GLASTONBURY ESTATES IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY

Abstract

T HE estates of Glastonbury Abbey have always figured very prominently among the manorial specimens of the twelfth century familiar to historians. The late twelfth-century survey of Henry de Soliaco published by the Roxburgh Society in i877 has provided historians with a document at least as full and as reliable as the other well-known surveys of twelfth-century estates, i.e. those of the Bishop of Durham, of the abbey of Peterburgh, of Bruton Priory and of the canons of Saint Paul's. And until recently this small group of sources formed the backbone of the economic historiography of the twelfth century. It was much used by Vinogradov and his contemporaries and has also been greatly relied on in some more recent studies.' What made the Henry de Soliaco survey specially attractive was the geographical location of the estates. For, unlike the estates of the Bishop of Durham or those of Bruton Priory, the estates of Glastonbury were situated in parts of the country which happened to be fully covered in the Domesday survey (i.e. in Somerset, Wilts, Dorset, Berkshire), and were at the same time sufficiently manorialized in io86 to be capable of relevant comparison with similar surveys of later date. More recently its value to historians has been further enhanced by Dom Aelred Watkins's edition of the Great Chartulary of Glastonbury. It is now possible to add to its value still more by making public the contents of a most valuable, even though very brief and somewhat fragmentary, collection of surveys of Glastonbury estates in the Hearne MSS. This collection is contained in a fourteenth-century compilation which now forms part of the Trinity MS. from which Hearne derived most of his material for his edition of the works of John of Glastonbury.2 The existence of this MS. was a few years ago pointed out to me by Dom Aelred Watkin, who also placed at my disposal his own transcript of its most important parts. The full results of my subsequent study of this document, and possibly the text of the MS. itself, will, I hope, be included in my forthcoming book. In the meantime historians working on twelfth-century subjects may be interested in a preliminary survey of its contents, and in an equally preliminary summary of conclusions which its study has suggested. The most important document, and also the one most useful for purposes of comparison, is that embodying the findings of an inquest into the income of the estates carried out in the last quarter of the century by Hilbert the Precentor. This inquest describes the estate at two points of time-the year II 76 in which Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester and Abbot of Glastonbury died, and a year unspecified in the reign of King Henry I, i.e. not later than, and