The Nuns of Wilton Abbey

The Nuns of Wilton Abbey William Smith (bio) INTRODUCTION Complementing a recent similar work on Shaftesbury Abbey by the writer,1 this article presents a history of Wilton Abbey together with a record of its known nuns from pre-Conquest times to its suppression in 1539, providing biographical and other information where available. The sources for such an investigation are inevitably limited, telling at best an incomplete story mainly from an official aspect, but which must nevertheless remain our starting point. While this work falls short of a formal prosopography, it endeavors within its limitations to identify and present its accessible subjects over a period of some seven centuries as a proposed basis for further research. One acknowledges that there is still very much more to be established (including dates of birth and death, and family relationships), especially for the less well documented pre-Conquest era, when nuns are mentioned only sporadically in the sparse surviving sources, in particular Anglo-Saxon charters. Here they occur mainly as beneficiaries of royal land grants, suggesting associations with the West Saxon royal house, with which the tenth-century Wilton monastery was closely involved. Post-Conquest sources furnish additional names from the Anglo-Saxon period and beyond, providing also crucial information about the abbey's saints' cults promoted by one of its first abbesses, who was herself similarly venerated after her death. Unsubstantiated origin traditions examined in the next section, claiming the beginnings of the convent during the early Viking era and its refoundation by Alfred the Great, mention other heads of house not occurring in pre-Conquest sources. It is mainly from the early thirteenth century, however, that names of nuns, in particular the abbesses, begin to appear with any regularity in the records of royal and ecclesiastical administration discussed in the penultimate section of this work. End Page 157 WILTON ABBEY Pre-Conquest Late medieval accounts of the origins of Wilton Abbey are disputed and are generally believed to owe more to legend than to fact,2 though they are accepted by some.3 An anonymous early fifteenth-century vernacular verse life of St. Edith (Eadgyð, Eadgyth) of Wilton,4 perhaps written by a convent chaplain or a nun, relates that a chantry or secular college was established in honor of the Virgin in 800 by Ealdorman Weohstan (Wulfstan) of Wiltshire in memory of his father-in-law Alcmund, slain in battle against a Mercian king Ethelmund (Æthelmund) that year.5 This is said to have superseded End Page 158 a long-forgotten earlier foundation,6 perhaps dating from the eighth century, if not before. In 830 the chantry was converted into a convent for thirteen nuns by King Ecgbert at the request of his sister Alburga,7 Weohstan's widow, who became its prioress.8 According to an apparently related tradition, King Alfred founded another house for thirteen nuns in 890, dedicating it to the Virgin and St. Bartholomew, and amalgamating it on its completion two years later with the earlier house.9 Radegund, daughter of Æthelstan,10 earl of Wiltshire, is named as first abbess of the new convent of twenty-six nuns.11 Other women, most likely belonging to the West Saxon nobility, were also veiled there in due course.12 The year assigned to the origin of Alfred's putative nunnery is close enough to the accepted foundation date of Shaftesbury Abbey (ca. 888) to suppose that it may have been his intention to complement the latter with a companion house for high born Wessex women at Wilton around the same time, perhaps as a further expression of his family's piety.13 Like Wareham near the Dorset coast, both Wilton and Shaftesbury were burhs (fortified settlements) End Page 159 established by Alfred as protection against the Vikings,14 and all three had nunneries within their precincts. Wilton, whence Wiltshire derives its name, was also the seat of a royal residence (villa regalis) by the mid-ninth century,15 now recalled by the town's Kingsbury Square.16 There is, however, no indication that a house for women was founded by Alfred at Wilton in pre-Conquest sources, including in particular his biographer Asser, whose Life of King...