CHAPTER VII
ST. PLEGMUND, ARCHBISHOP AND CONFESSOR, AUGUST 2
A.D. 890-914
PLEGMUND, the 19th Archbishop, who followed Ethelred, was a Mercian born. In his youth he had felt drawn to the life of a hermit, and became a "solitary" in what was then an island a few miles from Chester, which afterwards, on account of its having been the residence of this holy man, was called "Plegmundham," later Plemondstall, now Plemstall.
Plegmund was reckoned the most learned man of his time and afterwards became tutor to King Alfred the Great, and his Adviser when crowned.
He had been elected Archbishop according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 890, and occupied the See of Canterbury partly during the last ten years of the reign of Alfred and the first half of the reign of Edward the Elder. He went to Rome to be consecrated by Pope Formosus in 891, who gave him the pallium.
Marinus, a former pope (882-884), had shortly before granted exemption from all taxes and tolls to the Saxon School at Rome, and had sent sundry presents to the King of England, amongst them being a piece of the True Wood of the Cross upon which Our Lord suffered death. In return for these favours Plegmund, upon his return from Rome, busied himself in collecting money from all well-disposed persons to the Papal See, to which the King himself added from the Royal Treasury; this he sent to the Pope, first setting aside a part of it to be sent to Jerusalem.
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