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Two lost documents of King Athelstan
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 September 2008
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The Liber Vitae of Durham is a well known and frequently studied document. Now preserved in the British Library, London, under the press-mark Cotton Domitian vii, it consists of a list of benefactors to St Cuthbert's community, or, at least, of those for whom the prayers of the community were solicited. The names were written in alternate lines of gold and silver in the early part of the ninth century, and very little was added for two centuries or more. Then, between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, many other names were written in, and the book was even occasionally used as a kind of register for documents. An important exception to this generalization consists of the name aeðelstan rex added at the top of 12r in a mid-tenth-century hand which attempts to imitate some of the features of the original script. King Atheistan (924–39) was remembered as a great benefactor to St Cuthbert's and it is fitting that he should have been thus commemorated.
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page 137 note 1 Throughout this article the phrase ‘St Cuthbert's’ is used to denote the cathedral community which was at Lindisfarne until the late ninth century and then settled at Chester-le-Street from where it moved finally to Durham in 995; the most convenient summary of the community's wanderings is in Blair, P. Hunter, Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 1956), p. 168Google Scholar.
page 137 note 2 Some of Athelstan's benefactions were listed in charter form in the Historia de Sancto Culhberto, c. 26 (Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, ed. Thomas, Arnold, Rolls Ser. (1882), 11, 211 f.) See also below, p. 142.Google Scholar
page 137 note 3 ‘With fewer and less gross errors than in his other editions. The Oldest English Texts, ed. Sweet, H., Early Eng. Text Soc. o.s. 83 (London, 1885; repr. 1966), 153.Google Scholar
page 137 note 4 Ibid. pp. 153–66.
page 137 note 5 Vol. 136.
page 137 note 6 Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum (Cambridge, 1897), pp. xxix f.Google Scholar
page 138 note 1 Thompson, pp. xvii–xxviii.
page 138 note 2 Anglo-Saxon Charters (Cambridge, 1939), nos. Lx and lxviii.Google Scholar
page 138 note 3 The undiscriminating but comprehensive list of Anglo-Saxon abbots published by de Gray Birch, W. (Fasti Monastici Ævi Saxonici (London, 1873), pp. 19 and 43)Google Scholar, includes an Abbot Alfred who attests a charter of 994 and an Ælfwold who was abbot of wind' in the period 993–1002. These names although generally very common seem not to have been borne by many abbots; and the dates of about 1000 would suit the handwriting. The identification of Ælfwold's house depends upon an original charter of 993:Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici, ed. Kemble, J. M. (London, 1839–1848; hereafter KCD)Google Scholar, no. 684. Examination of the original text (BL Cotton Augustus ii. 39) has convinced me that wind' should really be read as wincl' and that Ælfwold was about of Winchcombe.
page 139 note 1 Hearne, T., Adam of Domerbam (Oxford, 1727), p. 94.Google Scholar
page 139 note 2 Robinson, J. Armitage, The Times of St Dunstan (Oxford, 1923), p. 39.Google Scholar
page 139 note 3 Cartularium Saxonicum, ed. de Gray Birch, W. (London, 1885–1893; hereafter BCS), nos. 909 and 911.Google Scholar
page 139 note 4 Searle, W. G., Anglo-Saxon Bishops, Kings and Nobles (Cambridge, 1899), pp. 8 f. and 86 f.Google Scholar
page 139 note 5 It should be noted that Cenwald's later attestations as ‘monk’ are in a higher place in the sequence of names, appropriate to his episcopal rank.
page 140 note 1 BCS 659.
page 140 note 2 BCS 731.
page 140 note 3 BCS 702.
page 140 note 4 BCS 553.Select English Historical Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries, ed. Harmer, F. E., (Cambridge, 1914), no. xiGoogle Scholar; Miss Harmer seems (p. 99) to accept this identification.
page 140 note 5 Robinson, J. Armitage, Somerset Historical Essays (London, 1921), pp. 42 ff.Google Scholar
page 140 note 6 Searle, (Onomasticon, p. 369)Google Scholar gives only six references to the name, three or four of which seem to relate to the same person – a Worcestershire thegn of the mid-eleventh century.
page 140 note 7 Both attest, e.g., the Chilcomb charter of 909 (BCS 620), of which the original text has been reconstructed by Finberg, H. P. R. (The Early Charters of Wessex (Leicester, 1964), pp. 244 ff.).Google Scholar
page 140 note 8 Harmer, , Select Documents, no. xxGoogle Scholar;Robinson, , St Dunstan, pp. 42–50.Google Scholar
page 140 note 9 E.g. KCD 663, of the year 988; 684, of 993.
page 140 note 10 E.g. BCS 1297, of the year 973. The ætheling Athelstan bequeathed his dish-thegn an eight-hide estate, which rates him very high.Anglo-Saxon Wills, ed. Whitelock, D. (Cambridge, 1930), p. 60.Google Scholar
page 140 note 11 National Library of Wales, Peniarth 390, p. 347.
page 141 note 1 Ibid. p. 346; BCS 642; translated with some commentary by Robinson, , St Dunstan pp. 42–5.Google Scholar
page 141 note 2 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 926 D;Blair, , Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England p. 85Google Scholar; Stenton, F. M., Anglo-Saxon England, 1st ed. (Oxford, 1943), p. 336.Google Scholar
page 141 note 3 The names are in the first column of the folio; w is written as wyn throughout.
page 142 note 1 Searle, , Onomasticon, pp. 493 fGoogle Scholar., lists only fifteen examples of its use. Five of these references are to the person now under discussion.
page 142 note 2 BCS 663.
page 142 note 3 BCS 818.
page 142 note 4 BCS 702; Stenton, , Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 337 f.Google Scholar
page 142 note 5 They are, in the order in which they occur in the Durham list, Ælfhere, Æthelnoth, Wulfstan, Wulfsige, Wihtgar, Æthelred, Ælfric, Æthelwold, Wulflaf, Ælfsige, Æthelbryht, Beorhtric, Æthelstan, Ælfsige, Wulfsige and Æthelred. Eadred attests another charter of King Athelstan of 931 (BCS 674). The other nine (or rather eight, ignoring the obviously blundered Adhelan.ð) cannot be identified. I suggest that they may have been local thegns from the north, who attended the king's court only when it was in their district.
page 142 note 6 Cited in the Historia de Sancto Cutbberto see Robinson, , St Dunstan, pp. 52 ff.Google Scholar
page 142 note 7 Symeonis Monachi Opera, ed. Arnold, 1, 212.Google Scholar
page 142 note 8 The 1,200-shilling wergeld is mentioned in the laws as far back as Ine of Wessex (688–725) in an unemphatic and passing way which makes clear that it was of immemorial antiquity.The Laws of the Earliest English Kings, ed. Attenborough, F. L. (Cambridge, 1922), pp. 42, 58 and passim.Google Scholar
page 142 note 9 E.g. a manumission of 925 Harmer, , Select Documents, no. xix.Google Scholar
page 143 note 1 The Saxon Bishops of Wells (London, 1920), pp. 31 ff.Google Scholar
page 143 note 2 This is the Ælfheah who was sometimes surnamed the Bald, a surname which may possibly have been derived from his tonsure – as hinted by Robinson, , St Dunstan, p. 83, n. 1Google Scholar. In Saxon Bishops of Wells (p. 33), Robinson quotes Rudborne as authority for the statement that Æflheah had been a monk of Glastonbury; but Rudborne wrote in the mid-fifteenth century and is likely to have confused Ælfheah with his more famous namesake trained at Glastonbury, who became bishop of Winchester in 984 and was martyred by the Danes as archbishop of Canterbury in 1012. The Glastonbury obituary of former monks who were raised to the episcopate (quoted above, p. 139, n. 1) does not claim the earlier Ælfheah.