__NOTOC__ Ælfwold (or Ælfweald or Aelfwold) was a medieval Bishop of Crediton.

Life

Ælfwold was a

Benedictine The Benedictines, officially the Order of Saint Benedict (, abbreviated as O.S.B. or OSB), are a mainly contemplative monastic order of the Catholic Church for men and for women who follow the Rule of Saint Benedict. Initiated in 529, th ...

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Glastonbury Abbey Glastonbury Abbey was a monastery in Glastonbury, Somerset, England. Its ruins, a grade I listed building and scheduled ancient monument, are open as a visitor attraction. The abbey was founded in the 8th century and enlarged in the 10th. It wa ...

Knowles ''Monastic Order'' p. 65 footnote 65 before he was elected to Crediton between 986 and 987. He was succeeded by Ælfwold III in 1008. He died between sometime before a time frame between 1011 and 1015.Frye ''Handbook of British Chronology'' p. 215

Will

Ælfwold's will is still extant, and the hand drawing up the will matches the hand that drew up a charter of 997 from King Æthelred II to Ælfwold.Chaplais "Royal Anglo-Saxon 'Chancery'" ''Studies in Medieval History'' p. 45 In his will, Ælfwold freed all the slaves that had worked on his estates, suggesting the existence of slavery in

Anglo-Saxon England Anglo-Saxon England or early medieval England covers the period from the end of Roman Empire, Roman imperial rule in Roman Britain, Britain in the 5th century until the Norman Conquest in 1066. Compared to modern England, the territory of the ...

, was tempered by the need to free such slaves on death.Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger: ''The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium'', Chptr 2 February, Little, Brown, 2000

Citations

References

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External links

* Bishops of Crediton (ancient) 10th-century English bishops 11th-century English Roman Catholic bishops 1010s deaths English Christian monks Benedictine bishops English Benedictines Year of birth unknown Year of death uncertain {{England-bishop-stub