The Somerset diocese Bath and Wells Author:William Hunt Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. THE EARLY EPISCOPATE. Foundation of the See—Dunstan : his Life and Ecclesiastical Work—Doubtful Succession of Bishops—Duduc—Gisa : Disputes abo... more »ut Property, the Rule of Chrodegang. By the conquest of Devon and Cornwall, which may be said to have been completed in the reign of Ecgberht, the diocese of Sherborne became too large for one bishop. During the troubles of the Danish wars no measure of ecclesiastical reform could be taken in hand. And when the western land had rest under Eadward, the son of Alfred, several dioceses appear to have been vacant. Eadward and Archbishop Plegmund held a council in 909 to remedy this state of things. The West Saxon land was redivided, and Somerset received a bishop of its own. His see was planted at Wells. At first sight the choice may seem strange, for Wells is, and ever has been, a small place. An English bishop, however, unlike the bishops of the continent, was the bishop of a people rather than of a city. The early English system of administration was local rather than central, and was carried on through popular rather than royal institutions. There was, then, nothing really strange in the choice of Wells, for it was fairly convenient for the work of a bishop who had the spiritual supervision of the Sumorsastan. There must, however, have been some special reason for the choice, and this reason seems to have been that an ecclesiastical establishment of some size already existed there. Tradition declares Ini to have been a founder at Wells, and some truth generally underlies even a false tradition. Besides this, a charter of Cynewulf, dated 766, records a grant "to the minster near the great spring at Wells for the better service of God in the church of St. Andrew." The charter may be spurious, and yet, like the traditio...« less