54 THE MYSTERY OF CORFE. 



Again it is clear that Shaftesbury Abbey held the manor 

 apparently under two charters, the first a grant by Eadred 

 to one Alfthrith in A.D. 948, and the second a charter by the 

 same king to one Whitsige of 16 mansis of land at Corfe and 

 Bleckenamwelle, granted in A.D. 956. There is also in the 

 Shaftesbury Cartulary a doubtful charter perhaps relating 

 to the same land, but no other charter whatsoever relating 

 to property in the Isle of Purbeck appears in the Cartulary, 

 and one or other of those here noticed must have been the 

 deed whereby Shaftesbury Abbey held the estate. 



Alfthrith is presumed to have been an Abbess of Shaftes- 

 bury, and she is referred to in the charter as a religious woman. 

 It therefore seems certain that there were no intermediate 

 holders of the land upon which Corfe Castle stands between 

 the years A.D. 948-956 and A.D. 1084, for had either Alfthrith 

 or Whitsige granted the land to any one else, then this holder 

 must have granted it to Shaftesbury Abbey. But the Car- 

 tulary contains no evidence that any such intermediate grant 

 occurred, and upon the face of it the evidence, as it stands, 

 indicates that the Abbey of Shaftesbury held the land under 

 one or both of these charters and they are both of them dated 

 prior to the year 978. Moreover, the evidence is as strongly as 

 can be in favour of the contention that the site in question 

 during the whole of that period belonged to no one else ; 

 therefore the supposition that it belonged to Elfrida cannot 

 for a moment be entertained, and as it did not belong to her 

 and there is no evidence that she ever stayed there, there is 

 no testimony that it was the place of the murder of Edward 

 the Martyr. 



It is just possible that the fact that the original grantee of 

 the site in 948 bore the same name as the Queen, may have 

 given rise to the obvious error into which the early chronicles 

 have fallen. For it is not very difficult to understand how a 

 grant of land to one Alfthrithe could easily have been assumed 

 to have been a grant to another person bearing the same 

 name ; and anything like a critical comparison of dates and 

 witnesses was not to be expected at so early a period. 



