The Role of Mercian Kings in the Founding of Minsters in the Kingdom of the Hwicce

Abstract

A number of Mercian royal grants made in the late 7th and 8th centuries have been widely interpreted as founding the Hwiccian minsters to which they relate.1 In each case the Mercian king who issued the charter has been seen as the donor of the lands from which the community of the newly established minster was meant to draw its livelihood. An example of such a charter is the one issued by the Mercian king Æthelbald in respect of Wootton Wawen (Warwicks.). The original manuscript has not survived, but there is an apparently reliable copy in the earliest of Worcester’s 11th-century cartularies.2 The charter was issued at an unknown date between Æthelbald’s accession in 716 and the death in 737 of Uuor (Aldwine), bishop of Lichfield, who witnessed the charter.3 Although it cannot be dated more narrowly, it probably belongs to the latest years of this date range, given that it has a number of distinctive features in common with Æthelbald’s charter of 736 concerning land in Usmere near Kidderminster (Worcs.) and at an unidentified place nearby named Brochyl. This latter charter survives as an original single-sheet manuscript.4 One of the distinctive features shared by this pair of charters is the make-up of their witness lists; another one is that, unusually, neither has either an invocation or a proem. The Wootton Wawen charter states that: