WITAN ANGELCYNNES

HEADS OF RELIGIOUS HOUSES
IN ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND

<under construction>

 

Walter de Gray Birch, Fasti Monastici Aevi Saxonici: or An Alphabetical List of the Heads of Religious Houses in England Previous to the Norman Conquest (London, 1873). Includes 'Chronological List of Religious Houses in England and Wales before the Conquest' (pp. 1-11), arranged in order of their foundation; a list of religious houses founded before the Norman Conquest (pp. 12-13), ptd from BL Cotton Faustina A. viii, fols. 65-6; and 'Heads of Religious Houses' (pp. 16-110), in alphabetical order.

Birch's working notes for this volume, compiled in 1870, are in Cambridge, University Library, MS. Add. 1929: 'Saxon Abbots, or an Index to Kemble's "Codex diplomaticus Saxonici Aevi", to which is added an Index to Dugdale's "Monasticon" and occasional references to other works. The whole forming a comprehensive alphabet of Saxon Abbots. By Walter de Gray Birch, F.R.S.L., of the MS. Dept., British Museum. 1870.' The volume comprises names on slips, pasted down in alpabetical order. On left-hand page, slips made from Dugdale's Monasticon, giving abbey and dates; on right-hand page, slips from Kemble, giving date and charter (and abbey, where known). Scribbles on last two pages (pp. 295-6) show that Birch was experimenting for the layout of the volume published in 1873.

For the period from 940 to 1066 (and after), see The Heads of Religious Houses England and Wales 940-1216, ed. David Knowles, C. N. L. Brooke and Vera London (Cambridge, 1972), of which a second edition is in preparation.

 

List of religious houses [others to be inserted]

 

Nunneries

 

and others (cf. HRH, pp. 225-7)