By the Rev. W. E. Jones. 



71 



of the West Saxons, "after long and due deliberation gave the 

 monastery to Aldhelm, a monk of the same place, to be by him 

 governed with the authority then possessed by Bishops. " And 

 then he gives a copy of the charter, to which allusion has been 

 made, by which the Bishop bestows on " Aldhelm the priest in 

 order that he might lead a life according to strict rule that portion 

 of land called Maildalfesburg, 1 in which place from his earliest 

 infancy and first initiation in the study of learning he had been in- 

 structed in the liberal arts, and passed his days, nurtured in the 

 bosom of the holy mother church." The grant would seem to have 

 included the site on which the Abbey and its surrounding buildings 

 afterwards rose. In the Malmesbury Chartulary 2 this deed is 

 dated in 675, but, as Bishop Leotherius died in that year, the date 

 which William of Malmesbury gives, — viz., 672, — is more probably 

 the correct one. 



A few years after the constitution of a regular monastery here, 

 its revenues were increased by endowments from various sources. 

 The first benefactor singularly enough was Ethelred, a king of 

 Mercia, who, at the request of his kinsman Coenfrith, Earl of 

 Mercia, endowed it, in 681, with lands at Newentone (Long 

 Newnton) and Charletone (Charlton) next Tetteburi. 3 In the 

 following year Caedwealha of Wessex, bestowed on Aldhelm an 

 estate, described as being " on either side of the wood called 

 Kemele" (Kemble), a gift which he considerably augmented some 

 seven years afterwards. 4 His original gift was certainly a remark- 

 able one, inasmuch as the Kings of Wessex had, after embracing 

 Christianity, relapsed again into idolatry, and Ceedwealha at the 

 very time when he was endowing Aldhelm's monastery was himself 

 a heathen. Possibly the awe of a good man, and the secret con- 

 viction that after all Christianity now openly professed in the 

 kingdom of Mercia was right, may have moved him to this act. 

 At all events in the year 688, — the very time it may be observed at 



1 In the copy of the charter given in the Lansdowne MS. the word is spelt 

 " Mealdume&burg." Cod : Dip : 11. 



2 MSS. Lansdowne 417, fo). i. 3 Ibid, fol. 2. Cod : Dipl : 23. 



4 See Charters 24 and 29 in Cod : Diplom. 



