award[1] given by R. abbot of Ford, W. abbot of Binedon and R. dean of Wells, who had been appointed commissioners by Urban III in a bull dated at Verona, ' xii kal. Septembr.' This date can only mean 21 August in 1186 or 1187: and in deference to the current view the editor of the Calendar of Wells MSS (1907) has obelised the dean's initial and appended a note in which he says: 'Dean Alexander seems to have been contemporary with Pope Urban III'. But the correctness of the copy in Liber Albus I has since been demonstrated by the recent publication of the chartulary of Buckland Priory: for there we find Bishop Reginald's confirmation of K. Henry II's grant placing sisters at Buckland instead of the ejected canons. This grant is attested by Richard dean of Wells, and it is dated 8 November 1186.[2]
It is plain from these two documents that Dean Richard's decease has been considerably antedated;[3] and we must prefer the wiser judgement of Archdeacon Archer, who placed it conjecturally in 1188. Even this is probably too early, as appears when we try to date the appointment of his successor.
The Buckland charter of 8 Nov. 1186 is attested by Master Alexander; and this is the earliest date at which his appearance in documents connected with Wells can be fixed with certainty. But there are three charters which he attests as subdean, and one of these is witnessed also by Robert fitz Paine as sheriff of Somerset, an office which he held from Mich. 1184 to Mich. 1188.[4] Therefore Alexander must have become subdean at some time between Nov. 1186 and Mich. 1188. With our present knowledge it is reasonable to suppose that he was subdean in 1187-8, and became dean in 1189 or 1190.
Accordingly we date Dean Richard's tenure of the deanery provisionally as c. 1164-89. Of himself we know but little. The Pipe Roll for 1169-70 tells us that he was fined ten marks for having imprisoned one of the king's Serjeants. More to his credit is that in the last years of his life he co-operated with Bishop Reginald in his preparations for the rebuilding of the church of Wells. But, strangely enough, his real interest as a builder lay elsewhere: for the Evesham Chronicle gratefully records that the completion of the cloister and the nave of the abbey church under Adam the abbot was chiefly due to the assistance of Richard the dean of
