RELIGIOUS HOUSES 



Of the communities very few lasted until the General Dissolution. 

 With the exception of Hoddesdon, which continued up to 1575 as a kind 

 of almshouse, all the hospitals mentioned had disappeared before 1530, or 

 survived only as chantries ; the college at Thele had come to an end in 

 143 1, the preceptories of the Hospitallers before 1500; and the monastery at 

 Salford had ceased to exist in the 14th century ; Rowney Nunnery and the 

 alien priory at Ware had been dissolved in the 15th century ; Redbourn 

 Priory had been abandoned before the Act of 1536, under which the houses 

 of Cheshunt, Flamstead, Sopwell, Royston and Wymondley were suppressed. 



HOUSES OF BENEDICTINE MONKS 



I. ST. ALBANS ABBEY 



BEFORE THE CONQUEST 



The legend of the foundation of St. Albans 

 Abbey has been graphically written by Matthew 

 Paris, a 13th-century monk of the abbey. 

 According to his account Offa II, King of the 

 Mercians, desired to found a monastery in 

 atonement for the murder by Quendreda, his 

 queen, of Ethelbert, King of the East Angles, a 

 suitor for the hand of their daughter.^ Being 

 at Bath in 793, Offa, it is said, was visited one 

 night by an angel who admonished him to raise 

 the body of St. Alban, ' protomartyr of the 

 English or Britons,' and place it in a more 

 worthy shrine.^ The king told Humbert or 

 Higbert, Archbishop of Lichfield, of his vision, 

 who, taking with him the Bishops of Lindsey 

 and Leicester with a multitude ' of both sexes 

 and divers ages,' went to Verulamium, where 

 they were joined by OSa. There the place of 

 Alban's burial being forgotten, the king was 

 guided to it by a ray of light, and upon digging 

 the ground the body of the martyr with the 

 relics of divers saints left there by St. German 

 were found.* The archbishop and bishops 

 raised the relics from the sepulchre and carried 

 them in procession with hymns and shouts of 

 praise to a church outside the town of Veru- 

 lamium, built by the early British converts, 

 and consecrated in honour of St. Alban. After 

 this the king called a synod (or provincial 

 council) at ' Celchyth ' in 793, at which it was 

 determined to establish a monastery, where 

 the relics of St. Alban should be preserved. 

 For this purpose a large endowment was made 

 by Offa and Egfrith, his son, with the consent 

 of the synod, and extensive hberties, including, 

 as Matthew Paris asserts, freedom from all 

 interference by .ecclesiastics or laymen, were 

 granted. 



That Offa wished to found a monastery, and 



1 Vita Offae Secundt (Wats ed.), 983. 



2 Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. (Rolls Ser.), i, 356 ; Will, 

 of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum (Rolls Ser.), 316. 



^ See above, p. 286. 



that his choice fell upon a spot near Veru- 

 lamium on account of the sanctity of the 

 memory of St. Alban, is doubtless correct. 

 Nevertheless, a further determining factor in 

 the selection of the site was that the productive 

 lands in England had been at this time granted 

 out and settled, and there only remained the 

 forests and marshes with which to endow 

 any newly-founded monastery. Besides which 

 monks seem to have been the great settlers of 

 unreclaimed land.* 



The gift of so many ' manses ' or ' man- 

 siones ' or land of so many ' manentes ' did not 

 indicate a strictly defined area,^ but probably 

 a district of waste land such as all the south 

 and south-west parts of Hertfordshire then 

 were.^ This manner of endowment led later 

 to many disputes and to the system of forging 

 charters in support of claims. Although Offa's 

 and Egfrith's charters, which the monks 

 of St. Albans proffered as their original title 

 deeds, are probably such forgeries, yet their 

 contents as regards the territorial gifts may be 

 correct in substance. Offa's original endow- 

 ment ' of 34 ' mansiones ' at Caegesho or Cashio 



^ Elton, Origms of Engl. Hist. Z28. The monasteries 

 of Worcester, Evesham, Pershore and Westminster 

 divided the greater part of Worcestershire, which was 

 unreclaimed forest, and cleared and settled it ; 

 St. Augustine's and Christ Church, Canterbury, 

 drained and settled the great marsh districts of south- 

 east Kent, and it was the same with Croyland in 

 Lincolnshire and Westminster in Western Middlesex. 



^ Maitland, Domesday Bk. and Beyond, 227. 



* Offa's charter suggests that the lands granted to 

 the abbey were woodland, for in it he forbids anyone 

 to do harm either to the church or the woods (si/vis) 

 belonging to the monastery (Matt. Paris, Chron. 

 Maj. vi, 2). 



' These charters are all taken from Cott. MS. 

 Nero, D i, fol. 148, 148 d., and are printed in the 

 most accessible form in Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. vi, 

 add. i-ii. See also Birch, Cart. Sax. i, 367, 373, 

 388, 389; Dugdale, Mon. ii, 223, 224; Kemble, 

 Cod. Dipl. i, 195, 197, 208, 209. The charters 

 were confirmed by Inspeximus of Edward IV printed 

 by Clutterbuck, Hist, and Antiq. of Herts, i, App. I. 



367 



