20 Malmeshury. 



I do not dwell upon Aldhelm's history, as it will form the subject 

 of a separate paper by the Vicar of Bradford. Aldhelin was buried 

 in a chapel of St. Michael, which he had built, but his remains 

 were many years afterwards found and removed. Chapels of St. 

 Michael were common in cemeteries. St. Michael is called in one 

 of the Roman Services the signifer, or standard-bearer, being sup- 

 posed to represent the herald of the Resurrection.^ John Aubrey, 

 who lived 200 years ago, thought that St. Michael's Chapel had 

 stood where the House called the Abbey House now is. But he 

 gives no authority for it, and the underground architecture of that 

 House does not look as if it had been any part of a chapel. 



After Aldhelm's death the Monastery had a hard matter to hold 

 its own. The history of those days is but a wearisome repetition 

 of petty kingdom fighting against petty kingdom : Wessex defeating 

 Mercia to-day : Mercia victorious to-morrow : and as each lost or 

 won, so was this Monastery on the frontier bandied from one to the 

 other. Or else it was the Bishop in the lower part of Wessex, 

 who would seize and enjoy its estates for years together. In truth, 

 more than once it was almost extinct. Ethelwulf the father of King 

 Alfred befriended it and greatly enlarged its possessions. King 

 Alfred himself probably thinking that it stood (as in his days it very 

 likely did) more in need of learning than of possessions, attempted 

 to revive literature. Another learned Scot was sent to Malmesbury, 

 but for some reason or other this second Missionary was unpopular. 

 He came distinguished as the author of a Book, called a " Treatise 

 on the Division of Nature, extremely useful in solving the per- 

 plexities of certain indispensable enquiries." But the youth of 

 Maldulf 'sburg, belonging to the school or college of the Monastery, 

 made very short work both of his enquiries and himself, for they 

 set upon and stabbed him to death with the steel instruments used 

 in those days for writing. What the special cause of ofience was, 

 whether it was having to study the "Division of Nature," or 



1 This is alluded to ia one of the Glastonbury Charters : Dugdale, New 

 Monasticon, Charter No. v. " Oratorium edificaverunt, in honore Sancti 

 Miehaelis Arch-angeli, quatenus ibi ab hominibus haberet honorem, qui homines 

 in perpetuos honores, jubente Deo, est introducturus." 



