Note 25 — AN ESSAY, &c.

There is considerable difficulty as to the dates of some of Offa’s endowments and foundations. His endowment of the English college at Rome (Matth. West. A. D. 794), his making Mercia tributary to the See of Rome (Holinshed, ch. 4, b. 6, vol. 2.), and his erection and endowment of St. Albans over the body of the English protomartyr, were all subsequent to the murder of Ethelbert. Some of his other donations to the church were as follows: viz.—

He made large gifts of land near Sandwich “monachis ecclesiæ Christi Doroberniæ” at the request of archbishop Iambertus, A. D. 773, Canterbury (Cant-wara-burh) having been burned a few years before.—Dugd. Mon. Angl.

He freed the abbey of Woking A. D. 775. “In the days of this same Offa was an alderman of the name of Brorda who requested the king for his sake to free his own monastery, called Woking, because he would give it to Medhamsted and St. Peter, and the abbot that then was, whose name was Pusa. Pusa succeeded Beonna; and the king loved him much. And the king freed the monastery of Woking against king, against bishop, against earl, and against all men: so that no man should have any claim there except St. Peter and the abbot. This was done at the king’s town called Free-Richburn.”—Ingr. Sax. Chron. p. 75.

After Bath had been devastated by the Danes Offa rebuilt the church of St. Peter about A. D. 775.—Tanner’s Notitia Monastica. V. Somersetshire I.

At Bredon or Breordun he founded or endowed a monastery A. D. 780.—Tanner’s Not. Mon. III. Worcestershire 5.—Dugd. Mon. Angl.

He also appears to have granted some endowment or privilege to the cathedral and benedictine priory of Worcester.—Not. Mon. XXI. Worcestersh. I.

He was also a liberal donor to (some imagine the founder of) Westminster Abbey. A. D. 785 “Offa granted ten plough-lands at Aldenham in Herts to St. Peter’s church, ‘et plebi Domini degenti in Torneia’ (Thorney Isle, on which the Minster was built). He also ‘collected a parcel of monks here’ and ‘repaired and enlarged the church,’ and ‘having a great reverence for St. Peter,’ continues Sulcardus, ‘he in a particular manner honoured it by depositing there the coronation robes and regalia.’ He also exempted it from the payment of Romescot.”—Neale’s Westminster Abbey, vol. 1. p. 13. Dugd. Mon. by Ellis, I. 266.

He resettled the see of Dorchester (Oxon), which had experienced some interruption in the succession of its bishops.—Flor. Wig. 785. Kennett’s Paroch. Antiq. p. 33.

He built a nunnery at Winchelcombe (called Winchcumb by Dugdale), A. D. 787.—Not. Mon. XXXIII. Gloucestershire I.

He gave “between the years 791 and 794 to Athelard, archbishop of Canterbury thirty tributaries of land on the north side of the Thames, at a place called Twittenham.”—Lyson’s Twickenham.

But the most important of Offa’s foundations was that of St. Alban’s abbey. I have followed the date of Ingram’s Saxon Chronicle, Speed, and others, in assigning 794 as the period of his death, and therefore cannot suppose the foundation of St. Alban’s to have been later than that year, though it may have been the year previous. (V. Storr’s Chron.) From Tanner’s Not. Mon. (I. Hertfordshire, I.) we learn that A. D. 793 a noble abbey for one hundred Benedictine monks was founded by Offa. The Chronicler Speed says that in A. D. 795 “Offa in honour of St. Albane, and in repentance of his sins, built a magnificke monastery (over against Verolamium in the place then called Holmehurst, where that protomartyr of Britaine for the constant profession of the Faith lost his head), indowing it with lands and rich revenewes for the maintenance of an hundred monks. Upon the first gate of entrance in stone standeth cut a salteir argent in a field azure, and is assigned by the judicious in Heraldry to bee the armes that he bare.”—Book 7. ch. 28.

Matthew of Westminster and others assign different dates varying from A. D. 793 to 797 to this foundation, and the Monk of St. Albans agrees with Matth. West. in recording the vision of an angel which occurred to Offa at Bath, wherein he was instructed by the heavenly visitant to exhume and place in a tomb worthy of him the body of St. Alban. This design he subsequently named to the Pope, for which the Holy Pontiff commended him, and promised to take the projected abbey of St. Alban under his especial protection “nullo episcopo sive archiepiscopo mediante.”

Speed further states, that Offa built a church in Warwickshire after his return from Rome, “where the adjoining town from it and him beareth the name of Off-Church:” and that at Bath he built “another monastery.” Perhaps it is to this last, and not to St. Peter’s church which was rebuilt by him (see ante), to which Dugdale refers in his Mon. Angl. when he says, “Monasterium Batoniense rex Offa construxit, quod post rex Edgarus, sicut alia monasteria reparavit.”

To the above Holinshed adds the church of Hereford, which he states that he “indowed with great revenues.” Hist. Engl. b. 6. ch. 4.