In the previous article I introduced the importance of the cult of St Clement for Viking dynasties during the eleventh century. In England the cult seems to have had special significance in the half century between the accession of King Cnut and the Norman Conquest. You may recall I have suggested that it was during this period the English I-Y33765 lineage originated from a Scandinavian man who was in some way involved with a cluster of seven north Somerset manors. In 1066 these manors were owned by four Scandinavian landowners, who were each characterized as “the Dane” by the scribe who compiled the Domesday record. So it seems the logical place to look for evidence of the cult of Clement would be in these manorial locations. For instance were any Anglo Scandinavian churches dedicated to the saint in these manors during the eleventh century? The answer at first sight is sadly no. All seven locations now have parish churches whose oldest surviving parts were built after the end of Anglo-Danish rule in England, sometime between 1100-1300, and whose dedications are to different saints none of whom are St Clement (see table).
Indeed, medieval churches and chapels dedicated to St Clement, south west of the Thames, are very few (Crawford, 2008a, 2008b) (see map below). There are none in Somerset or Gloucestershire apart from the example in the city of Bristol. Here the chapel dedicated to St Clement is not relevant to our exploration because it was not founded until the end of the medieval period (see photograph below). Consequently it is later than dates at which the Clement surname is already documented in north Somerset (circa 1303) and so had no influence on the popularity of the name.
Medieval churches dedicated to St Clement in the south-west of England. St Clement, Powderham, Devon is in a manor owned by Tholf the Dane who also owned Tickenham in north Somerset.
A less obvious, but it seems to me, very significant link between the Somerset Scandinavian manors and St Clement is through the church dedicated to him at Powderham, near Exeter, Devon (see map above). From the Domesday record, in 1066, the manor of Powderham was owned by Tholf “the Dane” and importantly he also owned one of the seven north Somerset manors, namely Tickenham.
Tholf was a substantial landowner in Wessex owning eighteen manors spread across five counties which were assessed at over 100 hides and worth £95 (see map).
Wessex manors owned by Tholf the Dane in 1066
According to PASE (2020) the form of his name ”is characteristic of Denmark” and “he was among the Danes settled in the heart of Wessex by the Danish kings of the earlier eleventh century”. Among the Scandinavian owners of the north Somerset manors he is by far the wealthiest and the extent of his wealth would have given political influence. Lewis (2016) classified Tholf as a “Great Landowner” and among this category “Tholf was the wealthiest great landowner whose property was confined to Wessex, with a value that made him almost as significant as any of the Danish magnates who had land there” and ”Tholf the Dane is likely to have been a first or at most second generation newcomer to Wessex”. In other words he was most probably a member of Cnut’s ruling Danish elite. According to Crawford (2006) the hegemony of this group depended on trade and travel “Their lives were dominated by the sea and they needed a saintly protector to whom they could call- and to whom they could give thanks- for safe travel over water” “For this very reason the cult of Clement is likely to have played an important role in the daily activities of the king and his following”.
While the present church at Powderham was not built until1258 it seems likely there had “been a little Saxon church on the site” (Anon, 2011) and Tholf’s political credentials make it entirely possible that this chapel would also have been dedicated to Clement. After all the site on the banks of the Exe estuary in the “promontory reclaimed from the marsh” (Domesday Old English, 1086; polra + hamm) would be entirely appropriate for a saint who preserved those threatened by water. At the very least this connection between Powderham and Tickenham is useful circumstantial evidence that some of those “Danes” living in the Somerset manors had direct experience of St Clement and his cult.
Also, three of the Scandinavian manors; Clevedon, Yatton and Tickenham were, during the Dark Ages, liable to frequent inundation from the Severn Estuary and all three may have had earlier churches associated with the sites of their later Norman buildings. The dedications of these earlier churches were probably different from those used later so it is not impossible that one of these manors may have had an Anglo-Scandinavian church that was dedicated to Clement. The very unusual dedication at Tickenham, to St Quincus & St Julietta, is of Norman origin and would definitely not have been the dedication of an earlier church on that site. Barbara Crawford (2008a; 2008b) has noted that many churches originally dedicated to Clement were subsequently rededicated to other saints as the cult of St Clement became less popular (see St Nicholas, Bristol, below).
Manors owned by John the Dane in 1066. He was "Lord" in those shown with a light blue symbol. One of these is Yatton in north Somerset.
The manors of Clevedon and Yatton were owned by John "the Dane". Like Tholf he too was also classed by Lewis (2016) as a "Great Landowner" with 50 hides of land in seven manors across four shires of Wessex (Devon, Somerset, Dorset and Gloucestershire}. According to PASE (2020) "His centre of operations may have been Yatton in Somerset, and there is
some evidence of a connection with Bishop Giso of Wells (1060–88) (who
acquired Yatton after 1066), through John’s probable son Northmann (fl.
1065–72). On balance John was probably the same person as John the
sheriff who had an interest in a small estate across the Wye from
Hereford and was probably sheriff of Herefordshire." From this biography we have another Scandinavian landowner in the north Somerset manors who seems to have been very much part of the Anglo-Scandinavian ruling elite. The office of county sheriff was the highest official under the king in that county. Also, because of our particular interest in church dedications it may be relevant that John has an unusual (for an eleventh century Dane resident in England) biblical name and that he may also have had a connection with the local Bishop. Could this indicate a particularly devout family that would consequently be more inclined to found a church or chapel? All the pre-Norman Conquest instances of the name John in Domesday refer to John "the Dane" and PASE (2020) notes "It is almost as surprising to find it [John] as the name of a Danish layman as it would be of an Englishman". So maybe it was at John's Clevedon or Yatton manor that an early wooden church was dedicated to Clement.
As mentioned above, the port at Bristol was part of the Scandinavian trading network and a growing urban centre in the eleventh century. It had a chapel dedicated to Clement by the 15th century but it seems rather strange there is no record of any such dedication before that date. This is the more so because of Barbara Crawford’s (2008a) description of a “typical” Clement church in England as follows; “it is the link with urban centres that is most striking” and a “strong association with the sea and with the Danish trading community” and “very often it is located at the end of the bridge or river crossing”. Taken together these criteria would seem to fit Bristol rather well and in particular one church site in the medieval port, that of St Nicholas which was by the city gate adjacent to the bridge (see map below) from which the settlement took its name (Domesday Old English, 1086;“Assembly place by the bridge” brycg + stow). The dedication here may be significant as St Clement’s role as patron saint for sailors and those traveling across water was superseded by that of St Nicholas after the enshrining of the latter’s relics at Bari, Italy in 1070 (Crawford, 2006). So, as almost nothing is known about churches in Bristol prior to the Norman Conquest, it seems possible that a Saxon church on the site of the twelfth century Norman foundation dedicated to St Nicholas may well have been dedicated to Clement. In this connection it is worth noting that Tholf’s manors at Tickenham and Powderham were 14.5km and 9km respectively from the significant Viking ports at Bristol and Exeter. It has been suggested (Lewis,2016) that Tholf’s acquisition of these manors close to the two largest towns west of Winchester “may well have been deliberate policy, and the manors may have been associated with urban property which was simply not recorded in Domesday book”. As Powderham and Exeter each contained a church dedicated to Clement perhaps if Tholf had trading interests through the port of Bristol he would have founded a chapel to that “sailors” saint at Tickenham too.
So it seems to me there are several reasons why we may surmise a
connection between the cult of Clement and the Scandinavian manors of north
Somerset. Certainly two of the landowners had status and wealth that would make it feasible they may have founded a chapel to this Viking saint in the area. But, even if that were so, how might this be connected with the association of St Clement's name with the I-Y33765 SNP? Well, because it is a saint's name we should assume Clement was "chosen" or "bestowed" as a family name to honour the saint and aspects of his cult (Hanks & Hodges, 1988). Since this is the case perhaps, in the two centuries between 1066 and the end of the 12th
century, descendants of the I-Y33765 patriarch were inclined to adopt the saint’s name because of its perceived link with missionary zeal or with the Scandinavian Christianity
of their ancestral line or perhaps with the protection Clement brought to those in peril at sea? Implicit in
this theory is the notion that these descendants and also their close community retained some awareness of their Scandinavian origins for perhaps eight generations. While Anglo-Scandinavian personal names have been
recorded in the south west of England during the Norman period (Higham, 2020) it is hard to
judge the plausibility of such assumptions. On the other hand, if there is no basis for my idea that some ancestral awareness motivated descendants of our patriarch, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, to adopt the Clement surname then the coincidence of their choice seems rather remarkable given the explicit Scandinavian context we have discovered for the St Clement cult.
Consequently it seems to me most plausible that
the Clement surname, which is shared by English men who are derived for the I-Y33765 Y-DNA marker, became their hereditary family name precisely because it was the name of a saint honoured in the Anglo-Scandinavian communities in which their ancestors lived during the 11th century.
References
Anon, (2011) St Clement's Church, Powderham 1259-2011, Powderham PPC 8pp
Crawford, B.E.(2006) The Cult of St Clement in Denmark, Historie, p235-282
Crawford, B.E (2008a) The Saint Clement dedications at Clementhorpe and Pontefract Castle: Anglo-Scandinavian or Norman?, in Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Brooks Ed. Julia Barrow, Andrew Wareham, Ashgate Publishing, p 189-210
Crawford,
B.E (2008b) The Churches Dedicated to St. Clement in Medieval England. A
Hagio-geography of the Seafarer´s Saint in 11th Century North Europe.
St. Petersburg: Axioma, 237 pp.
Hanks, P. & Hodges, F.(1988) The Oxford Dictionary of Surnames, Oxford University Press
Highham, R. (2020) The Godwins,Towns and St Olaf Churches: Comital Investment in the Mid-11th Century, in The Land of the English Kin, Studies in Wessex & Anglo-Saxon England in honour of Professor Barabara Yorke, p467-513
Lewis, C.P. (2016) Danish Landowners in Wessex in 1066, in Danes in Wessex, Eds Ryan Lavelle & Simon Roffey, Oxbow Books, p 172-211
PASE (2020) Prosopography of Anglo Saxon England, http://www.pase.ac.uk/
Wonderful findings John!
ReplyDeleteHamn in Swedish is harbour, as in Powderham and Tickenham.