St Benet's Abbey, also known as St Benet's at Holme or St Benet Hulme, was a medieval monastery of the Order of Saint Benedict situated at Cow Holm in Horning, Norfolk, England. It lay on the River Bure within the Broads.Ordnance Survey (2005). OS Explorer Map OL40 - The Broads. . St Benet is a medieval English version of the name of St Benedict of Nursia, hailed as the founder of western monasticism. At the period of the Dissolution of the Monasteries the abbey's possessions were in effect seized by the crown and assigned to the diocese of Norwich. Though the monastery was supposed to continue as a community, within a few years at least the monks had dispersed. Today there remain only ruins.
The Abbey in Anglo-Saxon times
The early history of the monastery has to be told tentatively since it is difficult to reconcile the surviving sources with what is known of the bigger picture of the development of the area. It is said that St Benet's was founded on the site of a 9th-century monastery where the hermit Suneman was martyred by the Danes. About the end of the 10th century it was rebuilt by one Wulfric. A generation later, c. 1022, King Canute conferred on it his manors of Horning, Ludham and Neatishead.cf. Joan M. Snelling and W. F. Edwards, St Benet’s Abbey, Norfolk, Norwich, 1983, p. 3.Tim Pestell, St Benet's Abbey: Guide and History, Norfolk Archaeological Trust, Norwich, 2007, p. 24
Canute appears to have endowed at the same time another Benedictine monastery that was later Bury St Edmunds Abbey, at Beodricsworth, afterwards known as St Edmundsbury, where since the early 10th century, the relics of the martyred king, St Edmund had been venerated. With this new endowment, under the auspices of the Bishop of Elmham, the original community was reinforced or replaced by a party consisting of half of the monks of St Benet's Abbey under Prior Uvius or Ufi. They arrived bearing half of all the furniture, books, sacred vestments and other worship items belonging to St Benet's.Joan M. Snelling and W. F. Edwards, St Benet’s Abbey, Norfolk, Norwich, 1983, p. 3.Tim Pestell, St Benet's Abbey: Guide and History, Norfolk Archaeological Trust, Norwich, 2007, pp. 24-25 Ufi became Bury's first abbot and governed until his death in 1043. He was blessed as abbot by the Bishop of London. His successor (1044–1065) was Leofstan, another of the former St Benet's monks.
Other early benefactors of St Benet's included Earl Ralf II of East Anglia and Edith Swannesha, concubine to Harold II.
In 1065 St Benet's Abbey was in good enough condition to establish a cell, later Rumburgh Priory in Suffolk.Page, W. (1975) 'Houses of Benedictine monks: Priory of Rumburgh', A History of the County of Suffolk: Volume 2, pp. 77–79 (available online). Retrieved 2011-05-02. However, towards the end of the 12th century this became a dependency of St Mary's Abbey in York. This happened by means of a gift made by the patron, who was either Stephen of Penthièvre, Count of Tréguier, Lord of Richmond or his son Alan of Penthièvre, Earl of Richmond and Cornwall.Houses of Benedictine monks: Priory of Rumburgh, in William Page (ed.), A History of the County of Suffolk, Volume 2, London, 1975, pp. 77-79. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/suff/vol2/pp77-79 [accessed 9 September 2017].
It was the first abbot of St Benet's Abbey, Elsinus, who procured stone to replace the wooden structure of the abbey's church. This must have been a notable operation since suitable stone does not occur in the vicinity. The work was completed by the second abbot, Thurstan, who when he died in 1064 is reported to have been buried before the altar in the chapel of St Michael within the abbey church.Tim Pestell, Landscapes of Monastic Foundation: The Establishment of Religious Houses in East Anglia c. 650–1200, Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2004, p. 125.
At the time of the Norman Conquest of England, King Harold Godwinson put the abbot of St Benet's, in charge of defending the East Anglian coast against invasion. The involvement with military naval matters was naturally incumbent upon the abbot, as upon bishops and monastic superiors throughout England, in so far as he was a prominent public personage and landowner in the area and hence an integral element in the feudal system.Daniel M. G. Gerrard, The Military Activities of Bishops, Abbots and other Clergy in England c. 900-1200. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2011, pp. 35-36. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2671/ [retrieved 9 September 2017].Frank Barlow, The English Church 1000–1066: A History of the Later Anglo-Saxon Church, Longman, London, 1963, pp. 170-171.Henry Ellis (ed.), Chronica Johannis de Oxenedes, Longman, London 1859, p. 293.Edward Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England, its Causes and Results, Clarendon Press, Oxford, vol. VII, 1878, p. 717.Stenton 1922, p. 233. The abbey was responsible for organizing a shipsokeCf. Margaret Deanesly, The Pre-Conquest Church in England, Black, London, 2nd edition 1963, pp. 319-320. or grouping of several hundreds which then had the obligation of providing a fighting ship. It is possible that the abbey did in fact provide the King Harold's ship.Peter Rex, Harold: The King Who Fell at Hastings, Amberley, Stroud, 2017, p. 24.
The Abbey after the Conquest After the Conquest, William the Conqueror pursued those seen as having supported the defeated Harold and Abbot Aelfwold was outlawed and exiled for a time to Denmark,Brian Golding, Conquest and Colonisation: The Normans in Britain, 1066-1100, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2013, p. 29. and the abbey's estates suffered encroachments by neighbouring landowners and a general campaign of systematic harassment by the tenants of the upcoming Norman magnate Sir Roger Bigod,Stenton 1922, pp. 225-229.Emma Cownie, Religious Patronage in Anglo-Norman England, 1066-1135, 1998, p. 60 whom the Domesday Book gives as holding 187 lordships in Norfolk and another 117 in Suffolk. The harassment was to continue for a long period of time.Stenton 1922, pp. 232-233. In the reign of Henry II (1154–1189) the church at Ranworth, which was the property of the abbey, was stolen bodily, and being a timber building, was dismantled and spirited away. It took a command from the King to have it returned.Joan M. Snelling and W. F. Edwards, St Benet’s Abbey, Norfolk, Norwich, 1983, p. 4.
John of Oxnead (de Oxenedes), a 13th-century monk of St Benet's, says in his Chronicle that Abbot Aelfwold was later able to return and resume his post, dying at the abbey as abbot on 14 November 1089.Henry Ellis (ed.), Chronica Johannis de Oxenedes, Longman, London, 1859, p. 293. He was succeeded as abbot by Ralph, and Ralph in 1101 by Richard, who is credited with having completed the church's western tower and with having hung two large bells there.
The site was not immune to natural disasters and in the 13th and 14th centuries there were incidents where violent storms on the coast forced the sea to break through the dunes, causing damage to the abbey. In 1287 to save the horses, they had to be brought from the stables to shelter on higher land in the nave of the church.Joan M. Snelling and W. F. Edwards, St Benet's Abbey, Norfolk, Norwich, 1983, p. 5. The abbey also remained vulnerable to hostile incursions by water and in 1327 by royal licence the site was enclosed by a wall with battlements, isolated traces of which still survive.
Surviving records from the 12th century show that at least some of the abbey's tenants paid their rents in kind or by means of service rendered. At Swanton Abbott the lease for a mill and a piece of land were four fat cocks a year, land at Potter Heigham was paid each year with a supply of beer for the monks, another stretch of land at Banningham was rented for eight measures of honey and a property in London for a pound of pepper and a pound of cummin, while two churches, one at Stalham and one in Norwich had to present the abbey annually with a pound of incense each.
Abbots with connections That the abbey continued to have connections to the court may be shown by the fact that the man who became abbot in 1126 was Conrad, who has been identified with the monk who till then had been prior of Christ Church Cathedral Priory, Canterbury, and who had been confessor to King Henry I.Sally N. Vaughn, Anselm of Bec and Robert of Meulan: The Innocence of the Dove and the Wisdowm of the Serpent, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1987, p. 318. Conrad is said to have brought with him two chasubles and a book that had been the property of St Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, together with a chalice Dunstan himself had made. These objects were conserved at St Benet's as relics.
Later that same century another abbot with even stronger connections to power arrived to govern St Benet's. Hugh was an illegimitate half-brother to Cardinal William of the White Hands and to Count Henry I of Champagne who was married to Marie, elder daughter of King Louis VII of France. Hugh's half-sister was Adela, Queen of France and he was a nephew of King Stephen of England and of the King's brother Henry of Blois Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester.Cf. genealogical scheme in Ruth Harwood Cline, Abbot Hugh: An Overlooked Brother of Henry I, Count of Champagne, in Catholic Historical Review 93:3 (2007) 505.
Hugh became a knight and was wounded in battle about 1136. Cared for at Tiron Abbey in France, when he recovered he decided to become a monk there. Later he was made abbot of St Benet's (1146–1150) thanks to his uncle King Stephen (or Henry of Blois),David Crouch, The Reign of King Stephen: 1135–1154, Routledge, London, 2013, p. 303.Everett U. Crosby, The King’s Bishops: The Politics of Patronage in England and Normandy, 1066–1216, Palgrave Macmillan, London 2013, pp. 160–161, 182–183. the appointment receiving papal confirmation in 1147. To secure this post for Hugh, the previous abbot, Daniel, was deposed.
The story in John of Oxnead's ChronicleHenry Ellis (ed.), Chronica Johannis de Oxenedes, Longman, London, 1859, pp. 270–271. is that he was a capable and serious abbot but made powerful enemies who framed him by having a woman slipped into his bed and then sent armed men to punish the supposed crime by castrating him. After the violence, John of Oxnead says, Hugh's uncle King Stephen obtained for him the post of abbot of Chertsey Abbey (1149–1163) in Surrey and at St Benet's Abbot Daniel returned to his post. Subsequently, the death of King Stephen lead to a hostile climate in England for the family and Henry of Blois fled from England in 1155. Hugh followed, returning to Champagne and becoming once more a monk of Tiron Abbey. However, when trouble arose at Lagny Abbey, he was made abbot there (1163–1171). Though an active abbot, for some reason was deposed in 1171 and died shortly afterwards, being buried at the abbey.Ruth Harwood Cline, Abbot Hugh: An Overlooked Brother of Henry I, Count of Champagne, in Catholic Historical Review 93:3 (2007) 501-516.
Local cults