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CROWLAND ABBEY AS ANGLO-SAXON SANCTUARY IN THE PSEUDO-INGULF CHRONICLE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2018

LINDY BRADY
LINDY BRADY*
Affiliation:
University of Mississippi
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Abstract

Crowland Abbey was one of many English monasteries after the Norman Conquest to forge documents that claimed a right to permanent sanctuary rooted in the Anglo-Saxon period. Yet Crowland's claims stand out because while other ecclesiastical chronicles that grounded their sanctuary claims in an earlier tradition did so in order to defend those rights in the twelfth century or later, Crowland never claimed this privilege for anything other than the abbey's Anglo-Saxon past. Indeed, I argue that the three forged “Anglo-Saxon” charters that make this assertion, which all appear in the Pseudo-Ingulf section of the abbey's chronicle, the Historia Croylandensis, do so in order to emphasize a more fundamental claim about the institution's authority — its association with one of the most significant fenland saints, Guthlac. Moreover, I argue that the most likely date when this material was forged is the late twelfth century. In the context of the narrative in which they appear, these charters reveal that later medieval Crowland constructed a narrative that saw permanent sanctuary as an important feature of the abbey's Anglo-Saxon past.

Keywords

sanctuaryforgeryCrowlandPseudo-IngulfGuthlac
Type
Research Article
Information
Traditio , Volume 73 , 2018 , pp. 19 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © Fordham University 2018 

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Footnotes

I am very grateful to Frederick M. Biggs, Andrew Rabin, Joshua Byron Smith, and the readers for Traditio (particularly Karl Shoemaker, who kindly identified himself and corresponded with me) for their thought-provoking and helpful comments throughout the development of this essay.

References

1 The Historia Croylandensis survives in two extant manuscripts: the damaged fifteenth-century London, BL Cotton Otho B xiii and the sixteenth-century London, BL Arundel 178. Early editions are by Savile, Henry in Scriptores post Bedam (London, 1596)Google Scholar and Rerum Anglicarum scriptores veteres, ed. William Fulman (Oxford, 1684), the only complete edition of the Historia Croylandensis ever to have been published. See the Introduction to The Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 1459–1486, ed. N. Pronay and J. Cox (London, 1986), for discussion of this work's textual difficulties. The text is also partially published by de Gray Birch, Walter, The Chronicle of Croyland Abbey by Ingulph (Wisbech, 1883)Google Scholar and is translated by Riley, Henry T., Ingulph's Chronicle of the Abbey of Croyland with the Continuation by Peter of Blois and Anonymous Writers (London, 1854)Google Scholar. Due to the inaccessibility of this text, citations will be to de Gray Birch's edition by page number, and translations will be modernized from Riley's translation, also by page number.

2 Sir Palgrave, Francis, “Anglo-Saxon History,” Quarterly Review 34 (1826): 289–98Google Scholar; Riley, H. T., “The History and Charters of Ingulfus Considered,” Archaeological Journal 19 (1862): 32–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar and 114–33; and Liebermann, F., “Ueber Ostenglische Geschichtsquellen des 12., 13., 14. Jahrhunderts, besonders den falschen Ingulf,” Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde 18 (1892): 249–67Google Scholar.

3 Searle, W. G., Ingulf and the Historia Croylandensis: An Investigation Attempted (Cambridge, 1894)Google Scholar, particularly 115–43. Searle firmly established the Historia as a late fourteenth- or fifteenth-century compilation. However, it should be noted that his study is very even-handed: as he notes (206), “the object of the author of this present investigation into the History of Ingulf, which is the first part of the Historia Croylandensis, is rather to enable a more competent student to arrive at a definite conclusion respecting its date, than to speak himself decidedly on that matter.” He also notes (116) that many contemporary scholars, “in their anxiety to expose the mistakes, and thereby to disprove the genuineness, of the first two portions of the ‘Historia Croylandensis,’ have not only forgotten the numerous anachronisms and mistakes to be found in doubted mediæval histories … but have also, in addition, made mistakes quite as serious as those which they are dragging to light. Ingulf has quite enough to answer for, without being burdened with the mistakes of his critics.”

4 Gransden, Antonia, Historical Writing in England, vol. 2, c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (London, 1982), 400Google Scholar.

5 Pestell, Tim, Landscapes of Monastic Foundation: The Establishment of Religious Houses in East Anglia, c. 650–1200 (Woodbridge, 2004), 108Google Scholar.

6 The neglect of the Historia Croylandensis is evidenced by the fact that the only complete edition of the entire text is that of Fulman in 1684, a full three hundred years before the publication of The Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 1459–1486, ed. N. Pronay and J. Cox, which are at least seen to merit a contemporary edition. See also Williams, Daniel, “The Crowland Chronicle, 616–1500,” in England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Williams, (Woodbridge, 1987), 371–90Google Scholar.

7 Hiatt, Alfred, The Making of Medieval Forgeries: False Documents in Fifteenth-Century England (London, 2004), 36–69Google Scholar, at 37.

8 Chibnall, Marjorie, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis (Oxford, 1969–80)Google Scholar, 2:xxv.

9 Roffe, David, “The Historia Croylandensis: A Plea for Reassessment,” English Historical Review 110 (1995): 93–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 96. Particularly, he discovers that “the Historia's accounts of Crowland's Domesday estates incorporates material drawn from a geographically-arranged Domesday satellite” as well as a charter “probably composed between 1086 and 1119” along with additional charters from the first half of the twelfth century (100 and 105). For later-medieval Crowland, see Raban, Sandra, The Estates of Thorney and Crowland: A Study in Medieval Monastic Land Tenure (Cambridge, 1977)Google Scholar and Jones, E. D., “The Church and ‘Bastard Feudalism’: The Case of Crowland Abbey from the 1320s to the 1350s,” Journal of Religious History 10 (1978): 142–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Roffe, “Plea for Reassessment,” notes the weight of evidence pointing to the twelfth century: “The early eighteenth-century facsimile of what was supposed to be the Golden Charter suggests an original written in a twelfth-century hand … current concerns intrude. The most persistent are probably Crowland's difficulties in retaining title to its fens of Great Postland, Goggisland, and Alderland in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as reflected in the minute detail of the boundary clauses in the 716, 833, 851, 868, 948, and 966 charters” (104); moreover, “core elements can be identified and a date of composition suggested. The tradition of foundation by Æthelbald and refoundation by Eadred was known to Orderic Vitalis, who visited Crowland sometime between 1109 and 1124, possibly in 1119. He refers to Æthelbald's charter which, if not that which was known in the eighteenth century, was one very like it. Further, Orderic saw Edgar's confirmation of 966, along with Archbishop Dunstan's anathema of the same date… . The charter, or a document very like it, was probably composed between 1086 and 1119. Eadred's confirmation of Thurketel's ‘original’ charter is closely related to Edgar's grant and must emanate from a contemporary source. It is unlikely that the remaining charters were produced at a very much later date, for they do not include grants to Crowland made after the middle years of the twelfth century” (105).

11 Roffe, “Plea for Reassessment,” 101–4.

12 See, for example, Hiatt, Making of Medieval Forgeries, 42.

13 The classic study on this topic remains Cox, J. Charles, The Sanctuaries and Sanctuary Seekers of Mediæval England (London, 1911)Google Scholar. Cox carefully compiles documentary evidence for medieval English sanctuary laws, customs, and historical incidents, with chapters dedicated to those places that actually did have rights of chartered sanctuary. He discusses Crowland briefly but notes that its claim to chartered sanctuary rests on forged documents (201–2).

14 For a thorough study of sanctuary in the later medieval to early modern periods, see McSheffrey, Shannon, Seeking Sanctuary: Crime, Mercy, and Politics in English Courts, 1400–1550 (Oxford, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 See Cox, Sanctuaries and Sanctuary Seekers, for a full list.

16 Gregory-Abbott, Candace, “Sacred Outlaws: Outlawry and the Medieval Church,” in Outlaws in Medieval and Early Modern England: Crime, Government and Society, c. 1066–1600, ed. Appleby, John C. and Dalton, Paul (Surrey, 2009), 75–89Google Scholar, at 85.

17 On sanctuary, see Rosser, Gervase, “Sanctuary and Social Negotiation in Medieval England,” in The Cloister and the World: Essays in Medieval History in Honour of Barbara Harvey, ed. Blair, J. and Golding, B. (Oxford, 1996), 57–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davies, Wendy, “‘Protected Space’ in Britain and Ireland in the Middle Ages,” in Scotland in Dark Age Britain, ed. Crawford, Barbara (St. Andrews, 1996), 1–19Google Scholar; Helmholz, R. H., “The Law of Sanctuary,” in The ius commune in England: Four Studies (Oxford, 2001), 16–81Google Scholar; Jordan, William Chester, “A Fresh Look at Medieval Sanctuary,” in Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe, ed. Karras, Ruth Mazo, Kaye, Joel, and Matter, E. Ann (Philadelphia, 2008), 17–32Google Scholar; Lambert, T. B. and Rollason, David, eds., Peace and Protection in the Middle Ages (Durham, 2009)Google Scholar; and Shoemaker, Karl, Sanctuary and Crime in the Middle Ages (New York, 2011)Google Scholar.

18 As Helmholz in “Law of Sanctuary” notes, “the medieval law of sanctuary permitted any person who had committed a serious crime to take refuge in a church, churchyard, or other designated place of asylum” (16) — however, “in England, as in Scotland and Wales, and, indeed, in most parts of the Continent, the law of sanctuary settled into a regular form during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries… . English custom permitted that men and women who took sanctuary in a parish church were permitted to remain there for no longer than forty days after the coroner's arrival … the rule became settled by the twelfth century that, after forty days had passed, all those who had taken sanctuary were required to leave the church” (18–19).

19 Gregory-Abbott, “Sacred Outlaws,” 85.

20 Shoemaker, Sanctuary and Crime in the Middle Ages, 78 and 92.

21 Shoemaker, Sanctuary and Crime in the Middle Ages, 82.

22 See Hyams, Paul R., Rancor & Reconciliation in Medieval England (Ithaca, 2003), 92–98Google Scholar.

23 Shoemaker, Sanctuary and Crime in the Middle Ages, 98.

24 Helmholz, “Law of Sanctuary,” 18–19.

25 Shoemaker notes that the forty-day rule “would crystallize in the late-twelfth- and early-thirteenth-century royal law governing sanctuary” (Sanctuary and Crime in the Middle Ages, 107). He suggests (in a personal comment) that if Crowland's assertion of a permanent sanctuary right arose in direct response to royal encroachment on local practice in the twelfth century, there is reason to suspect that these forgeries were made in the late twelfth century, when royal encroachment was at its peak. See the conclusion below for further discussion.

26 Shoemaker, Sanctuary and Crime in the Middle Ages, 110. McSheffrey, Seeking Sanctuary (n. 14 above), has recently made a compelling case that the institution of sanctuary thrived in the late medieval and early modern periods, right up until the dissolution of the monasteries: “Sanctuary did not wither away under the early Tudors, but instead revived. The years between Henry VII's accession in 1485 and the late 1530s witnessed a resurgence of sanctuary-seeking, as many like the Southwells used sanctuary to avoid capital penalties for felony. The prevalence of sanctuary-seeking in the first fifty years of Tudor rule has until now escaped notice… . The revival of sanctuary from the 1480s indicates that we have to question the premises of the model that sees sanctuary as a ‘medieval’ phenomenon unsuited to the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century English system of laws” (6).

27 Crick, Julia, “Pristina Libertas: Liberty and the Anglo-Saxons Revisited,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 14 (2004): 47–71Google Scholar, at 49.

28 Crick, “Pristina Libertas,” 47. See her “Appendix: The Language of Liberty in Charters before the Norman Conquest,” 69–71 and Cox, Sanctuaries and Sanctuary Seekers of Mediæval England (n. 13 above), for claims made by individual monasteries throughout the medieval period.

29 Shoemaker, Sanctuary and Crime in the Middle Ages (n. 17 above), 99.

30 Shoemaker, Sanctuary and Crime in the Middle Ages, 100.

31 Crick, Julia, “Liberty and Fraternity: Creating and Defending the Liberty of St Albans,” in Expectations of the Law in the Middle Ages, ed. Musson, Anthony (Woodbridge, 2001), 91–103Google Scholar, at 91.

32 Crick, “Liberty and Fraternity,” 91.

33 Riley, Ingulph's Chronicle (n. 1 above), 344. (I quote in translation because de Gray Birch's edition ends in the eleventh century and Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 1459–1486, ed. N. Pronay and J. Cox [n. 2 above], begins in the fifteenth.)

34 See Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 1459–1486, ed. N. Pronay and J. Cox, for these episodes.

35 McSheffrey, Seeking Sanctuary.

36 See Colgrave, Bertram, ed. and trans., Felix's Life of Saint Guthlac (Cambridge, 1956, repr. 1985), 1–58Google Scholar for more information on Guthlac (674–715). The Vita Sancti Guthlaci was written between 730 and 740 at the request of Ælfwald, king of the East Angles from 713 to 749.

37 Colgrave, Felix's Life of Saint Guthlac, 9.

38 For the text of this charter, see de Gray Birch, Chronicle of Croyland Abbey (n. 1 above), 4–7; Riley, Ingulph's Chronicle, 5–8. On the charters in the Historia Croylandensis in general, see Searle, Ingulf and the Historia Croylandensis (n. 3 above), 153–90; for this particular charter see 165–66.

39 Chibnall, Ecclesiastical History (n. 8 above), 2:338–41 and xxv–xxix.

40 Chibnall, Ecclesiastical History, 2:xxv and xxvi, noting further that Orderic's visit, because it took place during the abbacy of Geoffrey of Orleans, must have occurred between 1109 and 1124 (xxvi). For the Guthlac Roll, see Sir Warner, G. F., The Guthlac Roll (Oxford, 1928)Google Scholar; Chibnall dates it to the third quarter of the twelfth century.

41 Forster, R. H., “Notes on Durham and other North-Country Sanctuaries,” Journal of the British Archaeological Association 61 (1905): 118–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 120.

42 Detailed most fully by Searle, Ingulf and the Historia Croylandensis, 167–69.

43 Searle, Ingulf and the Historia Croylandensis, 153–64.

44 Searle, Ingulf and the Historia Croylandensis, 167.

45 De Gray Birch, Chronicle of Croyland Abbey (n. 1 above), 13.

46 Riley, Ingulph's Chronicle (n. 1 above), 15.

47 For the full text of this charter, see de Gray Birch, Chronicle of Croyland Abbey, 13–18; Riley, Ingulph's Chronicle, 15–22. See also Searle, Ingulf and the Historia Croylandensis, 167–69.

48 De Gray Birch, Chronicle of Croyland Abbey, 13.

49 Riley, Ingulph's Chronicle, 15.

50 De Gray Birch, Chronicle of Croyland Abbey, 14–15.

51 Riley, Ingulph's Chronicle, 17.

52 De Gray Birch, Chronicle of Croyland Abbey, 15.

53 Riley, Ingulph's Chronicle, 18.

54 On this charter, see Searle, Ingulf and the Historia Croylandensis (n. 3 above), 169–70.

55 De Gray Birch, Chronicle of Croyland Abbey, 20.

56 Riley, Ingulph's Chronicle, 24.

57 De Gray Birch, Chronicle of Croyland Abbey (n. 1 above), 21–22.

58 Riley, Ingulph's Chronicle (n. 1 above), 26.

59 On the idea of a zone of sanctuary protection surrounding a person, see McSheffrey, Seeking Sanctuary (n. 14 above), 83–111, and her discussion of “the hospitaller's cloak.”

60 De Gray Birch, Chronicle of Croyland Abbey, 22.

61 Riley, Ingulph's Chronicle, 27.

62 On this episode, see Searle, Ingulf and the Historia Croylandensis, 62–69.

63 De Gray Birch, Chronicle of Croyland Abbey, 33.

64 Riley, Ingulph's Chronicle, 40.

65 Roffe, “Plea for Reassessment” (n. 10 above), 94, continuing, “To take but one example, the men of Stamford appear to have been led against the invaders by a certain Harding of Ryhall. Ryhall (Rutland) is a small village situated to the north of Stamford, and it seems odd that an inhabitant from such an insignificant place, albeit the resting place of St Tibba, should be accorded such an important role in the affairs of a major borough in a later fabrication. But the reference may make sense in a ninth-century context, for much of the territory of Stamford was probably situated in the parish of Ryhall before the construction of the Danish borough in the 880s.”

66 Toley's biography is suspiciously identical to Guthlac's: a Mercian warrior, renowned for his military prowess, who is inspired to abandon the comitatus and come to a fenland monastery, ending at Croyland. However, many saints’ lives deliberately share details with those of earlier saints, and the similarities between Toley and Guthlac may have been heightened consciously as a deliberate homage, rather than unconsciously, in imitation.

67 On this charter, see Searle, Ingulf and the Historia Croylandensis (n. 3 above), 174–75.

68 On Turketul, see Searle, Ingulf and the Historia Croylandensis, 69–79.

69 As Roffe, “Plea for Reassessment,” 94, notes, “the only critical reassessment of the Historia has shown that its tradition of Crowland's refoundation by Thurketel is almost certainly accurate, although it probably took place some twenty or so years later than the date of 948 recorded,” citing Chibnall, Ecclesiastical History (n. 8 above), 2:xxv–xxvii.

70 For the text of the charter, see de Gray Birch, Chronicle of Croyland Abbey (n. 1 above), 56–61; Riley, Ingulph's Chronicle (n. 1 above), 65–72.

71 De Gray Birch, Chronicle of Croyland Abbey, 59–60.

72 Riley, Ingulph's Chronicle, 70.

73 Shoemaker, Sanctuary and Crime in the Middle Ages (n. 17 above), 125, notes that “although the Laws of Edward the Confessor had suggested that sanctuary-seeking thieves had to restore the goods they had stolen, from the thirteenth century onward the common law considered all of the goods in a fugitive's possession forfeit to the crown.” He notes further (in a personal comment) that “the crown seems to regularize its claims on sanctuary seekers’ goods in the late twelfth century, certainly by the 1190s but perhaps a decade or so sooner.” The crown's claim on sanctuary seekers’ goods will be discussed further below, but like the forty-day time limits for sanctuary, growing royal control over the property of those who sought sanctuary suggests that Crowland's forgeries were made in the late twelfth century in response to increased royal encroachment on local administration of sanctuary practices.

74 On these, see Reynolds, Susan, “Eadric Silvaticus and the English Resistance,” Historical Research 54 (1981): 102–5Google Scholar; Keen, Maurice, The Outlaws of Medieval Legend (London, 1977), 6–38Google Scholar; Hayward, John, “Hereward the Outlaw,” Journal of Medieval History 14 (1988): 293–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and two more popular studies: Head, Victor, Hereward (Stroud, 1995)Google Scholar and Rex, Peter, Hereward: The Last Englishman (Stroud, 2005)Google Scholar.

75 Brief, earlier references to Hereward's life and rebellion are made in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MSS D (1071) and E (a later interpolation into the 1070 annal); the Domesday Book (which records his estates in southern Lincolnshire); William of Malmesbury's Gesta Pontificum Anglorum; The Peterborough Chronicle of Hugh Candidus; the Chronicle of John of Worcester (which largely repeats the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle); Henry of Huntingdon's Historia Anglorum; and the Chronica Monasterii de Hida juxta Wintoniam (known as the “Hyde” or “Warenne” chronicle). Longer, more legendary accounts of his life are to be found in several twelfth-century texts: the Gesta Herwardi, Geoffrey Gaimer's Estoire des Engleis, and the Liber Eliensis, as well as the fourteenth- or fifteenth-century Historia Croylandensis discussed in this article and a fifteenth-century genealogy of the lords of Bourne (the Wake family) who claimed descent from Hereward and whose name is the source of his spurious appellation.

76 McSheffrey, Seeking Sanctuary (n. 14 above).

77 Chibnall, Ecclesiastical History, xxix.

78 Roffe, “Plea for Reassessment” (n. 10 above), 105.

79 Brooke, C. N. L., “Approaches to Medieval Forgery,” in Brooke, Medieval Church and Society: Collected Essays (London, 1971), 100–120Google Scholar, at 115. See also Brown, Elizabeth A. R., “Falsitas pia sive reprehensibilis: Medieval Forgers and Their Intentions,” in Fälschungen im Mittelalter: Internationaler Kongress der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, ed. Fuhrmann, Horst (Hanover, 1988), 1:101–19Google Scholar.

80 Shoemaker, Sanctuary and Crime in the Middle Ages, 107.

81 Shoemaker, Sanctuary and Crime in the Middle Ages, 125. I am grateful to Karl Shoemaker for the suggestions discussed in this paragraph.

82 As Roffe notes, the Historia Croylandensis was “at pains to point out that copies of charters had survived the conflagration, but it must be doubted, on the surviving evidence, that such was the case” (“Plea for Reassessment,” 107).

83 Searle, Ingulf and the Historia Croylandensis (n. 3 above), 155.

84 Crick, Julia, “Historical Literacy in the Archive: Post-Conquest Imitative Copies of Pre-Conquest Charters and Some French Comparanda,” in The Long Twelfth-Century View of the Anglo-Saxon Past, ed. Brett, Martin and Woodman, David A. (Surrey, 2015), 159–90Google Scholar. See also the rest of the essays collected in this volume for broader discussions of documentary activity in the twelfth century.

85 Crick, “Historical Literacy in the Archive,” 164.

86 Crick, “Historical Literacy in the Archive,” 190.

87 As Hiatt in Making of Medieval Forgeries (n. 7 above) writes: “the nature of the Crowland forgeries was not that of imitations of antique models of Anglo-Saxon charters, but rather of a creative, at times flamboyant, form of pastiche. Instead of a careful reproduction of the content and form of pre-Conquest charters, those responsible for the forgeries seem to have been concerned to produce a contemporary re-interpretation of the idea, the genre, of the pre-Conquest charter” (44–45).

88 See Hiatt, Making of Medieval Forgeries, 42 and 46.