The Bishop of Ramsbury was an episcopal title used by medieval English-Catholic diocesan bishops in the

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...

English church. The title takes its name from the village of

Ramsbury Ramsbury is a village and civil parish in the English county of Wiltshire. The village is in the Kennet Valley near the Berkshire boundary. The nearest towns are Hungerford about east and Marlborough about west. The much larger town of Swindon ...

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

, and was first used in the 10th and 11th centuries by the Anglo-Saxon Bishops of Ramsbury. In

Saxon The Saxons ( la, Saxones, german: Sachsen, ang, Seaxan, osx, Sahson, nds, Sassen, nl, Saksen) were a group of Germanic * * * * peoples whose name was given in the early Middle Ages to a large country (Old Saxony, la, Saxonia) near the Nor ...

times, Ramsbury was an important location for the Church, and several of the early bishops went on to become Archbishops of Canterbury. The ancient bishopric of Ramsbury was created in 909 by

Plegmund Plegmund (or Plegemund; died 2 August either 914 or 923) was a medieval English Archbishop of Canterbury. He may have been a hermit before he became archbishop in 890. As archbishop, he reorganised the Diocese of Winchester, creating four ne ...

, Archbishop of Canterbury, as part of a division of the two West Saxon bishoprics into five smaller ones. Wiltshire and

Berkshire Berkshire ( ; in the 17th century sometimes spelt phonetically as Barkeshire; abbreviated Berks.) is a historic county in South East England. One of the home counties, Berkshire was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II as the Royal County of Berk ...

were taken from the

bishopric of Winchester The Bishop of Winchester is the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Winchester in the Church of England. The bishop's seat (''cathedra'') is at Winchester Cathedral in Hampshire. The Bishop of Winchester has always held ''ex officio'' (except dur ...

to form the new diocese of Ramsbury.Barbara Yorke, ''Frithestan'', Oxford Online Dictionary of National Biography, 2004
/ref> It was occasionally referred to as the bishopric of Ramsbury and

Sonning Sonning is a village and civil parish in Berkshire, England, on the River Thames, east of Reading. The village was described by Jerome K. Jerome in his book '' Three Men in a Boat'' as "the most fairy-like little nook on the whole river". Geo ...

. In 1058 it was joined with the bishopric of

Sherborne Sherborne is a market town and civil parish in north west Dorset, in South West England. It is sited on the River Yeo, on the edge of the Blackmore Vale, east of Yeovil. The parish includes the hamlets of Nether Coombe and Lower Clatcombe. ...

to form the diocese of Sarum (Salisbury), and the see was translated to

Old Sarum Old Sarum, in Wiltshire, South West England, is the now ruined and deserted site of the earliest settlement of Salisbury. Situated on a hill about north of modern Salisbury near the A345 road, the settlement appears in some of the earliest r ...

in 1075.

Medieval bishops diocesan

References

Further reading