1 THE ARCHIVE OF BERMONDSEY ABBEY

Monastic Archives Project, on which a progress report was published in the last issue. It is my purpose here to provide readers with a concrete demonstration of how a well-scattered archive can be reconstructed using our database, for which I have chosen the example of Bermondsey Abbey in Surrey. The abbey of Bermondsey was founded as a dependent priory of the Cluniac monastery of La Charité-sur-Loire (in Nevers) in the late eleventh century, allegedly by King William Rufus. It asserted its independence of its mother house in 1381, when it secured a charter of denization from King Richard II, who was also responsible for its elevation to the status of abbey in 1399. Patronised by several English kings, the abbey housed a relic of the Holy Rood, which attracted many pilgrims to its magnificent church. Its substantial buildings made it a suitable venue for large assemblies and councils of state, particularly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and in the fifteenth century two dowager queens retired to the royal lodgings within its precinct to spend their last months.1 Bermondsey could thus justly claim to have been an important urban monastery. There is, however, little evidence of its former splendour today, its church and monastic buildings having been pulled down soon after its dissolution in 1538. Its archive suffered a similar fate; it was broken up with its estates and dispersed at that same time, and much of it was believed to have been lost. Our reconstructio