There is, however, extant a still earlier record, that the tradition had not yet been doubted by the learned. The Rev. Prebendary Earle, Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, has most judiciously preserved some marginal notes of the 16th century, that he found in that MS. of the Saxon Chronicle,[29] which he distinguishes as “C.;” which notes he considers to be “written in an Elizabethan hand:” but as will be presently seen they must have been of the reign of Henry VIII. One of these is written in the margin against one of the occurrences of the name “Clofes hoo” in the Chronicle, and reads “doctor Hethe’s benyffyce;” and Mr. Earle asks, “where may Dr. Hethe’s benefice have been?”[30] To this question of the Professor’s, two more may be added: Who was Dr. Hethe? And who was—evidently his intimate acquaintance—the writer of the marginal notes to the Chronicle?
The answers to these three questions will shew what sort of men these were whom we find in possession of this historical tradition concerning the actual place of those famous synods; and who, long before any question about it had been raised, by the incipient critical scepticism of the 17th century, out of fancied probabilities, are here seen treating it as an undoubted fact. These answers will also shew what advantages, of time and local associations, they had for judgment of the fact.
The benefice, then, was the Rectory of the Cliffe above mentioned, situated in the peninsula, or Hoo, north of Rochester. This living was held, from 1543 to 1548, by Dr. Nicholas Heath: it was, therefore, during these years that the marginal notes were written. He was afterwards Bishop of Rochester, and of Worcester, and Archbishop of York, and Lord Chancellor; and during the reign of Henry VIII., and to the accession of Elizabeth, took leading parts in most affairs, both in Church and State. Wood calls him “a most wise and learned Man, of great Policy, and of as great Integrity.”
As to Dr. Heath’s friend, the writer of the marginal notes, there can be no doubt that he was Dr. Nicholas Wotton: one of the small knot of revivers of Anglo-Saxon literature, and of those, named by Mr. Earle,[31] as a few persons who then had the handling of Saxon MSS. It is found that the long active and distinguished career, of each of these two men, ran both in the same groove:—through the same period, in the same rank and line of affairs, and locally together.[32] They were both part authors of the well-known Institution of a Christian Man, 1537. Wotton was the first Dean of Canterbury, and so continued for more than twenty-five years: also Dean of York. During two intervals he administered, by commission, the Province of Canterbury; and was named, along with Parker, as successor to that Primacy.
These are the two men, who are first found in possession of the historical tradition, that the famous place where the Mercian kings, with the Archbishops, the Bishop of Rochester, and the Mercian and other Bishops, held their councils; the acts of which must, in all ages, have been most conspicuous to learned English Canonists, was no other than this very Cliffe-at-Hoo; and it is evident, from the directness of the marginal note, that they held it as an unquestioned fact. So, about fifty years afterwards, when he published Britannia, it was as we have seen, also without reserve, accepted by Camden.[33] Up to this time the tradition—not among men who accept Geoffrey of Monmouth’s stories and the like, but among the learned—was yet undisturbed. But twenty years later we find Camden wavering; influenced only by speculations on the nature of the district, and a then prevalent distorted perspective of the remote historical circumstances of the time concerned. In the edition of Britannia, which received his latest revision,[34] he qualifies his former statement, by saying that he no longer dares to affirm, as others do, whether or not the Cliffe in the little country called Ho, may be the “Cliues at Ho,” so celebrated in the infancy of the Anglican Church; because the place seems not to be a convenient one for holding the Synod; and that the actual place seems to have been within the kingdom of Mercia, rather than Kent. From that time to this present day the place, indicated by this name, has ranked among the most disputed and unsettled questions of early English topography.
It also happened, that Camden, when treating of Berkshire, had quoted from the Chronicle of Abingdon, a passage which set forth, that, before the abbey was founded at, or removed to, that place, its name had been “Sheouesham,” and was a royal residence. This name, thus brought forward by Camden, struck the fancy of Somner the learned compiler of the earliest Anglo-Saxon Dictionary,[35] who, collating it with Camden’s hesitation at the Cliffe-at-Hoo tradition, thought he saw in “Sheouesham” a scriptorial erroneous variation of “Clouesho or -ham;” Abingdon being, in accordance with the conception of the greater constancy of the frontiers of the “Heptarchy” then prevalent, more likely to be the place of councils, at which the Mercian kings so often presided. And this seemed to be the more likely; because the Abingdon Chronicle also said, that Abingdon had hitherto been a royal residence, when the abbey was founded, from which it got its new name. The Abingdon Chronicle is, of course, good for its proper uses, but where it says that “Seouescham civitas” had been a “sedes regia,” although the name has an English colouring, it is evidently speaking of British or ante-Saxon times. If a royal residence during the reign of Æthelbald, it must have been of the West Saxons, and not of the Mercians. It could not, therefore, have been the Cloveshoe where Æthelbald presided.
If this liberty of interpretation should be permitted, it is plain that it would be enough to shake almost any recorded name. Indeed another example of its use, if also tolerated, would reverse the one itself that had been proposed: would, if the other was enough to carry it to Abingdon, be strong enough to bring it back again to Hoo. In the charter, dated A.D. 738,[36] four years before the earliest recorded Cloveshoe Council, a piece of land is called “Andscohesham.” This is certainly within the very Hoo district itself, which is the site of the Cloveshoe of the tradition; being described as “in regione quæ uocatur Hohg.” Mr. Kemble prints the charter from the Textus Roffensis, but omits the title or endorsement that fixes the very spot in the Hoo that it refers to. This is, however, preserved in Monasticon Anglicanum:[37] “De Stokes, que antiquitus vocabatur Andscohesham;” and Stoke is now a parish in the Hoo, and close to Cliffe. There can be no doubt that the “And-” stands for, or is a corrupt reading of, “aed-” or the preposition “æt,-” so continually carried, along with vernacular Anglo-Saxon names, into Latin documents; and the name of this “Scohesham” of the Kentish Hoo would thus be practically identical with that of the “Scheouesham”—also written “Seuekesham”[38]—the alleged ancient name of Abingdon. Not that it is intended here to say that “Andscohesham” is a corruption of “Clovesham,” although it would have been just as reasonable as Somner’s inference; but that Somner’s conjecture for removing the place, might be retorted by one equally efficient to bring it back again. But even this might be worth farther scrutiny: for if this identity, of “Andscohesham” and “Clovesham,” should prove to be the case, the ancient controversy would be determined at once, without the further trouble here being bestowed. This Andscohesham or Stoke is close also to Hoo-St.-Werburgh, and probably identical with “Godgeocesham,” the place where “Eanmundus rex,” or Eahlmund (= Alcmund, father of Egbert of Wessex) was living, when he added his form of approval to a gift,[39] of land at Islingham also close adjoining, by his co-rex of Kent, Sigered, to Earduulf Bishop of Rochester, (A.D. 759-765.)
The likeness of the name Clovesho and Cliff-at-Hoo, is not of a sort likely to suggest identity, except first prompted externally, such as by an actual independent tradition; but after having been thus brought together by external evidence, the structure of the old name can thoroughly justify the identity.
But, however slender may have been this original philological cause of disturbance, it served to carry the question, of the actual place, out into the expansive region of conjecture; where it has been ever since rolling and rebounding, from one end of the land to the other, from that time to this. Every succeeding writer treating the matter as if it had been commissioned to him to choose the place of the synods, according to his own views of the fitness of things. Bishop Gibson first accepted Somner’s conjecture, and so adopting Abingdon, concludes that “no sane man,” who admits the authority of the Abingdon Chronicle, “can stick at it:”[40] the Abingdon Chronicle having never said it except through Somner’s distortion. Smith’s gloss, on the name in Beda is, “Vulgo Cliff, juxta Hrofes caester.” But he continues, in a note, that Somner’s opinion in preferring Abingdon seems not unworthy of observation. He recites Camden, but concludes, “Sed in his nihil ultra conjecturam, & illam certe valde fluctuantem.”[41] A conclusion which is even prophetic. In Dr. Geo. Smith’s map to Beda it is, however, placed at Abingdon. Smith’s note is transcribed as it stands by Wilkins;[42] and again by Sir T. D. Hardy.[43]