6 - The eighth-century church

Summary

THE REIGN OF ÆTHELBALD

By 716, when Æthelbald returned from exile to become king of Mercia, at least thirteen monasteries had been founded in the dioceses of the Hwicce and Magonsætan: Hanbury, Evesham, Fladbury, Tetbury, Lingen(?), Leominster, Wenlock, Bath, Gloucester, Pershore, Ripple, Penintanham and Withington. All of these may have continued in existence in his reign (716—57), though some of them disappear from the record; the monastery of Hanbury, for example, only resurfaces in 836, by which time it was in the hands of the bishop of Worcester. Often it is easier to trace the histories of the monasteries which were absorbed into the well-documented episcopal estate of Worcester than those of the ‘big names’ which escaped episcopal control. Knowledge of eighth-century Evesham, for instance, is limited to a thirteenth-century list of abbots and a mass of late forged charters. Leominster is lost to view, and the same may be said of Pershore, though later on the monks claimed to have received a privilege from Coenwulf of Mercia (796—821). The fortunes of the other ‘big names’ — Wenlock, Bath and Gloucester — are slightly better recorded. Wenlock's continued existence is shown by Boniface's allusion, at the very beginning of Æthelbald's reign, to ‘monasterium Milburge abbatissȩ’, and by the latest grant, of 727×736, in the so-called ‘Testament of St Mildburg’:

I {Mildburg} also bought a property from the king's comes Sigward. To him I gave a large sum of money, and he gave me an estate of three hides, with its charter, called Madeley.