He made large gifts of land near Sandwich “monachis ecclesiæ Christi Doroberniæ” at the request of archbishop Iambertus, A. D. 773, Canterbury (Cant-wara-burh) having been burned a few years before.—Dugd. Mon. Angl.
He freed the abbey of Woking A. D. 775. “In the days of this same Offa was an alderman of the name of Brorda who requested the king for his sake to free his own monastery, called Woking, because he would give it to Medhamsted and St. Peter, and the abbot that then was, whose name was Pusa. Pusa succeeded Beonna; and the king loved him much. And the king freed the monastery of Woking against king, against bishop, against earl, and against all men: so that no man should have any claim there except St. Peter and the abbot. This was done at the king’s town called Free-Richburn.”—Ingr. Sax. Chron. p. 75.
After Bath had been devastated by the Danes Offa rebuilt the church of St. Peter about A. D. 775.—Tanner’s Notitia Monastica. V. Somersetshire I.
At Bredon or Breordun he founded or endowed a monastery A. D. 780.—Tanner’s Not. Mon. III. Worcestershire 5.—Dugd. Mon. Angl.
He also appears to have granted some endowment or privilege to the cathedral and benedictine priory of Worcester.—Not. Mon. XXI. Worcestersh. I.
He was also a liberal donor to (some imagine the founder of) Westminster Abbey. A. D. 785 “Offa granted ten plough-lands at Aldenham in Herts to St. Peter’s church, ‘et plebi Domini degenti in Torneia’ (Thorney Isle, on which the Minster was built). He also ‘collected a parcel of monks here’ and ‘repaired and enlarged the church,’ and ‘having a great reverence for St. Peter,’ continues Sulcardus, ‘he in a particular manner honoured it by depositing there the coronation robes and regalia.’ He also exempted it from the payment of Romescot.”—Neale’s Westminster Abbey, vol. 1. p. 13. Dugd. Mon. by Ellis, I. 266.
He resettled the see of Dorchester (Oxon), which had experienced some interruption in the succession of its bishops.—Flor. Wig. 785. Kennett’s Paroch. Antiq. p. 33.
He built a nunnery at Winchelcombe (called Winchcumb by Dugdale), A. D. 787.—Not. Mon. XXXIII. Gloucestershire I.
He gave “between the years 791 and 794 to Athelard, archbishop of Canterbury thirty tributaries of land on the north side of the Thames, at a place called Twittenham.”—Lyson’s Twickenham.
But the most important of Offa’s foundations was that of St. Alban’s abbey. I have followed the date of Ingram’s Saxon Chronicle, Speed, and others, in assigning 794 as the period of his death, and therefore cannot suppose the foundation of St. Alban’s to have been later than that year, though it may have been the year previous. (V. Storr’s Chron.) From Tanner’s Not. Mon. (I. Hertfordshire, I.) we learn that A. D. 793 a noble abbey for one hundred Benedictine monks was founded by Offa. The Chronicler Speed says that in A. D. 795 “Offa in honour of St. Albane, and in repentance of his sins, built a magnificke monastery (over against Verolamium in the place then called Holmehurst, where that protomartyr of Britaine for the constant profession of the Faith lost his head), indowing it with lands and rich revenewes for the maintenance of an hundred monks. Upon the first gate of entrance in stone standeth cut a salteir argent in a field azure, and is assigned by the judicious in Heraldry to bee the armes that he bare.”—Book 7. ch. 28.