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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 August 2011
On the death of Hædde, bishop of the West-Saxons (676–705) with his see at Winchester (Ha), the West-Saxon diocese as then constituted was subdivided; in Freeman's words this was “the great ecclesiastical event of the reign of Ine,” king of Wessex from 688 to 726. The simplest, earliest and really most authoritative statement of the matter in general is that of Bede:
Quo [Haeddi] defuncto, episcopatus prouinciae illius [Occidentalium Saxonum] in duas parrochias divisus est. Una data Daniheli,…altera Aldhelmo.
1 Before Hædde's day Dorchester (in Oxfordshire not Dorset) had been the see of the West-Saxon diocese.
For statements general and particular concerning the subdivision of the West-Saxon diocese in 705 see the following works: Cassan, S. H., Lives and Memoirs of the Bishops of Sherborne and Salisbury from the Year 705 to 1824 (Salisbury, 1824), pp. 16–27Google Scholar; Haddan, A. W. and Stubbs, Wm., Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland III (Oxford, 1871), 276Google Scholar, first note; Jones, Wm. Henry Rich, Early Annals of the Episcopate in Wilts and Dorset (London, 1871), pp. 19–20Google Scholar; Edw. Freeman, A., “King Ine,” Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural History Society's Proceedings XX (Taunton, 1874), Pt. ii, pp. 16–23Google Scholar and notes on p. 51; Wm. Bright, Chapters of Early English Church History (1st ed., London, 1878), pp. 423–8Google Scholar; Wm. Jones, H. R., Salisbury (London, 1880), pp. 35Google Scholar ff.; Plummer, Charles ed., Venerabilis Baedae Historia Ecclesiastica (Oxford, 1896), II, 307Google Scholar; Hunt, Wm., The English Church from its Foundation to the Norman Conquest (597–1066) (London, 1899), pp. 169–71Google Scholar; Hill, Geoffry, English Dioceses: a History of their Limits from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (London, 1900); pp. 143–51Google Scholar; Browne, G. F., St. Aldhelm: his Life and Times (London, 1903), pp. 138–48Google Scholar; Cox, J. C., art. “Ecclesiastical History” in the Victoria History of the County of Hampshire II (London, 1903), 2Google Scholar; Miss Calthrop, M. M. C., art. “Ecclesiastical History” in the Victoria History of the County of Dorset II (London, 1908), 1–2Google Scholar; Holmes, T. Scott, art. “Ecclesiastical History” in the Victoria History of the County of Somerset II (London, 1911), 5–6Google Scholar; Oman, Charles, England before the Norman Conquest (5th ed., London, 1923), p. 328Google Scholar; Hodgkin, R. H., A History of the Anglo-Saxons (Oxford, 1935), I, 319Google Scholar, 322.
The views of the above-mentioned writers at times differ radically from one another in matters, concerning the diocesan boundaries in question. Some have been listed because they have been cited by prominent historians, some for having written very generally read handbooks.
2 Cited above, p. 17.
3 Historia Ecclesiastica v, 18, ed. Plummer, I, 320; Loeb Library Series, ed. J. E. King, II, 294.
4 Migne, J.-P. ed., Patrologia latina LXXXIX (Paris, 1850), col. 73Google Scholar (bottom); also in Haddan and Stubbs, cited note 1 above, p. 275 (bottom).
5 This quotation is from the Parker Chronicle and the other versions are essentially the same. See Plummer, Charles ed., Two of the Saxon Chronicles parallel I (Oxford, 1892), 40Google Scholar; Thorpe, Benjamin ed., The Anglo Saxon Chronicle I (London, 1861), 68–9Google Scholar. The corresponding passage in the Latin annals in Brit. Mus. Ms. Cotton Domitian A. VIII, fol. 45 v, runs to the same effect: “ipse fuit episcopus in parte occidentis silve” (also quoted in Plummer, loc. cit., n. 4).
6 Chronicis, Chronicon ex, ed. Benjamin Thorpe (London: English Historical Society, 1848), p. 47Google Scholar (A.D. 709); on p. 46 Florence uses part of Bede's statement à propos of the division of the diocese.
7 Historia Anglorum, Bk. iv, § 8, ed. Thomas Arnold, Rolls Series No. 74 (London, 1879), p. 110. Bright (op. cit., p. 428, n. 6) renders silvis by “wood” (sing.) and equates this with the Selwood Forest.
8 Plummer, Two of the Saxon Chronicles II (Oxford, 1899)Google Scholar, xxix and n. 2.
9 Ibid., I, 40, n. 4; Thorpe, ed. cit., I, 68, col. 2.
10 So Woodward, H. B., art. “Geology” in the Victoria History of the County of Somerset I (London, 1906), 32–3Google Scholar; Woodward's statement agrees essentially with the indicàtions on the map facing the title-page of Jones's Salisbury (cited above) and the map facing p. 12 of Win. Greswell, H. P., The Forests & Deer Parks of the County of Somerset (Taunton, 1905)Google Scholar. The name survives today in the little town of Selwood (So) near Frome; see further Magoun, “Territorial, Place-, and River-Names...,” Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature XVIII (1935), 94Google Scholar under “Sealwudu.”
11 See Plummer, Two of the Saxon Chronicles II, ci-cii (§99).
12 Chronica, Bk. ii, ch. 11, ed. Petri, Henry, Monumenta Historica Britannica (London, 1848), p. 507Google Scholar. In a footnote Petri remarks: “episcopatus scilicet Scireburnensis.”
13 Ferd. Holthausen, Altengl. etymolog. Worterbuch (Heidelberg, 1934)Google Scholar, s. v.; cf. also the New English Dictionary under “shire.”
14 For a survey of meanings see Hall, John R. Clark, A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (3d ed., Cambridge, 1931)Google Scholar, s. v.
15 Joseph Bosworth and T. N. Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Oxford, 1898), p. 836, col. 2, under scīr f., IV.
16 Op. cit., Bk. ii, § 79, ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, Rolls Series No. 52 (London, 1870), p. 179Google Scholar; this passage is also quoted in Plummer's Bede, II, 307.
17 Yet in Two of the Saxon Chronicles II (Oxford, 1899), 460Google Scholar, col. 2, Wudu of 709 is interpreted “the Wood,” used absolutely for Selwood [Forest], thus virtually contradicting William. Did Plummer change his mind about William's definition which in the same volume (II, 36) he inferentially accepts by reference to his Bede note in his note under ann. 709?
18 See Hodgkin, op. cit., I, 315–6 and facing map.
19 Miss Calthrop (loc. cit.) is ready to include Devon and Cornwall, and one must not forget Aldhelm's apparently successful letter on the Easter question addressed to Gerontius, Celtic king of Dumnonia, in the year 705 (see Louis Gougaud, Christianity in Celtic Lands, London, 1932, pp. 200–1). One can think of far more pretentious grants of authority to missionary bishops in the colonial period of the New World, not to mention bishops sent to the Rhineland in the 8th century.
20 As do Thorpe, op. cit., II, 38 sub anno 709; Plummer, loc. cit. supra, and Classen, E. and Harmer, F. E., An Anglo-Saxon Chronicle from British Museum, Cotton Ms., Tiberius B. IV (Manchester, 1926), p. 140Google Scholar, col. 1 under wudu. Hoffmann-Hirtz, M., Une chronique anglo-saxonne … (Strasburg, 1933), p. 51Google Scholar and n. 2, is more reserved, rendering the passage: “évêque dans l'ouest de (Sel)wood,” with a note to the effect that the parenthetical “Sel” is from B.
21 Similarly in his article on Aldhelm in the Dictionary of National Biography I (1900), 246Google Scholar.
22 Hill (p. 148, n. 2) makes over-assured statements concerning the West-Saxon conquest of the southwestern counties.
23 See map “The Conversion of the English” at the end of Hodgkin, Vol. I, for an area designated “West of Selwood.”
24 For present purposes it is relatively unimportant whether Howorth is right or wrong in his quite special thesis that B and C may offer a better or more authentic picture of what might be called the Alfredian Chronicle than does A (the Parker Chronicle); see The English Historical Review XV (1900), 748CrossRefGoogle Scholar ff.
25 Plummer, Two of the Saxon Chronicles II, lxxxvii and n. 6.
26 Ibid., p. lxxxviii, n. 1 (mistakes), n. 2 (omissions), n. 3 (insertions).
27 Asser's Life of King Alfred (Oxford, 1904), pp. 197–8Google Scholar. Stevenson is mainly concerned with Asser's reference to the Selwood Forest as the boundary of a region west of which a revolt is supposed to have broken out against King Æthelwold. This reference to the Selwood Forest in Asser and in the Chronicle references under the years 878 and 894 have nothing to do with, and shed no light on, the annal for 709 here under discussion.
28 OE bewestan is a compound preposition governing the dative case and means “to the west of.” The phrase in the Old-English Chronicle can only mean “to the west of the forest,” under no circumstances “near, by, around the Western Forest” as many former translators, including Stevenson, have wrongly rendered it. So “classically” but quite wrongly “by Westwood” in James Ingram's all too well known The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, dating from 1823 (Everyman Library No. 624, London, 1912 and later printings, p. 46).
29 Stevenson, op. cit., p. 198.
30 Plummer, op. cit., II, lxxxix.
31 Cf. Browne, op. cit., pp. 142–9.
32 See Hunt, op. cit., p. 295.
33 Hill, op. cit., p. 140 and n. 4, quoting Bede's Hist. Eccl. v, 18, ed. Plummer, I, 321; so, too, Haddan and Stubbs, loc. cit., and Cox, loc. cit.
34 Cassan, op. cit., p. 16; Jones, Salisbury, p. 37; Freeman, art. cit., p. 21; Hunt, op. cit., p. 171 (top); Hill, op. cit., pp. 146–7; Miss Calthrop, loc. cit.
35 Not so, however, Bright, op. cit., p. 424, and Browne, p. 139.
36 Salisbury, p. 37.
37 Cox, J. C., art. “Ecclesiastical History,” Victoria County History of Berkshire II (London, 1907), 2Google Scholar.
38 Op. cit., p. 218 (cf. pp. 146–7, cited, pp. 108–9 above).
39 The western boundaries of Berkshire and Hampshire together form a north-south line of sorts.
40 Art. cit., p. 20.
41 I comment on this matter largely because of Bright's repetition of William of Malmesbury's statement that the partition was not an equal one (op. cit., p. 423, bottom).
42 According to John Bartholomew, The Survey Gazetteer of the British Isles (8th ed., Edinburgh, 1932)Google Scholar under the respective counties.
43 Sub anno 477 and 893; other instances cited in Plummer's ed. cit., I, 418, col. 1, under ”wudu” either refer to “wood” in the sense of “lumber” or to “woodland” in general.
44 See the New English Dictionary under “Weald” I (including Kent and parts of Sussex and Surrey), also Bartholomew cit. supra under “Weald.”
45 See Hoffmann-Hirtz cit. note 20 above, p. 33, n. 1.
46 Cf. Nisbet, J. and Lascelles, G. W., art. “Forestry,” Victoria County History of Hampshire II (London, 1903), 413Google Scholar: “During the Saxon and Danish periods the whole of the county … was probably thickly tree-clad.” The chalk-downs and swamps are noted as obvious exceptions.