Abingdon Abbey Administration

Abstract

For the first three hundred years or so of its existence after its refoundation in the mid-tenth century, the abbey of Abingdon was one of the most important Benedictine monasteries in England, comparable with Glastonbury, Bury St. Edmund's, St. Alban's and others of like standing. In the later middle ages its influence was much diminished, and its abbots were not on the whole distinguished for such virtues as reforming zeal, or for the cultivation of the arts and learning. Nevertheless, the written records show that this house, judged by the purely material standards of its net financial assets and of the extent and grandeur of its buildings, was still one of the great abbeys of the kingdom; in 1538, when it was dissolved, it was the sixth most wealthy monastery in England.