ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



on the high altar in the cathedral church of Winchester, is the most 

 memorable event during Swithun's episcopacy. 1 



In 857 Ethelwulf was succeeded by his son Ethelbald, and it was 

 Swithun who persuaded the latter to fortify the church and monastery 

 of Winchester in readiness for any sudden attack on the part of the 

 Danes. The advantage of this timely act was realized in the reign of 

 his brother Ethelbert, for in 860 a great army of Norsemen landed at 

 Southampton and made an onslaught upon Winchester. Most of the 

 city was plundered and burnt, but the new defence works saved the 

 minster and the cloister, together with all the citizens who had fled there 

 for safety. In 862 the good bishop died, and is said to have been buried 

 in the churchyard that the rain of heaven might fall upon him. 



Wessex was now the only kingdom strong enough to resist the 

 Danes. Ethelred, the third son of Ethelwulf, came to the throne in 866, 

 and with the powerful assistance of his youngest brother Alfred fought 

 gallantly and continuously against the foe and their treacherous allies. 

 In the hottest of the strife in 871, Ethelred was slain, and the charge of 

 the almost ruined kingdom devolved upon the heroic Alfred. To eight 

 years of war succeeded eighteen years of peace, during which the 

 Church flourished, chiefly through the education of her clergy, to 

 which Alfred gave special attention. 



Amongst other continental men of learning, the king invited to 

 Winchester St. Grimbald, purposing to found for him a new monastery 

 (New Minster) in the cemetery to the north of the cathedral church. 2 

 He had already founded at Winchester the abbey of St. Mary for Bene- 

 dictine nuns, commonly known as the Nunnaminster. This grand group 

 of three great minsters with their conventual buildings, which filled up 

 the south-eastern angle of the city of Winchester, must have formed for 

 many a generation one of the finest architectural spectacles of all 

 Christendom. 



On the death of Alfred in 899," one of the first acts of Edward the 

 Elder was to carry out his father's promises and complete the New 

 Minster, which was shortly afterwards dedicated by Archbishop Plegmund 

 of Canterbury. Edward also completed the Nunnaminster, to which 

 his mother Ealhswith betook herself, following the religious life with 

 such ardour that she was afterwards canonized. 



There was a considerable re-division and extension of dioceses at 

 the beginning of the tenth century, when it is said that seven bishops 

 were consecrated at the same time. Though the dioceses of the west 



1 The phrase of the chronicle is, ' He booked (gebocade) the tenth part of his lands to God's praise 

 and his own eternal welfare.' The gift therefore was expressly limited to the king's lands. Professor 

 Maitland thinks it may have been a case of ' beneficial hidation.' Cf. Earle's Land Charters, p. Ixxiii. n, 

 and Lord Selborne's facts and Fictions concerning Tithes. 



* The name New Minster distinguished it from the cathedral church or ' Old Minster,' but in the 

 time of Henry I. it was removed to Hyde Meadow and was subsequently known for the most part as 

 Hyde Abbey. 



3 Eng. Hist. Rev. xii. 71. Bishop Stubbs accepted the argument set forth by Mr. Stevenson in 

 this article as conclusively establishing the real date of Alfred's death. 



