Lichfield and the Lands of St Chad: Creating Community in Early Medieval Mercia

303 Pages·2020·11.93 MB·English

by  Andrew Sargent

Lichfield and the Lands of St Chad
Creating community
in early medieval Mercia
Andrew Sargent
University of Hertfordshire Press
Studies in Regional and Local History
Volume 19
Previous titles in this series
Founding Editor Nigel Goose
Volume 1: A Hertfordshire demesne of Westminster Abbey: Profits, productivity
and weather by Derek Vincent Stern (edited and with an introduction by
Christopher Thornton)
Volume 2: From Hellgill to Bridge End: Aspects of economic and social change
in the Upper Eden Valley, 1840–95 by Margaret Shepherd
Volume 3: Cambridge and its Economic Region, 1450–1560 by John S. Lee
Volume 4: Cultural Transition in the Chilterns and Essex Region, 350 AD to
650 AD by John T. Baker
Volume 5: A Pleasing Prospect: Society and culture in eighteenth-century
Colchester by Shani D’Cruze
Volume 6: Agriculture and Rural Society after the Black Death: Common
themes and regional variations by Ben Dodds and Richard Britnell
Volume 7: A Lost Frontier Revealed: Regional separation in the East Midlands
by Alan Fox
Volume 8: Land and Family: Trends and local variations in the peasant land
market on the Winchester bishopric estates, 1263–1415 by John Mullan and
Richard Britnell
Volume 9: Out of the Hay and into the Hops: Hop cultivation in Wealden Kent
and hop marketing in Southwark, 1744–2000 by Celia Cordle
Volume 10: A Prospering Society: Wiltshire in the later Middle Ages by John Hare
Volume 11: Bread and Ale for the Brethren: The provisioning of Norwich
Cathedral Priory, 1260–1536 by Philip Slavin
Volume 12: Poor Relief and Community in Hadleigh, Suffolk, 1547–1600 by
Marjorie Keniston McIntosh
Volume 13: Rethinking Ancient Woodland: The archaeology and history of
woods in Norfolk by Gerry Barnes and Tom Williamson
Volume 14: Custom and Commercialisation in English Rural Society:
Revisiting Tawney and Postan edited by J.P. Bowen and A.T. Brown
Volume 15: The World of the Small Farmer: Tenure, profit and politics in the
early modern Somerset Levels by Patricia Croot
Volume 16: Communities in Contrast: Doncaster and its rural hinterland,
c.1830–1870 by Sarah Holland
Volume 17: Peasant Perspectives on the Medieval Landscape: A study of three
communities by Susan Kilby
Volume 18: Shaping the Past: Theme, time and place in local history – essays in
honour of David Dymond by Evelyn Lord and Nicholas R. Amor
Studies in Regional and Local History
General Editor Jane Whittle
First published in Great Britain in 2020 by
University of Hertfordshire Press
College Lane
Hatfield
Hertfordshire
AL10 9AB
UK
© Andrew Sargent 2020
The right of Andrew Sargent to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-912260-24-9 hardback
ISBN 978-1-912260-25-6 paperback
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Printed in Great Britain by Charlesworth Press
Contents
List of illustrations vii
General Editor’s preface ix
Acknowledgements xi
Abbreviations xii
Introduction 1
Early medieval communities 2
The communities of the lands of St Chad 9
1 Lichfield and the English Church 11
The episcopal list tradition 12
Theodore’s church 19
Church and kingdom 21
The division of the Mercian see 26
The English Church and the Mercian kingdom 33
The English Church from the late ninth century 40
Conclusions 44
2 The Church of Lichfield 48
The Lastingham narrative 48
Bishop Chad and Bishop Wilfrid 54
The diocesan community 60
The Church of Lichfield and the diocesan community 80
3 The cathedral and the minsters 86
Hunting for minsters 87
Lichfield cathedral 110
Minsters attested by pre-c.1050 hagiography 123
Minsters attested by post-c.1050 hagiography 137
Minsters securely attested by stone sculpture 141
Minsters less securely attested 146
Minsters and communities 150
4 The bishop and the lords of minsters 156
Ecclesiastical tribute 157
Episcopal authority over the lords of minsters 166
Conclusions 175
5 The people 177
Agricultural communities and the historic landscape 177
Domainal communities and the possession of land 186
Brythonic place-names 190
Old English place-names 195
Eccles place-names 203
Agricultural and domainal communities in the diocese of Lichfield 206
6 The parish 216
Churches and parishes 217
Churches, estates and ‘regnal territories’ 225
Regnal territories and the regnal community 240
A parochial transformation 244
Conclusion 253
Bibliography 261
Index 273
Illustrations
Figures
1 Bounds of the diocese of Lichfield in the late thirteenth century 3
2 Layout of the Mercian episcopal lists 15
3 Distribution of estates of the bishop of Lichfield in 1066 63
4 Distribution of stone sculpture dated to the late eighth and early
ninth centuries 95
5 Examples of stone sculpture dated to the late eighth and early
ninth centuries 98
6 Distribution of stone sculpture dated to the mid- to late ninth and early
tenth centuries 102
7 Examples of stone sculpture dated to the mid- to late ninth and early
tenth centuries 104
8 Composite plan of the archaeological evidence beneath
Lichfield cathedral 113
9 Hypothetical reconstruction of the church and chapel at Lichfield 118
10 Distribution of minsters probably established in or before the early
tenth century 149
11 Distribution of various soil types amenable to cultivation across the
diocese of Lichfield 184
12 Distribution of sizes of estates with place-names containing
Brythonic elements 193
13 Distribution of sizes of estates with place-names containing dūn 197
14 Distribution of sizes of estates with place-names containing ēg 197
15 Distribution of sizes of estates with place-names containing hām 198
16 Distribution of sizes of estates with place-names containing burh 199
17 Distribution of sizes of estates with place-names containing feld 201
18 Distribution of place-names overlain on the distribution of different
soil types 210
19 Reconstruction of the early twelfth-century parochial geography of
the diocese 226
20 The thirteenth-century fee of Leek 236
21 Cheshire fees of six barons recorded in Domesday Book 238
Tables
1 The estates of the bishop of Lichfield in 1066 represented in
Domesday Book 66
2 ‘Superior churches’ identified in Domesday Book within the diocese
of Lichfield 220
vii

Studies in Regional and Local History
General Editor’s preface
For those of us who work on later periods of history there is an inescapable romance
to early medieval England. The exact contours of historical change in this period are
elusive, but many institutions which still influence our lives in the early twenty-first
century have their origins in this era: the county, the parish, and the English church.
This book focuses on the bishopric of Lichfield within the kingdom of Mercia, which
encompassed the Midland counties of Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Cheshire and parts
of Shropshire and Warwickshire. Lichfield’s importance to early English Christianity
explains the presence today of a grand medieval cathedral in what has remained a
small market town. Andrew Sargent’s innovative new study explores the emergence of
different types of community centred on the diocese of Lichfield between the seventh
and eleventh centuries. These include the establishment of a community of the
English church, to which the Bishop of Lichfield contributed; the diocesan community
centred on Lichfield; liturgical communities within the cathedral and local minsters;
hierarchical relationships of spiritual lordship that funnelled ecclesiastical tributes to
the bishop and his clergy; agricultural communities and their lords; and the interaction
of secular lordship, ecclesiastical lordship and royal lordship to create something
we might now label a system of government. In doing so, the idea of community is
interrogated and developed. Communities are considered not just as groups of
people who lived close to one another, but as networks of interaction which allowed
‘the creation and renewal of shared norms’. As such, individuals such as Lichfield’s
first bishop, Chad, were members of multiple communities in which they had different
roles. Communities encompassed both horizontal bonds of shared interest, and
vertical bonds of tribute, protection and rule. The importance of this period lies in
the fact many of these relationships were being developed for the first time, creating
institutions which were at first fluid, but later solidified into durable structures which
shaped religious, social and political life into the high medieval period and beyond.
Sargent’s careful consideration of the meaning and nature of communities is also a
model that could helpfully be followed by historians of later periods.
A second, other distinctive feature of this study is its focus on the history of what
has been described as the ‘Mercian hole’: a region for which relatively little written or
archaeological evidence survives for before the tenth century. This requires ingenuity
and skill, with the careful but creative use of available evidence. It necessarily makes
the study inter-disciplinary, relying on evidence of material culture (buildings and
sculpture) as well as written texts, and using topographical and toponymical evidence
to locate lost buildings and boundaries. In doing so it makes what might some regard
as an obscure period of English history surprisingly accessible. On a rainy summer’s
day in the Peak District near Dovedale – a day of luminous greenery and overflowing
waterways – I stumbled across the church at Ilam, now part of a National Trust
property. This small and rather odd-looking church has been heavily restored and
little remains of its original fabric, but the presence of two early medieval decorated
stone cross shafts in the graveyard indicate its early importance. Sargent identifies
ix