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Bishop Gundulf affirms his release to William II of land at
Borstal in exchange for three acres of land which were originally
granted by bishop Odo to St Andrew’s Priory as garden for the
monks, Textus Roffensis, ff. 211v–212r Translated from Latin and
edited Dr Chris Monk
Abstract: ‘Gundulf, bishop of Rochester by the grace of God, to
sheriff Haimo and all the king’s barons of Kent, the French and the
English, greetings along with his and God’s greatest possible
blessing. I wish you all to know that I am now at ease with King
Rufus concerning the exchange of land…’
To cite this report: Monk, C. (2018) Bishop Gundulf affirms his
release to William II of land at Borstal in exchange for three
acres of land which were originally granted by bishop Odo to St
Andrew’s Priory as garden for the monks, Textus Roffensis, ff.
211v–212r; Translated from Latin and edited. Rochester: Rochester
Cathedral Research Guild.
To link to this article:
https://rochestercathedralresearchguild.org/bibliography/2018-08
Published online: 14th March 2018 General Queries:
[email protected]
Produced by permission of Dr Chris Monk. All rights reserved to
the author. Any views and opinions expressed in this work are those
of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the official
policy or position of either the Research Guild or the Dean and
Chapter.
http://www.rochestercathedralresearchguild.org/https://rochestercathedralresearchguild.org/bibliography/2018-08mailto:[email protected]
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Textus Roffensis, ff. 211v-212r Dr Chris Monk
Published online by the Rochester Cathedral Research Guild Page
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Textus Roffensis, Rochester, Cathedral Library, MS A. 3. 5, f.
211v
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Textus Roffensis, ff. 211v-212r Dr Chris Monk
Published online by the Rochester Cathedral Research Guild Page
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Textus Roffensis, Rochester, Cathedral Library, MS A. 3. 5, f.
212r
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Textus Roffensis, ff. 211v-212r Dr Chris Monk
Published online by the Rochester Cathedral Research Guild Page
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Bishop Gundulf affirms his release to William II of land at
Borstal
in exchange for three acres of land which were originally
granted
by bishop Odo to St Andrew’s Priory as garden for the monks,
Textus Roffensis, ff. 211v–212r1
Translated and edited by Dr Christopher Monk © 2018
Date: c.1088–c.10942
Gundulf, bishop of Rochester by the grace of God, to sheriff
Haimo3 and all the king’s barons of Kent, the French and the
English, greetings along with his and God’s greatest possible
blessing. I wish you all to know that I am now at ease with King
Rufus concerning the exchange of land,4 which I promised to him
after his agreement,5 for those three acres which bishop Odo of
Bayeux gave to the church of Saint Andrew and to our monks – to be
made there into their garden – 6 adjacent to the [city] wall, from
its outside towards the southern part of the city on the outskirts,
which [three acres] are now enclosed all around by a wall. And
those three acres of land, which I have given to the king in
exchange from our demesne land of Borstal,7 I have now released to
the servants of the sheriff, namely Robert of Saint Amand; Robert
Latimer;8 his brother Ælfwine, reeve of Chatham; and Grento of
Rochester;9 with these witnesses present: Ansgot of Rochester;
Geoffrey Talbot;10 Geoffrey of Ros; Ralf, butler of Adam; Ralf the
cleric; and many others of our family and of the citizens of this
same town.
1 An overview of the historical background to this document is
provided by Colin Flight in his The Survey of Kent: Documents
relating to the survey of the county in 1086 (British
Archaeological Reports, British Series 506, 2010):
www.kentarchaeology.ac/digiarchive/ColinFlight/survey1086/07-otherdox.pdf,
pp. 222-3, nos. 13 and 14 [accessed 26.02.2018]. 2 Flight’s date. 3
Haimo, also known as Hamo Dapifer, d. c.1100. 4 Rufus, i.e. William
II, r. 1087–1100. 5 Gundulf uses here the Old English word wær, ‘A
covenant, compact, agreement, pledge’:
http://www.bosworthtoller.com/finder/3/wær [accessed 25.02.2018]. 6
See n. 12 below. 7 ‘our demesne land’, translating nostra dominica
terra. ‘Demesne. […] land held for the lord’s own use rather than
let or leased’: A Dictionary of Medieval Terms and Phrases, ed.
Christopher Corèdon with Ann Williams (D. S. Brewer, 2005).
Dominicus, ‘3c. demesne, land held for lord’s use’:
http://logeion.uchicago.edu/index.html#dominicus [accessed
06.03.18]. 8 Robert Latimer (spelt ‘Latimier’ in this text, meaning
‘interpreter’) was, despite his Norman-style surname, an
Englishman. He is recorded in the Domesday Book as an interpreter
and one of the officials of sheriff Haimo. See H. Tsurushima, ‘The
fraternity of Rochester Cathedral Priory about 1100’, Proceedings
of the Battle Conference 1991, Anglo-Norman Studies 14 (1992), pp.
313–37, at p. 329. For the Textus Roffensis charter relating to
Latimer’s wife, see Christopher Monk, ‘An agreement made by the
monks of Rochester with the wife of Robert Latimer, concerning land
in Frindsbury: Textus Roffensis, ff. 200v–201r’ (Rochester
Cathedral Research Guild, 2017):
https://rochestercathedralresearchguild.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/200v-211.pdf
[accessed 06.03.18]. 9 Grento was the reeve of Rochester. 10 Tenant
of Gundulf after 1086, established in Rochester Castle by 1100–03;
see ‘Goisfrid Talebot’ in K. S. Keats-Rohan, Domesday People: A
Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents 1066–1166,
vol. 1. Domesday Book (Boydell and Brewer, 1999), p. 231.
http://www.kentarchaeology.ac/digiarchive/ColinFlight/survey1086/07-otherdox.pdfhttp://www.bosworthtoller.com/finder/3/wærhttp://logeion.uchicago.edu/index.html#dominicushttps://rochestercathedralresearchguild.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/200v-211.pdf
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Textus Roffensis, ff. 211v-212r Dr Chris Monk
Published online by the Rochester Cathedral Research Guild Page
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Latin text, directly from Textus Roffensis
The digital facsimile of this text is located at:
http://luna.manchester.ac.uk/luna/servlet/detail/Man4MedievalVC~4~4~990378~142729?page=0.
Type ‘n431’ into the page search box. The text begins with the
large red display letter ‘G’, four lines from the bottom
of the left-hand folio, and finishes before the rubric (‘De
Hedenham’), three quarters of the way down the right-hand
folio.
The layout approximates that of the manuscript: the display
letter has been represented; and single words which are
split over two lines are hyphenated. Punctuation has been
modernised. Word-division and capital letters have been
normalised. Scribal insertions are indicated by > l
