Page:VCH Bedfordshire 1.djvu/368

 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE of possibility that he bequeathed to a church in Bedford some valuable lands in Kent, which had originally been part of the endowment of the see of Canterbury. 1 There may have been another centre in the southern district, where the name of Bissopescote (the modern Biscot) points to an assignment of Church property in the neighbourhood, and is tradition- ally older than the time of Offa — if indeed it is rightly numbered by the compiler of the St. Alban's Book of Benefactors among the original gifts of the royal founder to that abbey. 2 It is also stated in one of Offa's charters 3 that the 'five manses at Lygetun,' which he was pre- senting to St. Alban's, had belonged to the Church before his time ; they had been given to him by Abbot Ahlmund by way of reparation for an attempt to elude the obligations of the Fyrd. Ahlmund's name occurs among signatures to several charters between 791 and 796/ but there is no evidence to show what monastery he ruled ; it may quite well have been in some other county, though part of its property was in Bedford- shire. No certain conclusion can be drawn from indications such as these ; the utmost that can be said is that the earliest assignments of Church property, the earliest signs of Church life in this county, were probably connected with the town of Bedford and the neighbourhood of Luton. The tradition that Offa himself was buried at Bedford 5 is of fairly ancient date ; the chapel containing his tomb, which was outside the town on the bank of the river Ouse, is said to have been overthrown by the violence of the stream, after long use, and finally submerged. 6 Matthew Paris evidently thought that this happened soon after the Con- quest ; for he blamed not only the earlier abbots for failing to secure to St. Alban's the bones of their royal founder, but also the first Norman abbot, Paul of Caen. 7 By his own time its memory only survived in popular legend. 8 Such churches or monasteries as there were in Bedfordshire pos- sibly suffered from the plundering raids of the Danes in 870 and 877," and even after Alfred's second partition treaty the county was still the natural battlefield of Danes and English ; not until after 921 could there have been much opportunity of restoration. It is therefore all the more interesting to find, only fifty years after the last attack, reference made by the English chronicler in 97 1 10 to an abbot of 1 Kemble identifies the place referred to in a charter of Archbishop Athelheard {Cod. Dipt. mxix. ' ecclesia quae sita est apud Beodeford ') with Bedanford or Bedford, and is followed by the Rev. H. Cobbe in Luton Church ; but Mr. W. H. Stevenson is of opinion that the identification is extremely doubtful, and is inclined to locate ' Beodeford ' somewhere in Kent. The text from which the charter is printed is a late copy, and it is not at all certain that the name has been correctly transcribed from the original. 2 Cott. MS. Nero, D vii. f. 4. 3 Kemble, Cod. Dipl. dccclxxxiv. This charter is however of doubtful authenticity. 4 Ibid, civ., clvii., clix., clxvi., clxvii. The Rev. H. Cobbe calls him the constant companion of OfFa in his later years, and suggests that he may have been abbot of Bedford. 5 Matth. Paris, Chron. Majora (Rolls Series), i. 363. e Ibid. 7 Gesta Abbatum Mon. S. Albani (Rolls Series), i. 7, 62. 8 He says that in his own day bathers sometimes saw in the depths of the waters the appearance of a sepulchre ; but no one who deliberately looked for it could ever find it. 9 Anglo-Saxon Chron. (Rolls Series), ii. 61, 6+. 10 Ibid. 96. 310