402 Notes on the History of Wroitghtoii. 



Lelaiid's statement^ that Athelstan gave Ellendune to Winchester 

 is not borne out by what he says in another passage {Collectanea, 

 I., 429)^ or by Dugdale's Monasticon (I. 206),^ for in neither is 

 Ellendune included in the three recorded manors given by Athelstan 

 to Winchester. 



The Malmesbury charters prove that Ellendune belonged to 

 Malmesbury before 956 A.D., and it is also certain that not long 

 after Athelstan's death, somewhere between 956 and 1066, it passed 

 into the hands of Winchester. 



The connection between Ellendune and Malmesbury is of great 

 interest when we remember the place Malmesbury occupied in the 

 early Church ; or realize what the Bishop of Bristol has so well 

 pointed out in his Life of St. Aldhelm, that "few if any of 

 the archaeological and ecclesiastical interests of England are greater 

 than those which gather in the earliest times around Malmesbury. No 

 other British place remained undisturbed with its complete British life 

 and work, right out among the Saxons geographically, and right out into 

 Saxon history as Malmesbury did " " and nowhere in England have we so 

 unbroken a connection between the British and Saxon Church life and 

 teaching as at Malmesbury. When St. Augustine about A.D. 600 (fifty years 

 before the breaking up of the Selwood Forest Britons) turned his thoughts 

 westward to what Bede'* called ' the next province of the Britons ' he would 

 naturally fix on the frontier fortress on the heightsof Malmesbury as a place 

 where he might find Christians of the old British Church." 



" As a matter of geography it cannot be disputed that the British inhabit- 

 ants of that part of Selwood which lay north of Frome up as far as 

 Cricklade, were to Augustine the nearest province of the Britons," 



and we know that the frontier fortress of Malmesbury lay on the 

 Koman road from Bath to Cirencester. 



It was at Malmesbury not long afterwards that Maildubh sought 

 refuge (circ. 634), and Aldhelm and a band of scholars gathered 

 around him. 



^ Leland's Itinerary^ iii., p. 102, under " ex libello Donationum Winton 

 Eccl." : " JEthelstanus rex dedit Chilboltun et Elendon quod est Werston." 



2 Leland's Collectanea, I., 429, under Fundatores principales Cathedree 

 S. Swithini Winton "tria maneria Chiboltoun Enedford et Hamerisword." 



^ The Winton account of the donations in Dugdale Mon., I., 206 : "Edel- 

 stanus Bex Anglise dedit tria maneria Chibeldinham Enedford et Eismeres- 

 wordam." 



■* Bede, Eccl. History, by J. Giles. Bohn's Library, p. 68. 



