ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



division of the latter diocese, Egfrith King of Northumbria, who was present, 

 preceded the Kings of Mercia, East AngHa and Kent in giving his consent. 

 It would therefore seem that ' Haethfeld ' can with more probability be 

 identified with Hatfield in Yorkshire, in the kingdom of Northumbria and 

 diocese of York.'" 



Of the western and southern parts of the county we hear little or nothing 

 till the end of the 8th century, when they formed part of the kingdom of 

 Mercia. They were forest land which could have supported few famihes 

 and like other great areas of waste were largely granted to reUgious bodies 

 for settlement. The greater part was given to St. Albans Abbey at its 

 foundation in 793, and Ely and Westminster afterwards received large tracts. 

 The settlement of the district was probably late, for we know that the 

 clearance of it continued into the 12th and 13th centuries and possibly 

 later. Such inhabitants as there were would obtain the ministrations of 

 religion from the monks of St. Albans Abbey. But this monastery cannot 

 have ministered to the whole county before the introduction of the parochial 

 system in the loth and i ith centuries. There must have been other smaller 

 communities of priests to supply religious service in the districts distant from 

 St, Albans, whose existence has long been lost. These small monasteries or 

 minsters of priests, being impoverished by the Danish invasions and 

 discountenanced and suppressed by iEthelwold, Oswald and Dunstan, in their 

 endeavours to establish the stricter Benedictine rule, possibly became mother 

 churches, the matrices ecclesiae parochiales mentioned in the laws of William 

 the Conqueror, retaining in many cases their title of minster. We have 

 perhaps some evidence of this development at Braughing and Welwyn 

 and possibly at Hitchin. With regard to the two former places it would 

 appear that in 944-6 Ethelgiva left her land at Munden to Ealfwold for life, 

 subject to the yearly payment to each of the minsters {monasterid) of Braughing 

 and Welwyn of six bushels (modios) of barley together with flour and fish at 

 Lent and four pigs at the feast of St. Martin, and at his death the land was 

 to be divided between the two minsters." 



Such bequests as these would seem more appropriate to communities or 

 small minsters than to single parish priests, besides which all these places 

 lay on important roads, a matter so essential to early monasteries on account 

 of the periodical attendance at them of the people of the district. 

 Braughing was at the intersection of several Roman roads, almost on 

 the site of a Roman station ; it was the head of the deanery of Braughing, 

 which comprised all the lands in Hertfordshire that lay in the diocese of 

 London, and thus its church was one of importance. It had always been held 

 in alms of the king and supported a priest in 1086.'' Welwyn was at a ford on 

 a Roman road and had been an important Late Celtic and Roman settlement. 

 The priest there in the time of Edward the Confessor and probably long 

 before held the manor in alms of the king, and the rector still holds it. It 

 was also the head of a later deanery. Hitchin lay on an important early 

 road and the church is described in the Domesday Survey as a minster 



™ cf. Hardy, Monumenta Hist. Brit, i, 227 with variants. A council was held at ' Bergamysted ' in 696 

 to treat of ecclesiastical matters connected with Kent. This place has been identified with Berkhampstead in 

 Hertfordshire, but the probable identification is Bearsted near Maidstone (Haddan and Stubbs, op. cit. lu, 

 233, 238 n.). M Birch, Cart. Sax. n, jyi. '' l^-CH. Herts. \, ^22. 



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