aggressive reigns of Æthelbald and Offa, when, for the largest part of
the eighth century, the other kingdoms were more or less threatened
with the supremacy of Mercia, was that of a place called Cloveshoe or
Clovesham.[27] Its celebrity has been, no doubt, much enhanced by its
intimate connection with the Church History of that period; but it has
shared, with many of the names of the localities of the most important
events of the history of those times, in a great deal of uncertainty
and controversy as to the actual place.
Few monuments of those ages are preserved to us in such multitude as
names of places, and in such apparent entireness; but few are of such
uncertain and doubtful appropriation. Although we are living in the
midst of the scenes of the greatest events of our early history; yet
one of the most surprising circumstances is, that of the number of
the names of the places that have remained almost unaltered, during
the interval of twelve centuries, so few of them can, with any degree
of certainty, be identified: so that, although a Gazetteer or Index
Locorum of those times would be a most valuable help it would be
the most difficult to compile; and, judging from past attempts at
contributions to it, impossible to be done with any reasonable approach
to trustworthiness. The visible monuments have almost entirely been
swept from off the face of the earth. Towns, then of importance and
even magnitude, if not now entirely subject to the plough, are only
represented by the merest villages; and religious institutions have
had their identity drowned by the importation of later monastic
orders; and generally by more catholic, but less national or local,
dedications. The names of the places, in some few cases identified
by immemorial traditions, are often the only indications of the
whereabouts of some of the greatest events; but even the names
themselves are obscured by the different methods, used in that age
and in ours, of distinguishing them from other similar names; and the
traditions, which should have preserved them, are interrupted by the
long interval, between the events themselves, and the time at which the
names first come again into our sight.
But this Clovesho = Clofeshoum = or Clobesham[28] had necessarily
retained its hold upon the public memory of the ages from the eighth to
the sixteenth centuries, from the importance to the Church of the great
acts of councils, both royal and pontifical, there held; and the memory
or tradition of the National Church, was, of all others, the most vivid
and tenacious of any, during that long period--perhaps the only one
which may be said to have bridged it, unbroken by interruptions, such
as dynastic revolutions. When the tradition of the actual whereabouts
of this famous place comes first into our view, we find it attached to
the “Hoo” of Kent above described, and to the place called “Cliffe”
there situated. The name now current is “Cliffe-at-Hoo,” and this
appears to have been the form in which it came to Camden’s knowledge:
at any rate, in the earlier editions of Britannia (1587), he mentions
this place as “Cliues at Ho Bedæ dictum.”
There is, however, extant a still earlier record, that the tradition
had not yet been doubted by the learned. The Rev. Prebendary Earle,
Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, has most judiciously preserved
some marginal notes of the 16th century, that he found in that MS. of
the Saxon Chronicle,[29] which he distinguishes as “C.;” which notes
he considers to be “written in an Elizabethan hand:” but as will be
presently seen they must have been of the reign of Henry VIII. One
of these is written in the margin against one of the occurrences of
the name “Clofes hoo” in the Chronicle, and reads “doctor Hethe’s
benyffyce;” and Mr. Earle asks, “where may Dr. Hethe’s benefice
have been?”[30] To this question of the Professor’s, two more may
be added: Who was Dr. Hethe? And who was--evidently his intimate
acquaintance--the writer of the marginal notes to the Chronicle?
The answers to these three questions will shew what sort of men these
were whom we find in possession of this historical tradition concerning
the actual place of those famous synods; and who, long before any
question about it had been raised, by the incipient critical scepticism
of the 17th century, out of fancied probabilities, are here seen
treating it as an undoubted fact. These answers will also shew what
advantages, of time and local associations, they had for judgment of
the fact.
The benefice, then, was the Rectory of the Cliffe above mentioned,
situated in the peninsula, or Hoo, north of Rochester. This living was
held, from 1543 to 1548, by Dr. Nicholas Heath: it was, therefore,
during these years that the marginal notes were written. He was
afterwards Bishop of Rochester, and of Worcester, and Archbishop of
York, and Lord Chancellor; and during the reign of Henry VIII., and to
the accession of Elizabeth, took leading parts in most affairs, both in
Church and State. Wood calls him “a most wise and learned Man, of great
Policy, and of as great Integrity.”
As to Dr. Heath’s friend, the writer of the marginal notes, there can
be no doubt that he was Dr. Nicholas Wotton: one of the small knot
of revivers of Anglo-Saxon literature, and of those, named by Mr.
Earle,[31] as a few persons who then had the handling of Saxon MSS.
It is found that the long active and distinguished career, of each of
these two men, ran both in the same groove:--through the same period,
in the same rank and line of affairs, and locally together.[32] They
were both part authors of the well-known Institution of a Christian
Man, 1537. Wotton was the first Dean of Canterbury, and so continued
for more than twenty-five years: also Dean of York. During two
intervals he administered, by commission, the Province of Canterbury;
and was named, along with Parker, as successor to that Primacy.
These are the two men, who are first found in possession of the
historical tradition, that the famous place where the Mercian kings,
with the Archbishops, the Bishop of Rochester, and the Mercian and
other Bishops, held their councils; the acts of which must, in all
ages, have been most conspicuous to learned English Canonists, was
no other than this very Cliffe-at-Hoo; and it is evident, from the
directness of the marginal note, that they held it as an unquestioned
fact. So, about fifty years afterwards, when he published Britannia,
it was as we have seen, also without reserve, accepted by Camden.[33]
Up to this time the tradition--not among men who accept Geoffrey
of Monmouth’s stories and the like, but among the learned--was yet
undisturbed. But twenty years later we find Camden wavering; influenced
only by speculations on the nature of the district, and a then
prevalent distorted perspective of the remote historical circumstances
of the time concerned. In the edition of Britannia, which received
his latest revision,[34] he qualifies his former statement, by saying
that he no longer dares to affirm, as others do, whether or not the
Cliffe in the little country called Ho, may be the “Cliues at Ho,” so
celebrated in the infancy of the Anglican Church; because the place
seems not to be a convenient one for holding the Synod; and that the
actual place seems to have been within the kingdom of Mercia, rather
than Kent. From that time to this present day the place, indicated by
this name, has ranked among the most disputed and unsettled questions
of early English topography.
It also happened, that Camden, when treating of Berkshire, had quoted
from the Chronicle of Abingdon, a passage which set forth, that,
before the abbey was founded at, or removed to, that place, its name
had been “Sheouesham,” and was a royal residence. This name, thus
brought forward by Camden, struck the fancy of Somner the learned
compiler of the earliest Anglo-Saxon Dictionary,[35] who, collating
it with Camden’s hesitation at the Cliffe-at-Hoo tradition, thought
he saw in “Sheouesham” a scriptorial erroneous variation of “Clouesho
or -ham;” Abingdon being, in accordance with the conception of the
greater constancy of the frontiers of the “Heptarchy” then prevalent,
more likely to be the place of councils, at which the Mercian kings
so often presided. And this seemed to be the more likely; because
the Abingdon Chronicle also said, that Abingdon had hitherto been a
royal residence, when the abbey was founded, from which it got its
new name. The Abingdon Chronicle is, of course, good for its proper
uses, but where it says that “Seouescham civitas” had been a “sedes
regia,” although the name has an English colouring, it is evidently
speaking of British or ante-Saxon times. If a royal residence during
the reign of Æthelbald, it must have been of the West Saxons, and not
of the Mercians. It could not, therefore, have been the Cloveshoe where
Æthelbald presided.
If this liberty of interpretation should be permitted, it is plain
that it would be enough to shake almost any recorded name. Indeed
another example of its use, if also tolerated, would reverse the one
itself that had been proposed: would, if the other was enough to carry
it to Abingdon, be strong enough to bring it back again to Hoo. In the
charter, dated A.D. 738,[36] four years before the earliest recorded
Cloveshoe Council, a piece of land is called “Andscohesham.” This is
certainly within the very Hoo district itself, which is the site of
the Cloveshoe of the tradition; being described as “in regione quæ
uocatur Hohg.” Mr. Kemble prints the charter from the Textus Roffensis,
but omits the title or endorsement that fixes the very spot in the
Hoo that it refers to. This is, however, preserved in Monasticon
Anglicanum:[37] “De Stokes, que antiquitus vocabatur Andscohesham;”
and Stoke is now a parish in the Hoo, and close to Cliffe. There can
be no doubt that the “And-” stands for, or is a corrupt reading of,
“aed-” or the preposition “æt,-” so continually carried, along with
vernacular Anglo-Saxon names, into Latin documents; and the name of
this “Scohesham” of the Kentish Hoo would thus be practically identical
with that of the “Scheouesham”--also written “Seuekesham”[38]--the
alleged ancient name of Abingdon. Not that it is intended here to
say that “Andscohesham” is a corruption of “Clovesham,” although it
would have been just as reasonable as Somner’s inference; but that
Somner’s conjecture for removing the place, might be retorted by one
equally efficient to bring it back again. But even this might be
worth farther scrutiny: for if this identity, of “Andscohesham” and
“Clovesham,” should prove to be the case, the ancient controversy
would be determined at once, without the further trouble here being
bestowed. This Andscohesham or Stoke is close also to Hoo-St.-Werburgh,
and probably identical with “Godgeocesham,” the place where “Eanmundus
rex,” or Eahlmund (= Alcmund, father of Egbert of Wessex) was living,
when he added his form of approval to a gift,[39] of land at Islingham
also close adjoining, by his co-rex of Kent, Sigered, to Earduulf
Bishop of Rochester, (A.D. 759-765.)
The likeness of the name Clovesho and Cliff-at-Hoo, is not of a sort
likely to suggest identity, except first prompted externally, such as
by an actual independent tradition; but after having been thus brought
together by external evidence, the structure of the old name can
thoroughly justify the identity.
But, however slender may have been this original philological cause
of disturbance, it served to carry the question, of the actual place,
out into the expansive region of conjecture; where it has been ever
since rolling and rebounding, from one end of the land to the other,
from that time to this. Every succeeding writer treating the matter as
if it had been commissioned to him to choose the place of the synods,
according to his own views of the fitness of things. Bishop Gibson
first accepted Somner’s conjecture, and so adopting Abingdon, concludes
that “no sane man,” who admits the authority of the Abingdon Chronicle,
“can stick at it:”[40] the Abingdon Chronicle having never said it
except through Somner’s distortion. Smith’s gloss, on the name in Beda
is, “Vulgo Cliff, juxta Hrofes caester.” But he continues, in a note,
that Somner’s opinion in preferring Abingdon seems not unworthy of
observation. He recites Camden, but concludes, “Sed in his nihil ultra
conjecturam, & illam certe valde fluctuantem.”[41] A conclusion which
is even prophetic. In Dr. Geo. Smith’s map to Beda it is, however,
placed at Abingdon. Smith’s note is transcribed as it stands by
Wilkins;[42] and again by Sir T. D. Hardy.[43]
Capt. John Stevens, in a note in his translation of Bede, (A.D. 1723,)
says, as to the true place being Cliffe, “Of this opinion are the two
great antiquarians, Spelman and Talbot, to which Lambard likewise
gives in, though with caution.” This must be Dr. Robert Talbot, Canon
of Norwich, another early Saxon scholar, reign Henry VIII., who left
transcripts of charters of Abingdon,[44] and is, therefore, another
early learned witness of the tradition. Spelman’s interpretation is
“Cloveshoviæ (vulgo Clyff).”[45] The Rev. Joseph Stevenson[46] recites
the option of Cliffe and Abingdon. Of the church historians, Fuller
remonstrates against Camden’s doubts, with his usual moderation.
Collier merely calls it “Clovesho, or Clyff, near Rochester.”
By this time the Abingdon speculation had become strong enough to carry
double: to be able to be called in to the help of other theories, on
outside matters. The ingenious Welsh philologer, William Baxter,[47]
gets from it an offspring _ergo_. He makes Abingdon the “Caleva
Attrebatum,” _because_ it had been “Clovesho:” upon which, by a sort
of “To-my-love and from-my-love” formula, Dr. W. Thomas[48] completes
the symmetry of a logical circle, by citing “Calleva Attrebatum” as
evidence that Cloveshoe is near Henley-on-Thames, then thought to be
Calleva.
R. Gough, in Additions to Camden, leaves it at Abingdon on Bp. Gibson’s
argument: and, throughout the eighteenth century, Abingdon seems to
have been favoured; the writers being much given to copy each other.
Dr. Lingard, 1803, quoting Capt. Stevens’s translation of Bede, says
“probably Abingdon,” and so also puts it in his Anglo-Saxon map; but
Capt. Stevens had only quoted both views, without adopting either.
The later editors of the Saxon Chronicle, Dr. Ingram and Mr. Thorpe,
return to the tradition, contenting themselves with the simple gloss
“Cliff-at-Hoo, Kent,” “Cliff near Rochester.” Miss Gurney, however,
prudently says, “Cliff in Kent, or Abingdon.” Professor Earle gives
the valuable note and question about Dr. Heath, before mentioned, but
leaves the main question, of the place, open. On the other hand, the
Dictionaries, since Somner: Lye says “fortasse Abbingdon,” and Dr.
Bosworth follows with “perhaps Abingdon,” quoting both Somner and Lye.
But the nineteenth century took a fresh stride away from the start of
the seventeenth. Whilst accepting from the eighteenth the inheritance
of the doubt, it next renounced the claim itself for which the doubt
had been raised. It is no longer Abingdon, but wherever it may be
thought likely--Dr. Lappenberg[49] places it in Oxfordshire; Mr.
N.E.S.A. Hamilton[50] “co. Berks.” Mr. Kemble more boldly carries it
to “the hundred of Westminster, and county of Gloucester, perhaps near
Tewksbury.”[51] Next year,[52] he more firmly says “Doubts have been
lavished upon the situation of this place, which I do not share,” and
concludes that it was “not far from Deerhurst, Tewksbury, and Bishop’s
Cleeve; not at all improbably in Tewksbury itself, which may have been
called Clofeshoas, before the erection of a noble abbey at a later
period gave it the name it now bears.”
Messrs. Haddan and Stubbs[53] accept the objections of their
forerunners against Cliff-at-Hoo, thinking that this place “rests
solely on the resemblance of the name.” They say of the Abingdon
= Sheovesham theory, that it is also “the merest conjecture.”
They also reject Mr. Kemble’s Tewkesbury as founded on a mistaken
identity of Westminster hundred with another place sometimes called
“Westminster,” in the Mercian charters, (A.D. 804-824). This is,
indeed, Westbury-on-Trym. But why was the minster there called “west,”
and where was the minster that was east of it? At an earlier date
(A.D. 794) it had already got its present name, “Uuestburg.” Messrs.
Haddan and Stubbs leave the question of the true place of Cloveshoe as
they find it, neither endorsing the original tradition, nor indulging
in the freedom of choice which had been established for them. In
another work,[54] however, Mr. Haddan has said, “On the locality of
Cloveshoo itself, unfortunately, we can throw no more light than may
be contained in the observation, that St. Boniface invariably styles
the English synod, ‘Synodus _Londinensis_;’ and that … the immediate
vicinity of that city--in all other respects the most probable of
all localities--seems consequently the place where antiquarians must
hunt for traces of the lost Cloveshoo.” How far Cliffe, situated near
the mouth of the Thames, may satisfy or contradict the “Londinensis”
of S. Bonifatius must be left to be judged. Dean Hook recites his
fore-goers, but not quite understanding them:--“Where Cloveshoo was
it is impossible to say, some antiquarians placing it at Cliff-at-Hoo,
in Kent; some in the neighbourhood of Rochester; others contending for
Abingdon; others again for Tewkesbury.”[55] But Cliff-at-Hoo in Kent
_is_ in the _near_ neighbourhood of Rochester. The present state of the
question, therefore, seems to be, that it is given up as hopeless.
But the most strenuous renunciator of the Kentish tradition, in favour
of the Berkshire conjecture, was a learned and distinguished native
of the Kentish locality itself: the Rev. John Johnson. He is usually
reckoned among the learned and suffering body of the Nonjurors, but,
by personal merits and some concessions, he appears to have escaped
their political ordeal; having retained his preferments throughout
a long life. He is commonly distinguished, from the other Johnsons
of literature, as “Johnson of Cranbrook.” His remarks deserve all
the more careful consideration, because he was born at Frindsbury,
immediately adjoining Cliffe, and the intermediate parish between
it and Rochester. At Frindsbury, in fact, was the “Aeslingham” of
the Textus Roffensis, in one of the charters that concern the Hoo
and the locality now in question. He printed a Collection of Canons
of the English Church, in 1720.[56] In his preface and notes to the
Synod at which was ratified the submission of the usurped primacy of
Lichfield to that of Canterbury, A.D. 803, which is one of those held
at “clofeshoas;”[57] he oddly brings it, as an argument that Abingdon
was the place, that the triumphant Archbishop of Canterbury “was
willing to meet” his reconciled insubordinant rival, half way between
Lichfield and Canterbury. Converting what is a very strong presumption
against Abingdon, into an act of extreme humility on the part of the
Archbishop. The learned writer must have felt the difficulty, which he
thus strove so hard to liquidate into a virtue. After this, he goes
on to allege that “there is not a more unhealthy spot in the whole
province, I may say in all Christendom,” than this district of the Hoo.
With deference, however, to such a writer, and a native of the spot,
this account of it does, to a mere visitor, seem to be exaggerated.
The Gads-Hill, of Falstaff, will bring the neighbourhood to the
remembrance of many; and it has become more widely known of late years,
by the last residence of another great master of humour and fiction,
which is less than four miles from the church of Cliffe, and the
outlook from which would be about identical with that from any Mercian
Villa Regia that may have existed here. An ungrateful remembrance of
the inflictions of schoolmasters, or other childish griefs, is often
observed to haunt the later career of those to whose distinguished
position they may have contributed.
In his “Addenda,” Johnson afterwards says, “I find some worthy
gentlemen still of opinion, that Cliff … was not unhealthy in the
age of the Councils:” and he truly quotes charters from the Textus
Roffensis, to show that the northern marshes, or levels, then already
existed; and he urges that it “was, therefore, altogether unfit for
a stated place of synod.” That “As Cliff in Hoo was never a place of
great note itself, so it lies, and ever did lie, out of the road to any
place of note;” and he goes on to recite Somner and Camden’s plea of
the greater likelihood of Abingdon, for synods limited to the times of
Mercian domination.
But the marshes are not in question, they are but an appendage to the
Hoo. This peninsula is formed of a large fragment of the chalk at
the eastern end of the North Kentish downs, called by geologists an
“inlier” into the Thames basin; upon the heights, and in the valleys,
of which the places concerned in this enquiry were situated. The
marshes are a broad fringe of level pasture land,[58] advanced into the
Thames estuary, beyond its north chalk cliff. In Kent the word “marsh”
signifies the same as “more” in Somersetshire: which, although even
Dr. Jamieson confounds the two, is a totally different word and thing,
from the “muir,” or “moor,” for waste lands of a highland character.
It is to such land as this that we owe the dairies of Cheddar; and if
this objection should be good, Glastonbury and Wells, not to mention
Ely and Croyland, must resign their venerable places in history. A very
similar projection of alluvial level pasture extends from Henbury and
Shirehampton to the Bristol Channel, without disparagement of their
salubrity. Mr. Johnson, having suffered much in health by a residence
of a year or two at Appledore, in Kent, obtained the vicarage of
Cranbrook, where he lived for eighteen years. It is likely that he was
sensitive of climatal influences, and shy of those breezes that reach
this island after passing over the great plains of central Europe: a
tenderness, which neither Æthelbald nor Offa can be supposed to have
shared with him.
It is plain, however, that this broad alluvial margin, extending
from the northern edge of the heights, which are the substantial
constituents of the Hoo peninsula, already existed, A.D. 779, at
least a very large extent of it; for the first charter, so dated,[59]
describes it as then “habentem quasi quinquaginta iugerum.” In a later
charter, A.D. 789,[60] the name of the projecting level appears as
“Scaga.”[61] It must already have become land of value to be granted in
these charters; and its identity is certain from the limits--Yantlet
(“Jaenlade”) water to “Bromgeheg,” now “Bromey,” on the higher land at
Cooling. Does not the word “jugeru,” used in the charter, indicate that
this “marsh” was already cultivated or pasture land? How it had been
originally caused is, however, not hard to discern. It is, evidently, a
large portion of the delta of the Thames, intercepted by the confluence
of the other great river, the Medway, and thrown back behind the chalk
promontory of the Hoo. Inside, and westward of this deposit, the tidal
estuary makes a bold reach southward; sweeping the western side of
this level, and approaching the heights, so as, at Cliffe, Higham, and
Chalk, to leave only a comparatively narrow fringe of level; and it is
on the heights at the southern bend of this reach, that are situated
these three villages, which will presently be found, it is thought, to
be interesting to us.