36 Bath under West Saxon Dominion. 



selves by using for a pattern the small Saxon church of 

 Aldhelm, at Bradford-on-Avon. Of the religious reputation 

 of this society we shall catch a glimpse presently. Of its 

 literature and library some few valuable specimens exist, 

 especially one volume at Cambridge, which tells of the 

 estates of the Abbey, and of the benevolent agrarian policy 

 of the Abbots. A chief field of benevolence at this time 

 lay in the manumission of slaves ; and the records of this 

 ancient book combine with like records . at Exeter and at 

 Bodmin to afford us a broad glimpse of the philanthropic 

 movement in its westward march. 



The Saxon period terminates abruptly in 1066,, 



St. Alphege. , , ^ ^ ^ , f -^ , 



so that only a fragment of the eleventh cen- 

 tury falls into this chapter. But this remnant of the period 

 is illumined with the name of a Saint ; — a name which like 

 ^Ethelthryth of Ely, and Swithun of Winchester, stood the 

 scrutiny of the Reformation, and still adorns the Anglican 

 Calendar. Alphege (in pure English .^lfheah) was Bishop 

 of Winchester, and then Archbishop of Canterbury ; and 

 being captured by the heathen Danes in 1012, he died at their 

 hands rather than get himself ransomed with the goods of 

 his church. This true pillar of Church and State was formed 

 in the Abbey of Bath. The historian of the next century, 

 William of Malmesbury, in his account of the Bishops of 

 Winchester, says : — "^thelwold was succeeded by ^Ifheah, 

 another good man, of whom I have already said somewhat,, 

 and will now speak more fully. In boyhood he took kindly 

 to his books ; in youth he assumed the religious habit at 

 Deerhurst, then a small monastery, but now an empty shell 

 of the past (antiguitatis inane simulacrum). There he 

 adopted the rule of monastic life ; but aspiring higher he 

 proceeded to Bath, where he kept to his cell in strict seclu- 



