ABBOTSBURY ABBEY. 39 



would be a clumsy thing to make St. Peter call a place Abbotstury 

 in (say) the 5th century when there was to be no Abbot there 

 until the eleventh, and apparently no connection with Glastonbury 

 Abbey in the time of Bertufus, or presumably for long after. So 

 may not Abodesbyry be the original form, whether it means a 

 naval station, as some say, or something more likely to apply to 

 the spot ? And may not Abbotsbury be a subsequent corruption, 

 importing into the name a then familiar significance ? 



But to go on with what, of course, must be a bare outline of the 

 history of the place. The next thing known of Abbotsbury is 

 that it was a rural retreat of the Saxon kings. On King Knut 

 winning the realm, he gave Abbotsbury, Portisham, and Helton to 

 Ore, his house-carle. Ore, or Orcy, and his wife Thole, eponymos 

 of Tolpuddle, dedicated their Abbotsbury and other property to 

 found a fraternity of secular canons in 1026. This was in 

 connection with the long ruined primitive Celtic Church of St. 

 Peter. It is to be supposed that Ore restored this church and 

 erected some sort of dwellings for the canons. But in 1044, 

 furnished with a charter from King Edward the Confessor, and 

 probably too with authority from the Church powers, he took the 

 whole foundation again into hand. He expelled the canons, 

 " built a faire monasterie, and stored it with Benedictine Monks 

 from Cermill Abbie." This, I suppose, is a slip of Coker's for 

 Cernel, which is Cerne Abbas. . Ore, and also his Rouennaise 

 wife, the heroine Thole (as Dugdale calls her), were buried in the 

 new Abbey Church. At the dissolution the bones appear to have 

 been removed to the parish church " inclosed in a daintie marbill 

 coffin, which I have often seene," says Coker. From Hutchins it 

 appears that this coffin is at this moment buried near the north 

 end of the Holy Table. After founding the Abbey, Ore also 

 established at Abbotsbury a guild or lay-fraternity in honour of 

 God and St. Peter, with a Guildhall, and with a very remarkable 

 code of rules, which is written in Hutchins in Saxon, English, and 

 Latin. 



I do not know that there is anything that need be said about 



