THE SURVIVING texts attributed to Æthelwold display many features; subtlety is not always one of them. Among other things, these texts are clear that secure, independent wealth should be a key foundation for reformed houses’ autonomy and way of life. As noted in the introduction to this book, one of the key goals of the circle's reforms was to establish churches’ autonomy from lay interference: this concern shaped everything from the circle's insistence on celibacy to the way they conducted mealtimes. Communal property and the acquisition of communal property were key to this quest for autonomy. Documentary sources credit Æthelwold with providing generous gifts of land, books, and precious objects to the monasteries he refounded. Additionally, houses refounded by Æthelwold's circle acquired large tracts of land from kings and nobles during this period. Some of these acquisitions were gifts; others were secured through exchanges and purchases. By the time of Domesday Book, the houses that had been reformed by Æthelwold and his associates were among the wealthiest in England. John Blair has shown that the majority of this wealth had probably been secured by the reformers by the early eleventh century: that is, by Æthelwold and his students.

Saints featured prominently in this effort to enrich and secure the circle's houses: they were the motivations for donations, the means by which grants were protected, and sometimes even the recipients of grants on behalf of monasteries. Surviving property documents often invoked saints. They were part of monasteries’ identities: a charter might refer to a church ‘of a saint’ or ‘dedicated to’ a saint. Charters’ drafters might also claim saints were the rationale behind some gifts, claiming that a grant or church was ‘in honour of’ a saint. Other sources, such as hagiographies, also presented saints and their healing shrines as motivations for donations and warned of physical ailments for those who did not reimburse the shrines where they had been healed.