But although, in the existing records of the series of Councils and Synods that were held during the ascendancy of Mercia, and often presided over by the Mercian kings in person, the name of Cloveshoe is frequent, as the place of convention; other places, as “Cealchythe” and “Acle,” are also frequent and continuous. And the names of the councillors, who sign the acts as witnesses, have a certain current identity, with only such changes as may be expected by lapse of time, rather than of change of the region where the assemblies had been convened. After the king, usually follows the Archbishop of Canterbury; then the Bishop of Lichfield, followed by the other Mercian Bishops; and then of the other subject kingdoms.
These two places, Cealchythe and Acle, have been as great puzzles to enquirers as Clovesho itself; and they also have been placed in very distant regions; the sounds of their names being apparently thought to be the only consideration. Cealchythe was thought by Archbishop Parker to be in Northumbria; but Alford said Chelsea; Spelman that it was within the kingdom of Mercia.[74] Gibson suggests Culcheth in Lancashire, as although in Northumbria, not far from Mercia. Miss Gurney also says “Perhaps Kilcheth on the southern border of Lancashire.” Dr. W. Thomas gives it to Henley-on-Thames, partly because he considered it “near” Cloveshoe; Wilkins nor Kemble make any venture; others, adopted by Messrs. Haddan and Stubbs, and, as far as the name alone would have settled it, with a very great deal of apparent reason, would have placed it at Chelsea. The ancient forms of the name of Chelsea, of which examples are by no means scarce, seem all directly to lead up to an identity with that of the councils. One of these, of the baptism, A.D. 1448, of John, son of Richard, Duke of York, recorded in Will. Wyrcester’s Anecdota, is, for example, at “Chelchiethe.” But the name of the council seems to resolve itself into “Chalk-hythe,” and there is no chalk at Chelsea. But even this has been got over by taking the first portion of “Chelsey” for “chesil” or gravel; and this favours the ancient forms of Chelsea = Chelchythe, rather more than it does the variations in the name of the council; which on the whole lean towards “chalk” or “Chalkhythe.” Dr. Ingram[75] adopts “Challock, or Chalk, in Kent;” and Mr. Thorpe repeats that suggestion, with the addition of a “?”
As to this “Chalk,” it is also in the district of the Hoo, and is the adjoining parish westward of Higham; on the same chalk ridge, whereon both Higham and Cliff-at-Hoo are situated. The village is two miles west of Higham church, and all three are practically the same place, within a space of four miles; of which the ancient trajectus above mentioned is at the centre. The face of the cliff, upon which Cliffe stands, is still quarried for chalk, which is shipped in a small creek that runs up to the cliff. It will at once come to mind, how constantly such wharfs are called “hythe,” throughout the navigable portion of the Thames; and how frequently that word forms a part of the names of them. That river has, indeed, almost—not quite—a monopoly of this name-form. But the Ordnance Surveyors[76] show an eastward detachment of Chalk parish, within half a mile of Higham church, and close to that point of the shore which would have been the hythe of the traject. There can be little doubt that this detachment is a survival of the “Chalkhythe” at which some of the councils were dated, whilst others were at Cliffe-at-Hoo adjoining. An endorsed confirmation,[77] under Coenulf, has the formula, “in synodali conciliabulo juxta locum qui dicitur caelichyth.”
Another frequent name, of the place of convention of some of this series of councils during Mercian ascendancy, is “Acle” or “Acleah,” which has been as great a puzzle as the others. This name may be expected to appear in any such modern forms as Oakley, Okeley, Ockley, or Ackley, which are very numerous in nearly every part of England; indeed, wherever the oak has grown: and rather a free use of this wide choice has been made in the attempts to find the place of the councils so dated. The most accepted one seems to be Ockley, south of Dorking, near the confines of Surrey and Sussex; apparently attracted by a battle with the Danes there, A.D. 851. But this happened in later and Wessexian times. Lambarde (about A.D. 1577) thought it likely to be somewhere in the Deanery of Ackley, in Leicestershire: Spelman, in the Bishopric of Durham. Dr. Ingram says, “Oakley in Surrey.” Professor Stubbs says of one act of Offa so dated that it “is unquestionably Ockley in Surrey,” and affords “a strong presumption that the other councils of the southern province said to be at Acleah, were held at the same place,” apparently because the charter before him is a grant to Chertsey. But the substance of these royal grants does not show the place where they were executed. They are the Acts of the Supreme Court of Appeal. Ingram and Thorpe give Ockley, Surrey. Miss Gurney, “Acley, Durham?” Kemble, “Oakley or Ackley, Kent, or Ockley, Surrey,” Sir T. D. Hardy says “in Dunelmia;” no doubt adopting Spelman’s judgment.
Turning again to the Ordnance Survey,[78] at one mile-and-a-half from the church at Cliff-at-Hoo, and rather nearer to it than Higham church itself, will be seen a building marked “Oakly;” or, in the six-inch scale, two: Oakley and Little Oakley. Reverting to Hasted’s account of the parish of Higham,[79] we also find that it contained two manors, Great and Little Okeley; and he quotes the Book of Knight’s Fees, K. John, where it is written, “Acle.”[80] Oakley lies in the direct way from the ancient traject to Rochester bridge, and has been held liable to repair the fourth pier of it. In Domesday it appears as “Arclei.” But the existence of this very place can be realised at a date eight years earlier than the first recorded Synod at Aclea. Mr. Kemble has printed[81] a grant of Offa, dated A.D. 774, to Jaenberht the Archbishop, of a piece of land in a place called “Hehham,” now Higham; of which one portion is conterminous with Acleag—“per confinia acleage”,—another part touches “ad colling”—now Cooling with its Castle,—afterwards bounded by “mersctun,” since Merston, and other lands “Sc̄i andree,” i.e. of Rochester Cathedral. This piece of land, although granted by Offa to the Archbishop of Canterbury, is not only situated within the diocese of Rochester, but is immediately surrounded by the demesnes of Rochester Church. From a realization of the above three land-marks of the charter, it is certain that, although Cliffe is not named, the site of the church and town of Cliffe itself, as well as Higham, is included within the land-marks of the grant; and that the granted manor is identical with those parishes, as they have afterwards become. Cooling adjoins the granted land to the east; Acleag, now Oakley, to the south; Merston, is described by Hasted as a forgotten parish, and no longer appears even in his own map of the Hundred, but he identifies the ruined church among the buildings of “Green Farm,” close to Gads-hill. From this he represents it to have reached the Shorne Marshes; that is to the Thames shore; forming, therefore, the western boundary of Cliffe and Higham, and including the already mentioned detachment of Chalk parish, and having Acleag named as one of its boundaries.[82]
In this charter of Offa, we see one of the examples of those first separations of land, which afterwards became what we call a parish. What we now call a parish, is not an invention or institution by Archbishop Honorius, or Archbishop Theodore, nor of any individual genius; any more than shires and hundreds were invented by King Alfred. Our parishes are the natural and exigent result of the variety of causes that have planted churches; to the use of which, and to the privileges of the cures vested in them, neighbours have acquired customary or other rights. Territorial parishes are definitions and ratifications of these emergent rights, that pre-existed, as other political results do pre-exist, such confirmations of them. Their multiplication may have been promoted, more or less, by different men in different ages, including our own age. We shall presently see, that it is most likely that Offa founded the church at Cliffe; and this charter no doubt fixes the date of it. Higham must have been separated from it, into another parish, at a later time. The Archbishop of Canterbury continued to be the owner of Cliffe until K. Henry VIII.; and the rectory is still in the gift of the Archbishop, and exempt from Rochester which encompasses it. As Johnson of Cranbrook himself admits, “It is indeed a parish most singularly exempt; for the incumbent is the Archbishop’s immediate surrogate.”
But there is a much later Mercian council, which deserves to be noticed; not for its intrinsic importance, but on account of the place from which it is dated.[83] It is a sale of two bits of land at Canterbury to the Archbishop, A.D. 823, by Ceoluulf, “rex merciorum seu etiam cantwariorum.” The price seems to have been, a pot of gold and silver money, by estimation five pounds and-a-half (or ? four and-a-half); more portable and convenient to Ceoluulf under Beornuulf’s usurpation of Mercia. This was just when Mercia was waning, and Wessex ascendant. The date is “in uillo regali, qui dicitur werburging wic.” It will be remembered what was the business that first called us to the Kentish Hoo: the finding one of our St. Werburgh dedications there.
That this Werburghwick was in the Hoo, will become more likely by comparison with another charter.[84] This is, a grant of a privilege to the Bishop of Rochester, by Æthelbald, A.D. 734, which has an endorsed confirmation, by Beorhtuulf “regi merciorū in uico regali uuerbergeuuic,” which endorsement must have been added about A.D. 844. Turn also to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 851 or 853, where it is said that the Heathen men having held their winter in Thanet; in the same year came 350 ships into Thames mouth, and broke Canterbury, and London, and made this same Beorhtuulf King of the Mercians fly with his army, and went south over Thames into Surrey.[85] It is thought more likely that he was at his villa regalis, in the Hoo, than at Tamworth; where however he sometimes is also found.