By the Rev. W. H. Jones. 



79 



at Bishopstrow is still dedicated to St. Aldhelm. In a somewhat 

 similar way the memory of Felix, the first Bishop of East Anglia, 

 is preserved in Feiixstow, a little village in the neighbourhood 

 of Norwich. 



It was whilst engaged in his sacred work at no great distance 

 from the same neighbourhood that Aldhelm finished his earthly 

 course. He was near Doulting, 1 a small village in Somerset, not far 

 from Shepton Mallet, when he felt himself smitten for death. He 

 straightway directed his attendants to carry him into the little 

 wooden church, when, commending his soul to God, he tranquilly 

 breathed his last. The church at Doulting, as well as that at 

 Bishopstrow, is dedicated to St. Aldhelm. 



Under the direction of Ecgwin, Bishop of Worcester, the body 

 of the bishop was brought to Malmesbury and buried in the chapel 

 of St. Michael, which Aldhelm himself had built. Stone crosses 

 were erected as memorials at intervals along the road by which 

 they bare him to his burial, some of which remained in the days 

 of William of Malmesbury. In the reign of Edwy, the bones of 

 Aldhelm having- been discovered and disinterred were enshrined 

 with much solemnity by Dunstan. And according to Leland, 2 

 though it is by no means easy to weave a consistent narrative out of 

 the extracts which he gives us, they were again removed by 

 Osmund, Bishop of Sarum, at the commencement of the twelfth 

 century. 



A place has been given to Aldhelm in the Roman calendar, and 



i Wright makes the place of Aldhelm's decease to have been Dilton, near 

 Westbury, in Wilts, (Biogr. Liter. 217.) This is clearly a mistake, for one of the 

 chroniclers speaks of the place as having belonged to Giastonbury, and been given 

 to that monastery by Aldhelm : — " quam pridem dederat monachis Glastonise." 

 All that is probably meant is, that he had induced Ina to give the estate at 

 Doulting to Glastonbury ; as that King, according to a charter printed in the 

 New Monast. i. 48, appears to have so bestowed it in the year 708. There is 

 abundant evidence that much that was done by Ina was through the influence 

 and often through the agency of Aldhelm. Thus in the ' ' Annals of the Church of 

 Winchester " printed from the Cotton MS. in the Anglia Sacra we have the 

 following entry. " A°. 683. Ina Rex West-Saxonum construxit cenobium 

 Glastonise, et per manum Sancti Aldelmi monachos imposuit." See New 

 Monast. i., 204. 



2 Colleotanea, ii,, 299. 



