{"title":"The Godwins, Towns and St Olaf Churches: Comital Investment in the Mid-11th Century","authors":"R. Higham","doi":"10.1163/9789004421899_025","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Higham Historical research into the late Old English ruling class has been much pur-sued in recent decades. This essay brings together two of the many major themes emerging from recent work: aristocratic interest in towns and aristocratic church patronage. Their importance—singly, or in conjunction—has been highlighted, in different ways, by a number of authors.1 Here, they are brought together in order to explore possible links between the urban interests of the Godwin family and the building of churches dedicated to St Olaf in Exeter, Chichester and Southwark. This study arises from another enquiry concerning evidence for a comital residence in Exeter in the mid-11th century. This was located in the north-west quarter of Exeter, not far from the church of St Olaf (known as St Olave’s, as elsewhere, from the Latin form of the name). This property was remembered in local tradition and gave rise to the name Irlesbery (in various spellings), found in sources of late 12th-century and later date. Out-er (northern) parts of Irlesbery became the site of a hospital (St Alexius) in the late 12th century. The endowment of the church of St Olaf in Exeter was linked with the Godwins and with Edward the Confessor. Traditions of these endowments survive in a later cartulary of St Nicholas Priory, a Benedictine house founded by Battle Abbey (Sussex). William the Conqueror gave St Olave’s church to Battle by the time of the Domesday survey. The priory, which soon developed immediately adjacent, occupied the central (southerly) part of Irlesbery which, after the Conquest, passed into royal hands. The documentary evidence (hitherto unpublished and complex) for this comital property, its assessment in Exeter’s urban topography and its links with St Olave’s church,","PeriodicalId":178994,"journal":{"name":"The Land of the English Kin","volume":"7 3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2020-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"The Land of the English Kin","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004421899_025","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Higham Historical research into the late Old English ruling class has been much pur-sued in recent decades. This essay brings together two of the many major themes emerging from recent work: aristocratic interest in towns and aristocratic church patronage. Their importance—singly, or in conjunction—has been highlighted, in different ways, by a number of authors.1 Here, they are brought together in order to explore possible links between the urban interests of the Godwin family and the building of churches dedicated to St Olaf in Exeter, Chichester and Southwark. This study arises from another enquiry concerning evidence for a comital residence in Exeter in the mid-11th century. This was located in the north-west quarter of Exeter, not far from the church of St Olaf (known as St Olave’s, as elsewhere, from the Latin form of the name). This property was remembered in local tradition and gave rise to the name Irlesbery (in various spellings), found in sources of late 12th-century and later date. Out-er (northern) parts of Irlesbery became the site of a hospital (St Alexius) in the late 12th century. The endowment of the church of St Olaf in Exeter was linked with the Godwins and with Edward the Confessor. Traditions of these endowments survive in a later cartulary of St Nicholas Priory, a Benedictine house founded by Battle Abbey (Sussex). William the Conqueror gave St Olave’s church to Battle by the time of the Domesday survey. The priory, which soon developed immediately adjacent, occupied the central (southerly) part of Irlesbery which, after the Conquest, passed into royal hands. The documentary evidence (hitherto unpublished and complex) for this comital property, its assessment in Exeter’s urban topography and its links with St Olave’s church,