he gave up the place of his own monastery, and against the prohibition and will of our bishop he took his departure'.[1]
The abbey of Reculver in Kent had been founded by Bass the mass-priest in 669, the year of Theodore's arrival at Canterbury.[2] To this new house some years later Beorhtwald was appointed, and the earliest 'land-book' that has come down to us in its original form is a grant made to him there in 679.[3] Archbishop Theodore died 19 September 690: Beorhtwald was elected on 1 July 692, and consecrated at Lyons on 29 June 693. The long delay and the consecration abroad may have been partly due to the strained relations between Kent and Wessex, which were not readjusted until 694; and if Haeddi, the bishop of Winchester, whose commands Beorhtwald had disobeyed, was unwilling to take part in the consecration, this would be a further reason why it may have seemed wise to look abroad. The whole story hangs well together, and we may accept the tradition that Beorhtwald was the first English abbot of Glastonbury.
Beorhtwald was succeeded by Hemgisl. The first of the charters in the Liber Terrarum—a lost Glastonbury chartulary, probably compiled at the end of the tenth century[4]—was entitled 'the charter of Ken win concerning the island of Glastonia'. From a charter based on this William of Malmesbury must have drawn his statement that in 678 K. Centwine granted to Hemgisl 'Glastonbury, free from all service, VI hides': also that at the petition of Bishop Haeddi and the monks he appointed Hemgisl abbot.[5] The date agrees well with
- ↑ De Antiq., p. 51 'sine nostra violentia et sine expulsione locum proprii coenobii dimisit, et contra interdictum et voluntatem pontificis nostri discessit.' The charter is lost, but B. C. S. 121, a later compilation, which professes to be Ina's confirmation of Baldred's gift of Brent, is partly based upon it.
- ↑ A. S. Chronicle.
- ↑ B. C. S. 45. Although in the De Antiquitate (p. 49) W. of M. speaks of Beorhtwald as holding the abbey of Glastonbury for ten years and then becomingarchbishop of Canterbury, in the later edition of his Gesta Regum, c. 1139, when he inserts extracts from the De Antiquitate, he corrects this point and says that, on leaving Glastonbury, 'ad regimen monasterii Raculf secessit' (G. B.3 p. 29).
- ↑ John of Glastonbury, ed. Hearne, p. 370. A list of its contents, made in 1247, is there printed: see below, Appendix A.
- ↑ De Antiq., p. 49: 'Huic [sc. Hemgiselo] anno ab incarnacione domini DCLXXVIII Kentwinus rex Glastingai liberam ab omni servicio concessit, VI hidas; quem pro sua fideli conversacione, et episcopi Hedde et monachorum peticione, abbatem ibi constituit: ea tamen condicione quatinus fratres ejusdem loci habeant jus eligendi et constituendi rectorem juxta regulam sancti Benedicti. MUNECATONE. Et juxta silvam, inquit, quae vocatur Cantucdun XXIII hidas, in Caric XX hidas, et in Crucan III hidas, ad supplementum,' &c. It looks as if W. of M. found all this in one charter; if so, it was a composite one. The appoint-
