Note 482 — Chapter VI · THE WITENA GEMÓT.

Easter and Christmas were usual times for the meetings of the Witan, and during the Mercian period, Cloveshoo was frequently the place where they assembled. Doubts have been lavished, upon the situation of this place, which I do not share. In 804 Æðelríc the son of Æðelmund was impleaded respecting lands in Gloucestershire, and stood to right at Cloveshoo. Now it is clear that trial to those lands could properly be made only in the hundred or shire where they lay; and as the brotherhood of Berkeley were claimants, and the whole business appertained to Westminster, I am disposed to seek Cloveshoo somewhere in the hundred of that name in the county of Gloucester, and therefore not far from Deerhurst, Tewksbury and Bishop’s Cleeve; not at all improbably in Tewksbury itself, which may have been called Clofeshoas, before the erection of a noble abbey at a later period gave it the name it now bears. Cod. Dipl. No. 186.