Donations of Manors to Christ Church, Canterbury, and Appropriation of Churches

103 ) DONATIONS OF MANORS TO CHRIST CHURCH, CANTERBURY, AND APPROPRIATION OF CHURCHES. BY E. G. BOX. PREFACE. Tms paper contains descriptions of two cartularies and nine lists or catalogues, all of which record donations of manors to Christ Church, Canterbury, and also the appropriation of churches. Manuscripts of these two cartularies and six of the lists are preserved in the Libraries of Canterbury Cathedral, Lambeth Palace, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and the British Museum. One of the cartularies and one of the six lists have been printed, but the other cartulary and the other five lists have, I believe, never been printed. The manuscripts of the other three lists or catalogues are not known today, but exist only in printed books. The manuscripts of the five lists at Canterbury, Lambeth and Cambridge (which have never been printed) are, as I discovered in 1931 (I believe the discovery was new), almost identical in their contents. I have noted the tentative dates attributed to the several manuscripts, and suggested the probable relationship between them. I have also collected evidence as to the Catalogue of Donations printed by Somner (and Dugdale) which has sometimes been said to have been written or compiled by Somner himself ; and I have suggested reasons £or thinltlng that the Catalogue was not Somner's work, but was written by Stephen Birchington, a monk of Christ Church, at a much earlier date. I have in my possession photostats of the MSS. 1·eferred to of the Lambeth Cartulary and the several lists, except the Cartulary of 􀂐videntiae of which I have only a few pages. 104 DONATIONS OF MANORS. I have been much indebted in writing this paper to the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury, and to its honorary Librarian, the Rev. Canon Bickersteth, D.D., and to the Librarians of the Lambeth Palace Library, the British Museum, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, for allowing me to have photostats taken of MSS. in their custody. I have been also indebted to Dr. A. G. Little, D.Litt., F.B.A., Dr. M. R. James, O.M., the Provost of Eton, the Rev. C. Eveleigh Woodruff and Dr. Irene Churchill, D.Phil., Assistant Librarian of Lambeth Library, for help kindly given me in various ways. I should add that this paper could not have been written were I not a member of the invaluable London Library. PRECIS OF CoNTENTS. I. CA!tTULARms. I. MS. No. 189, Corpus Christi College, Cami.bridge. This MS. contains the " Evidentiae " which is pa.rt of the Chronicle of William Thorne (who was a monk of St. Augustine's and fiourished1 about 1397). The Chronicle is printed in Twysden's Decem Scriptores, 1652, Col. 2207-2226. The MS. is of XII century date. 2. MS. Lambeth 1212, pp. 304-339. This MS. has never been printed. Its date is XII century. II. LISTS OF DONATIONS IN MSS. I. British Museum. MS. Cotton Galba, E. iii, 2, fol. 31. This was printed in Dart's Oanterbur1J, 1725. The MS. is XIII century, 2. Lambeth MS. 303. Palace Lib,rai-y. The date of this MS. is probably XV century. It has never been printed. 3. Canterbury MSS. 156, 157, 158. Lib,rary of the Dean and Chapter. None of these have been jrinted. The date of MSS. 157 an 158 is probably XV century, and of MS. 156, XVI century. 4. Cambridge. Corpus Ohri8ti Oollege, MS. No. 298. This has neve1· been printed. Its date is early XVI century. III. PRINTED LIST. There is a list of donations in Fragmenta Sprottiana which was printed with Sprott's Chronicle by Hearne, 1719. The MB. is unknown, but its date was probably XII or XIII century, as it was evidently corn piled from the Cartulary in " Evidentiae ". There are Catalogues of Donations in Somner's Antiquities of Canterbury, 1640, and Dugdale'a Monasticon AngUcanum, 1655; their MSS. are lost, but they were probably written ea.rly in the XV century, being founded on Lambeth MS. 303 and Canterbury MSS. 157 and 158. 1 Grosa, Sources of English HiBtory, 2nd edition, 19J5, P.· 390. DONATIONS OF MANORS. 105 DESCRIPTION OF THE CARTULARIBS AND LISTS. I. THE CARTULARIBS. (1) "Evidentiae" in the Chronicle of William Thorne. The Benedictine MS. of the Chronicle originally at Canterbury but now at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, has the title " Chronica fratis Wilhelmi Thorne, cui subneotuntur Evidentiae Donationum ecclesiae Christi Cantuar." 1 In Twysden's Decem Scriptores, where it is printed at the · end of the Chronicles (as it is in the MS.), it is headed "Ex MS. in Collegio C.C. Cant. Dict. Thorne." The "Evidentiae" contains copies of 75 charters and 6 other documents, beginning with a charter dated 616 of Eadbald, King of Kent, granting Edesham and ending with an undated one of Archbishop Anselm. All but three are in the first person in a short form, and most of them omit the attestations of witnesses and anathemas. There are 15 documents in "Evidentiae" in a longer form than the others. These, according to B.C.S., exist also today in other cartularies at Canterbury, Lambeth, British Museum, Bodleian Library, or in the Public Record Office. (2) Lambeth MS. 1212, pp. 304-339. This section of MS. 1212 contains a cartulary headed " Transcripta de veteri Iibro Cantuar. .Memoranda cartarum & con()iliorum Arch. et ecclesie Cant." The whole MS. belongs to the part of the Lambeth Library MSS. called " Codices Manners-Suttoniana ", having been given to the Library by the Archbishop about 1800. Fol. 286-289 of the same MS. contain "oapitula memorandarum de veteri libro 1 MS. No. 189, the "Evidentiae" being at fol. 195 et seq. See Oatalogue of the MSS. of Oorpus Ohrieti Ooll. by Dr. M. R. Jo.mes, 1912, vol. i, pp. xxxv, lviii, 440, 451. This MS. was taken from St. Augustine's, Canterbury, by Archbishop Parker (Archbishop, 1559-1575) and given to 0. C. Coll. Dr. James refers in his catalogue to "another MS." which he tells me belonged to Twysden, and passed to the Sebrights, and wa.s sold in 1807. Dr. James says that the MS. of Thorne's Chronicle is" seculo XIV Scriptus ", while the "Evidentiae" which is part of it is "century XII and in a. Christ Church !\and." The last charter copied in the "Evidentiae " is one of Anselm who died in 1109 ; perhaps the MS. was written not much later. 106 DONATIONS OF MANORS. Cant. ", being the headings of the Charters in this cartulary (at pages 304-339). This section, pp. 304-339 of MS. 1212, was written probably in the latter part of the twelfth century. The last charters copied in it relate to Thomas Becket (1161-1171). Fol. 286-289 is perhaps late thirteenth or early fourteenth century.1 The cartulary contains copies of ninety-one charters in a short form, mostly without attestations of witnesses but with anathemas, and contains also copies of three papal . letters and records of nine councils. (3) Oompa;rison of" Evidentiae" andLambetkOartuktries. "Evidentiae" contains seventy-five charters and six other documents, while the Lambeth Cartulary contains ninety-one charters and twelve other documents. The two cartularies otherwise agree for the most part, but not in the chronological order of their contents. Also there are six charters in the Lambeth Cartulary which are later in date than in " Evidentiae ". II. LISTS OF DONATIONS. (1) MS. Cotton, Galba, E., iii. 2. fol. 31.2 The title of this MS. in the B.M. Catalogue of the Cottonian MSS., 1802, is : '' Catalogus benefactorumEcclesiaeChristi Cantuariensis, ah Ao. 1052 temp. scilicet Edwardi Confessoris, ad annum 1130, et quo tempore fiunt pro illis com· memorationes." The MS. is in the form of an almanack and obituary, the notes of the charters being entered under the names of the dead donors with the day and month of their deaths, but not the year. 1 Dr. A. G. Little, 1931. 2 The MS. is printed in Dart's Oante.rbury, 1726, App. p. xxiii, but incorrectly ; he omits the third line of the MS. and several words and transcribes several names wrongly. He also omits in the title of the MS. the words "ab Ao. 1052 . . . ad annum 1130." These words are in faot incorrect, as the Catalogue begins at an earlier date and ends at a later one. DONATIONS OF MANORS. 107 The MS. was written in the thirteenth century and probably not later than 1250.1 A more exact date might be fixed by the identification of all the charters and their donors.2 The latest I have so far identified is a charter of 1199 of Richard I. This MS. is written in a beautiful hand, clear, and easy to read, though some of the names of persons and manors are mis-spelt and a few are garbled and hard to identify: For instance, "Megeldewrthe" has been turned into "Migel de Werda ",while" Silvam Catur" in the MS. seems to be derived from the "silvam quae vocatur "of the charter, the last two syllables of "vocatur" being turned into a proper name. One distortion I cannot explain, namely, " Qui