colker, Trinity College Library Dublin: Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval and Renaissance Latin Manuscripts, 2 vols. (<place>, 1991);
Gransden, Historical Writing i. 356-79;
J. R. Hunn, ‘A Medieval Cartulary of St Albans Abbey’, Medieval Archaeology 27 (1983), pp. 151-2;
S. Keynes, ‘Changing Faces: Offa, King of Mercia’, History Today 40 (Nov. 1990), pp. 14-19;
S. Keynes, ‘A Lost Cartulary of St Albans Abbey’, Anglo-Saxon England 22 (1993), pp. 253-79;
W. Levison, ‘St. Alban and St. Albans’, Antiquity 15 (1941), pp. 337-59;
W. R. L. Lowe and E. F. Jacob, Illustrations to the Life of St Alban in Trin. Coll. Dublin MS. E. i. 40 (Oxford, 1924);
Matthew Paris: Chronica Majora, ed. H. R. Luard, 7 vols., Rolls Series (London, 1872-84);
N. Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts 1190-1250 (London, 1982);
C. C. Oman, ‘The Jewels of St Albans Abbey’, Burlington Magazine 57 (1930), pp. 80-2;
Johannis de Trokelowe et Henrici de Blaneforde, Monachorum S. Albani … Chronica et Annales, ed. H. T. Riley, Rolls Series (London, 1866);
Gesta Abbatum Monasterii S. Albani a Thoma Walsingham, ed. H. T. Riley, 3 vols., Rolls Series (London, 1867-9);
J. E. Sayers, ‘Papal Privileges for St. Albans Abbey and its Dependencies’, The Study of Medieval Records: Essays in Honour of Kathleen Major, ed. D. A. Bullough and R. L. Storey (Oxford, 1971), pp. 57-84;
R. M. Thomson, Manuscripts from St Albans Abbey 1066-1235, 2 vols., rev. ed. (Woodbridge, 1985);
R. Vaughan, Matthew Paris (Cambridge, 1958);
Matthæi Paris Monachi Albanensis Angli, Historia Major, ed. W. Wat[t]s (London, 1640), with Vitae duorum Offarum … et viginti trium abbatum Sancti Albani una cum Libro additamentorum, ed. W. Wats (London, 1639), appended