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The Cartulary of St. Augustine's Abbey, Bristol
Edited by DAVID WALKER, 1998
Bristol. The Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Societies, Gloucester Record Series, vat 10 xxxvi + 439 pp, unpriced
ISBN 0 900197 46 3
This cartulary provides an interesting counterpoint to some dismal landmarks in its creator's thirteenth-century history. Bishop Godfrey Giffard's censures in 1278 for various disciplinary and administrative shortcomings followed episcopal removals of two consecutive abbots some decades earlier. But on the evidence assembled here, at least the management of the estates and the record-keeping seem to have been sound. The main sequence of charters begins in 1148, the probable year of the abbey's foundation, and ends, bar a few later additions, in the late thirteenth century. Walker takes 1275 as a reasonable date for the completion. There are more than 600 charters, deriving from lands scattered around the southwest of England and Wales, but concentrating on the Gloucestershire side of the River Severn-most notably the city of Bristol (over 80 charters alone).
The introduction elucidates and discusses all the essential background: the founder Robert de Harding; his family; the foundation (in great detail); the composition and organisation of the manors; the history of the abbey and its community of Augustinian canons. As he proceeds Walker uses the material to challenge long-established views like J.C. Dickinson's notion that the nearby parish church of St. Augustine the Less formed the first abbey: a role as...