Page:St. Oswald and the Church of Worcester.djvu/25

 The bishop took the testimony of certain old men, well informed as to the ancient customs of the parish churches, and the testimony also of the monks of the cathedral church. It was affirmed that originally there was no parish in Worcester save that of the mother church. In the time of Bosel, the first bishop (680-691), St Helen's was a vicarage of the mother church. This arrangement was preserved throughout the times of all the bishops by the clerks who served in this see, until the days of Archbishop Oswald, who, by the aid of King Edgar and the authority of Archbishop Dunstan, changed the society of this church from the irregular life of clerks to the regular life and the habit of monks, A.D. 969. In St Oswald's time Wynsius the presbyter of St Helen's was vicar there of the mother church. He, with the others who served this church in the habit of clerks, laid aside the world and took the habit of monastic religion; and he gave up the keys of St Helen's church with its lands and possessions to the common use of the monks. In the third year of the conversion of Wynsius the presbyter, Oswald, with the king's assent, made him prior of the monks of this church.

We need not carry the story farther. The date 969 was doubtless gathered from the charter which claims to be of that year (B. C. S. 1243) and is said in the Saxon note to have been witnessed 'by Wynsige monk and all the monks of Worcester'. We note in passing that in the account here given there is no suggestion that there had ever been a community of monks at Worcester before St. Oswald's time.