18 Bradford-upon-Avon. 
Shaftesbury the monastery and vill of Bradeford, to be always 
subject to it, that therein might be found a safe refuge (his exact 
words are “‘impenetrabile confugium’’) for the nuns against the insults 
of the Danes, and a hiding-place also for the relics of the blessed 
martyr St. Edward and the rest of the saints,’’ He expresses moreover 
his wish “that on the restoration of peace, if such were vouchsafed 
to his kingdom, the nuns should return to their ancient place, but, 
‘that some of the family should still remain at Bradeford if it be 
thought fit by the superior.” It was indeed at an eventful crisis 
that he granted this charter. The miseries of his troublous reign | 
seem to have well nigh reached their culminating point. Again and 
again had meetings of the Witena-gemote been held, their delibe- 
rations issuing only in the fatal step of buying off with large sums 
of money the opposition of their dreaded foe. In this very year of 
which we are speaking, the Northmen devastated Waltham, Taun- 
ton, and Clifton, and were only induced to desist from further 
ravages by the immense bribe of £24,000. 
- What was precisely meant by Bradford being called “impenetrabile 
confugium”’ is not very clear. Probably it was by no means easy of 
access to a large armed force, and, in the event of their approach, 
the surrounding woods would furnish a secure hiding-place for the 
members of the sisterhood. However, hither the Danes came, and 
within a few years at most from this time, the monastery is said 
to have been levelled with the ground. That most treacherous act 
of Ethelred, by which, on St. Brice’s day, a.p. 1002, he ordered an 
indiscriminate massacre of the Danes, who, trusting to his promises, 
deemed themselves living at peace with him, exasperated them to 
madness, and they spared nothing. It is not improbable that either 
in the year 1003, when Sweyn laid waste to Wiltshire, or in 1018, 
when, at Bath, he received the submission of the Ealdorman Ethel- 
mar and the rest of the Western Thanes, our monastery fell. After 
1016, the date of the accession of Canute, the Dane, to the throne 
of England, it was not likely that the Northmen would destroy 
what then they might fairly reckon as their own. 
On the second point,—viz., the limits of the Manor of Bradford,— 
the charter is very explicit. This portion of the deed is not written, 
