ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



deserted. Under the influence of Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury, 

 Ethelwold, bishop of Winchester, and Oswald, bishop of Worcester, and with 

 the help of King Edgar, there was a brief but brilliant revival. When 

 Oswald determined to introduce into his diocese the strict observance of the 

 Benedictine rule, which he had himself learnt at Fleury, he differed from 

 Ethelwold in at first avoiding the violent measure of expelling secular priests. 

 The lands and church of Westbury belonged to Oswald's see, and soon after 

 his consecration in 961 he sent to Fleury for an English monk named 

 Germanus, who had gone thither from Winchester to study the observance 

 of the rule of St. Benedict. 1 Germanus was appointed prior of a new 

 foundation at Westbury, with twelve clerks and a number of boys under his 

 rule, and Westbury thus became the centre of the Benedictine revival in 

 Mercia ; the new monasticism flourished, and the number of monks 

 increased. In 968 a monastery was founded at Ramsey in Huntingdonshire, 

 and filled with monks from Westbury. In 969 King Edgar commanded the 

 bishop to drive out the secular clerks.* It is probable that, as in the cathedral 

 of Worcester, 8 some of the priests in the other monasteries of the province of 

 the Hwiccas consented to become monks. It was from Westbury and Ram- 

 sey that Oswald chose rulers and monks for other Gloucestershire houses. 

 Winchcombe became Benedictine in 969,* Deerhurst in 970.' Owing, possi- 

 bly, to the hostility of Elfhere, ealdorman of Mercia, the houses of St. Peter 

 and St. Oswald at Gloucester and the minsters of Berkeley and Cirencester 

 escaped the influence of the Benedictine revival.' On the death of Edgar in 

 975 there was a revulsion of feeling in favour of the secular priests who had 

 been ousted from the monasteries. In Mercia Elfhere incited the people to 

 expel the monks, 7 and Abbot Germanus and his brethren were driven from 

 Winchcombe, but after the death of Elfhere in 983 the persecution ceased. 8 

 The frequent and terrible ravages of the Danes from 980 to 1016 checked the 

 progress of the monastic revival throughout England. When peace was 

 restored, under Canute, the older generation of reformers in the church had 

 passed away, and their successors were lesser men. In 1022 Wulfstan II, 

 who held the sees of Worcester and York, introduced the Benedictine rule 

 into the monastery of St. Peter at Gloucester, and the secular priests became 

 monks, under the government of one of their number, Abbot Edric,* but 

 the monastery did not prosper. 10 Writing in the reign of Henry I, William 

 of Malmesbury said that ' Zeal and religion had grown cold many years 

 before the coming of the Normans,' ll and the condition of the Church in 

 Gloucestershire, during the reign of Edward the Confessor, bears out the 

 truth of his statement. The minster at Berkeley, with its great possessions, 

 passed away from the Church into the hands of Earl Godwin. 1 * Regenbald, 

 dean of Cirencester, was a great pluralist, holding sixteen churches and lands 

 in five different counties, 18 but the college itself was slenderly endowed ; u and 



Chron. Abbatiae Ramestiensis (Rolls Ser.), 42 ; Historians of York (Rolls Ser.), i, 424. 



Flor. Wigorn. (Engl. Hist. Soc.), i, 141. ' Brist. and Gltuc. Arch. Soc. Trans, xviii, 118, 119. 



Historians of York (Rolls Ser.), i, 435. ' Brist. and Glouc. Arch. Soc. Trans, xviii, 128. 



Ibid, xviii, 1 30. ' Historians of York (Rolls Ser.), i, 445. 



Brist. and Glouc. Arch. Soc. Trans, xviii, 122. * Hist, it Cart. Gltuc. (Rolls Ser.), i, 8. 



Ibid. Dugdale, Mon. i, 564. " Will, of Malmes. Di Gest. Reg. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 304. 



" Brist. and Gkuc. Arch. Sac. Trans, xix, 80, 8 1. u Round, Ttud. Engl. 426 ; Dugdale, Mon. vi, 177. 

 14 y. C. H. Gltuc. Re/ig. Houses, Cirencester, 80. 



