

CORFE CASTLE AND STUDLAND. li. 



suggested was Saxon. As to the documentary evidence, the 

 passage from William of Malmesbury's " Gesta Pontificum 

 Anglorum" to which Mr. Bartelot had referred described how 

 St. Aldhelm, before his appointment to the see of Sherborne, 

 and while still Abbot of Malmesbury, set out, on his way to 

 Rome, for his estates in the county of Dorset. There, awaiting 

 a favourable wind (felicem auram), he built a church (ecclesiam 

 fecit}, in which, while his companions were occupied in making 

 the necessary preparations (for the voyage) he himself might 

 commend to God his journey and his return. But what kind of 

 church could St. Aldhelm possibly have built in so short a space 

 of time, and to serve so passing a purpose ? Could it have 

 been anything but a small, perishable shelter of wattle-and-daub 

 or of scars dry-built ? Was it to be believed for a moment that 

 on that occasion St. Aldhelm, even with the assistance of his 

 companions (albeit they were expressly stated to be otherwise 

 engaged), could possibly have erected that considerable expanse 

 of herringbone masonry ? And the extreme unlikelihood was 

 increased by the indefiniteness of the historian about the site of 

 St. Aldhelm's ecclesia in Purbeck. It had to be remembered that 

 William of Malmesbury was writing over 400 years after the 

 event which he was narrating, and his conceptions of the 

 geography of Purbeck appear to have been somewhat hazy. 

 The passage ran : " Locus est in Dorsatensi pago, duobus 

 milibus a mari disparatus juxta Werham, ubi et Corf Castellum 

 pelago prominet." This he ventured to translate : " The place 

 is in the county of Dorset, two miles distant from the sea, near 

 Wareham, where also Corfe Castle juts out into the sea." Now 

 this was vexatiously ambiguous, and it was hardly surprising that 

 this familiar locus classicus had been quoted in support of asser- 

 tions that three different buildings in Purbeck were each the 

 church built by St. Aldhelm ! Because William of Malmesbury 

 said " near Wareham " it had been claimed that St. Martin's 

 Church in that town was the work of St. Aldhelm. Secondly, 

 the mention of Corfe Castle had been quoted, as that day, in 

 favour of the claim of this old herringbone masonry ; but Corfe 



