1 - Framing the Past: Charters and Chronicles at Worcester, c.1050–c.1150

Summary

The Worcester church – from the late Anglo-Saxon period through to the early Anglo-Norman – was a community of great importance, both at local and national level. In the mid-tenth and early eleventh centuries, before the time addressed in this volume, three of Worcester's bishops ascended to the highest ranks of ecclesiastical life and took part in some of the most significant cultural and political events then happening. Dunstan, who held the Worcester bishopric in 958–9, later became archbishop of Canterbury, and was at the forefront of the monastic reform movement; he clearly also held a position of influence in secular circles, becoming a central figure during King Edgar's reign, at a time when the English kingdom was gaining greater definition. Oswald, who held the Worcester see from 961 to 992, and in plurality with the York archiepiscopal see from 971 to 992, was a man of similarly elevated stature. Like Dunstan, he was instrumental in the spread of the tenth-century Benedictine reform and his holding of the York church in plurality demonstrates the confidence invested in him by successive kings of England in handling this sensitive northern institution. But possibly the most famous of all Worcester bishops from this time was Wulfstan I, who held the see from 1002 to 1016 and was simultaneously archbishop of York. A large corpus of works connected to Wulfstan I has fortunately survived, with the result that we can gain a good sense of Wulfstan's role as a ‘homilist and statesman’, and as someone who bridged the political chasm between the reigns of Athelred Unrad, of the West Saxon line, and Cnut, of Scandinavian extraction.

By the later eleventh century, therefore, Worcester was a place of national importance, and it had long been so. This book covers the period in the Worcester church's existence from c. 1050 to c. 1150, embracing the episcopacies of Ealdred (1046–61), Wulfstan II (1062–95), Samson (1096–1112), Theulf (1113–23) and Simon (1125–50). These years – bridging the Norman Conquest – arguably witnessed some of the most fundamental changes to the ecclesiastical and political landscape of the English kingdom in medieval times. Much ink has been spilled in trying to understand the extent of change across the country engendered by this military conquest.