This city had been famous in the time of the Romans and a station
of their troops, being called by Ptolemy and Antoninus, Venta. It
became afterwards the chief seat of the West-Saxon kings. Among
these, Kynegils, having received the faith about the year 635,
gave to St. Birinus the city of Dorcester for his episcopal see,
but founded a church at Winchester, which was dedicated by St.
Birinus to St. Peter, according to the Saxon Chronicle, or to the
Holy Trinity, according to Thomas Rudburn. Wini, the third bishop
of the West-Saxons, fixed his see at Winchester, and this church
became one of the most flourishing cathedrals of all Britain. St.
Swithun, called in the original Saxon language Swithum, received in
this church the clerical tonsure, and put on the monastic habit in
the Old Monastery, which had been founded by king Kynegils. He was
of noble parentage, passed his youth in innocent simplicity, and in
the study of grammar, philosophy, and the holy scriptures. He was an
accomplished model of all virtues when he was promoted to holy orders
by Helinstan or Helmstan, bishop of Winchester.
Being ordained priest, he was made provost or dean of the Old
Monastery. His learning, piety, and prudence, moved Egbert, king
of the West-Saxons, to make him his priest, under which title the
saint subscribed a charter granted to the abbey of Croyland in 833.
That great prince committed to his care the education of his son
Ethelwolf, and made use of his counsels in the government of his
kingdom. A degeneracy of manners had crept into the courts of the
Merceians and Northumbrians, and their government was weakened by
intestine divisions and several revolutions. Egbert having first
vanquished Swithred, king of the East-Saxons, and added his kingdom
to his own, upon several provocations, invaded Mercia, and conquered
it in 823, but soon after restored Withlaf, whom he had expelled, to
the throne of that kingdom on condition he should hold the crown of
him, and pay him an annual tribute. He treated in the same manner
Eandred, the last king of the Northumbers, and made him tributary,
after he had with a great army laid waste that province. The kingdom
of the East Angles submitted to him about the same time with Mercia,
with which it had been long engaged in war and was thereby reduced to
extreme poverty. Kent being at that time tributary to Mercia, it fell
also to the share of the conqueror. After this, Egbert assembled all
the great men of his kingdom, both clergy and laity, in a council at
Winchester, in which he enacted that this kingdom should ever after
be called England, and all his subjects Englishmen. At the same time
he was again crowned, and from that year, 829, was styled king of
England. Thus were the names of Saxons and Jutes abolished among us,
and an end was put to the heptarchy, or division of this nation into
seven kingdoms, which began to be formed by Hengist in 457, when he
took the title of king, seven years after his arrival in this island,
in 449. Towards the latter end of Egbert’s reign the Danes first
began to infest England. This general name historians give to those
shoals of pirates which were composed not only of Danes, but also of
Norwegians, Goths, Sweones or Swedes, and Vandals, as Eginhard, Henry
of Huntingdon, and others assure us.[170]
King Egbert reigned thirty-seven years over the West Saxons, and
nine years over all England, dying in the year 838, or according to
others in 837. Ethelwolf, his only surviving son, had been educated
in piety and learning under the care of St. Swithin, then provost of
the Old Monastery in Winchester,[171] and had been ordained subdeacon
by bishop Helmstan, as Rudburn, Huntingdon, and others relate. But
upon the death of his elder brother, whose name is not known, he
was dispensed with by pope Leo to marry, and returning again to a
secular life, helped his father in his wars, and after his death was
advanced to the throne. He married Osberge, a lady of remarkable
piety, and had four sons by her, Ethelbald, Ethelbright, Ethelred,
and Alfred. He governed his kingdom by the prudent advice of Alstan,
bishop of Shirborne, in temporal affairs; and by that of St. Swithin
in ecclesiastical matters, especially those which concerned his
own soul. And though the king was of a slow disposition, yet by
the assistance of these worthy counsellors, he reigned prudently
and happily; the Danes were often repulsed, and many noble designs
for the good of the Church and state were begun, and prosperously
executed. Bearing always the greatest reverence to St. Swithin, whom
he called his master and teacher, he procured him, upon the death
of Helmstan, to be chosen bishop of Winchester, to which see he was
consecrated by Ceolnoth, archbishop of Canterbury, in 852. Herne has
given us the profession of faith which he made on that occasion,
according to custom, in the hands of the archbishop.[172]
William of Malmesbury says, that though this good bishop was a
rich treasure of all virtues, those in which he took most delight
were humility and charity to the poor; and in the discharge of his
episcopal functions he omitted nothing belonging to a true pastor.
He built divers churches, and repaired others; and made his journeys
on foot, accompanied with his clerks, and often by night to avoid
ostentation. Being to dedicate any church, he with all humility used
to go barefoot to the place. His feasting was not with the rich, but
with the needy and the poor. His mouth was always open to invite
sinners to repentance, and to admonish those that stood to beware of
falling. He was most severe to himself, and abstemious in his diet,
never eating to satisfy his appetite, but barely to sustain nature;
and as to sleep, he admitted no more than what after long watching
and much labor was absolutely necessary. He was always delighted with
psalms and spiritual canticles, and in conversation would bear no
discourse but what tended to edification.
By his counsel and advice king Ethelwolf, in a Mycel synod or great
council of the nation in 854, enacted a new law by which he gave
the tithes or tenth part of his land throughout the kingdom to the
Church, exempt and free from all taxations and burthens, with an
obligation of prayers in all churches for ever for his own soul, on
every Wednesday, &c. This charter, to give it a more sacred sanction,
he offered on the altar of St. Peter at Rome in the pilgrimage which
he made to that city in 855. He likewise procured it to be confirmed
by the pope.[173] He carried with him to Rome his youngest and best
beloved son Alfred, rebuilt there the school for the English, and
ordered to be sent every year to Rome one hundred mancuses[174] for
the pope, one hundred for the church of St. Peter, and as much for
that of St. Paul, to furnish them with lights on Easter Eve. He
extended the Romescot or Peter-pence to his whole kingdom. He reigned
two years after his return from Rome, and died in 857. He ordained,
that throughout all his own hereditary lands, every ten families
shall maintain one poor person with meat, drink, and apparel; from
whence came the Corrodies which still remain in divers places. St.
Swithin departed to eternal bliss, which he had always thirsted
after, on the 2d of July, 862, in the reign of king Ethelbert. His
body was buried, according to his order, in the church-yard, where
his grave might be trodden on by passengers.
About one hundred years after, in the days of king Edgar, his
relics were taken up by St. Ethelwold, then bishop of Winchester,
and translated into the church in 964. On which occasion Malmesbury
affirms that such a number of miraculous cures of all kinds were
wrought, as was never to the memory of man known to have been in
any other place. Lanfrid, in the original Saxon Lantfred, called
by Leland all illustrious doctor, being then a monk at Winchester,
wrote, in 980, a history of this translation, and of the miraculous
cures of a blind man, and many others through the intercession of
this saint; which history has never been printed; though we have
two beautiful fair manuscript copies of it, the one in the Cotton,
the other in the king’s library in the enclosure of Westminster
Abbey.[175] In the reign of William the Conqueror, Walkelyn, bishop
of Winchester, a Norman, and the king’s relation, laid the foundation
of the new church in 1079, which he lived to finish with the abbey,
so that in 1093, the monks, in the presence of almost all the bishops
and abbots of England, came in great joy from the old to the new
monastery, and on the feast of St. Swithin, the shrine of this saint
was in another solemn procession translated from the old to the new
church; and on the next day the bishop’s men began to demolish the
old abbey. William of Wickham, the celebrated chancellor of England
in the reign of Edward III. and founder of a great college in Oxford,
in 1379, added the nave and west front to this cathedral which is now
standing. This church was first dedicated to the Holy Trinity under
the patronage of St. Peter; afterward by St. Ethelwold, in presence
of king Etheldred, St. Dunstan, and eight other bishops, to St.
Swithin, as Rudburn relates, in 980.[176] King Henry VIII. in 1540,
commanded this cathedral to be called no longer St. Swithin’s, but of
the Holy Trinity.[177]
St. Swithin is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on the 2d of
July, which was the day of his death; but his chief festival in
England was on the 15th of the same month, the day of the translation
of his relics. See the calendar prefixed to the chronicle entitled
Scala Mundi in a fair MS. in folio in the library of the English
college at Douay; also the Sarum Breviary and Missal. An arm of St.
Swithin was kept in the abbey of Peterborough, as is mentioned by
Hugh Candidus or White, in his accurate history of that monastery,
published by Mr. Spark, p. 1723. The abbey of Hyde was first built
within the precincts of the cathedral by king Edward the Elder, in
pursuance of his father Alfred’s will, for secular canons, over whom
St. Grimbald was intended to preside, had not his death prevented it.
These canons, after sixty years’ continuance, yielded this church to
the monks whom, in 964, St. Ethelwold brought in; from which time
this abbey was called Newminster till it was translated by king Henry
I. and the bishop William Giffard, to a place near the walls of the
city called Hyde. Of this magnificent abbey not so much as the walls
are left standing, though in it lay the remains of king Edward, his
son Alfred, his daughter St. Eadburga, &c. Its church was dedicated
to the Holy Trinity, St. Peter, and St. Grimbald. See the short life
of St. Swithin, written by Wolstan, a monk of Winchester, dedicated
to St. Elphege, then bishop of that city, in 1001, but translated to
Canterbury in 1006. It is published by Mabillon, sæc. 5, Ben. p. 628.
See also Malmesbury, t. 2, de Pontif. Robert of Glocester’s Chronicle
in verse, published by Mr. Herne. Thomas Rudburn, Historia Major
Wintoniensis, published by Wharton, t. 1, p. 200. Lord Clarendon,
and Sam. Gale, On the Antiquities of Winchester, and Pinius the
Bollandist, t. 1, Julij, ad diem 2, p. 321. Also S. Swithuni vita et
miracula per Lamfridum monachum Winton. MSS. in Bibl. Regia Londini,
xv. c. vii. 1.