monks to Worcester. At the outset of his episcopate he had formed a small community at Westbury-on-Trym, as a model of monastic life after the reformed manner. Then came his great new foundation at Ramsey in Huntingdonshire, colonized in the first instance from Westbury. Ramsey in its turn supplied the nucleus of the settlement at Worcester. The great church of St Mary must have taken from six to ten years to build: for we have positive evidence that the monks were in Worcester by 977, if not sooner. But Oswald was no rough-handed reformer. He would not force the pace, and he would not obliterate the past. The little old church of St Peter still stood and enjoyed the prerogative of the bishop's stool. In a charter (B. C. S. 1166), misdated 965, but shown by the signatures to belong to 991, the year before the archbishop's death, a grant is said to be made 'with consent and license of the monastic society of St Mary, the episcopal chair of whose monastery is known to be consecrated to St Peter'.
This reverence for the past is a fine trait in Oswald's character, and it goes far to explain the peaceableness which marked the reform of his cathedral chapter. But we can well understand that his successors would feel the incongruity of the situation thus created; and the church of St Mary was bound to succeed to the dignity to which its superior merits entitled it.
It will seem to those who are familiar with the history of the church of Worcester, as it has been written in recent times, that the account given above is seriously defective, inasmuch as it makes no reference to an earlier church of St Mary and to the monks who at one time were attached to it, as evidenced by a series of notices in charters from the eighth to the tenth century. It has become customary to explain these notices by the supposition that there were two churches side by side with a common cemetery between them, the principal church being dedicated to St Peter and served by secular clergy, while the other of lesser dignity had at one time at any rate been served by monks. The two churches are thought of as receiving benefactions separately and competing for public favour, until Oswald put an end to their rivalry by rebuilding St Mary's on a grand scale and transferring to it the bishop's chair and the ancient endowments of St Peter's.[1]
Instead of discussing point by point the difficulties inherent in the situation thus outlined, it may be well to state at once that
- ↑ The modern view is clearly stated in the Victoria County History of Worcester, ii. 3 f., 95 f.
