The abbey of La Trinité-du-Mont (Sainte-Catherine-du-Mont), Rouen, was founded c. 1030 by Goscelin, vicomte of Arques, and by Emmeline, his wife (Fauroux, no. 61). King William gave an estate at Harmondsworth, in Middlesex, to the abbey in 1069, and 30 hides at Harmondsworth, held TRE by Earl Harold, belonged to the abbey at the time of the Domesday survey (GDB 128v). Harmondsworth was subsequently purchased from the monks by William of Wykeham, bishop of Winchester (1366-1404). <Letter from NV on Harmondsworth. Check Chibnall cartulary.>
The charter by which King William granted Harmondsworth to La-Trinité-du-Mont (Round, Calendar, no. 77; Regesta i. 29) is preserved in the abbey’s cartulary, written towards the end of the eleventh century; see Deville, Cartulaire de l’abbaye de la Sainte-Trinité du Mont de Rouen, p. 455. The grant was made ‘per unum cultellum’, which the king playfully gave to the abbot as if about to stab him in the palm of his hand (saying ‘Thus ought land to be given’); and there is no suggestion that the abbey acquired any ancient title-deeds at the same time.
S 119, which purports to represent a grant of 20 hides at Harmondsworth by King Offa to Aeldred, his thegn, in 781, exists in the form of a single sheet (London, PRO, E 132, Bundle 3, no. 57), written in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century; see Gelling, ECTV, pp. 99-100. It is difficult to believe that this charter came from the archives of La-Trinité-du-Mont; and it may be significant that the charter appears to have been produced at about the time of the transfer of the estate back into English hands.
<Check: context of PRO E 132; nothing obvious from inspection of the charter itself. Was there a church or alien cell at Harmondsworth itself? See VCH Mx.>
Select bibliography
Neustria Pia, pp. 405-23; Round, Calendar, pp. 20-4. See also Matthew, Norman Monasteries, pp. 6-7, 30 and 116-17.
Deville, A., Cartulaire de l’abbaye de la Sainte-Trinité du Mont de Rouen, in M. Guérard, Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Saint-Bertin (Paris, 1840), pp. 403-87. Kirby, T. F., ‘Charters of Harmondsworth, Isleworth, Heston, Twickenham, and Hampton-on-Thames’, Archaeologia lviii (1902), pp. 341-58.
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