The Predecessors of Hasculf de Soleigny

The purpose of this paper is to try and answer two questions which were left unanswered by the Wessex Archaeology Evaluation and Assessment Report in 2009. Firstly, who were Hasculf de Soleigny’s predecessors; and why did they grant the Island of St Michael of Lammana to Glastonbury Abbey?

In an undated charter, (thought to have been issued no later than the first two decades of the thirteenth century), Hasculf de Soleigny, the lord of the manor of Portlooe, confirmed an earlier grant of the Island of St Michael of Lammana to Glastonbury Abbey, by his ‘predecessors’. The document itself does not explicitly reveal the identity of who these people might have been, other than the fact that Hasculf refers to himself in the text as ‘son’ of John de Soleigny.

In fact, one of the earliest historical references to a Soleigny family member occurs in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Ottuel de Soleigny is thought to have been an illegitimate child of Hugh le gros, the vicomtes of Avranches, who was made First Earl of Chester by William the Conqueror in 1071. The chronicler also tells us that Ottuel, along with his brother, Richard of Avranches, and ‘many of the king’s household’, lost their lives when the ship taking them to Southampton, foundered against rocks as it was leaving the port of Barfleur on the north western coast of Lower Normandy; only one person, a butcher’s boy, is known to have survived. Also on board were Ottuel’s wife Lescelina, and the son and heir of King Henry I, William the Atheling. Ottuel is said to have been Williams’s tutor, and as such was responsible for his education in the liberal arts. This consisted of two stages; firstly grammar, rhetoric, and logic, (the trivium); then geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy (the quadrivium). Ottuel himself may have been educated at the cathedral school of Avranches, where Lanfranc, (Archbishop of Canterbury 1070-89), had taught for three years before joining the newly founded abbey at Bec.

However, there is a curious footnote worth mentioning here. In the second part of the Roman de Rou, a history of the Norman people from the early duke’s of Normandy up until the Battle of Tinchebray in 1106, the Anglo-Norman historian Wace records that a certain ‘lord of Soligny’ took part in the battle of Hastings, and that he fought alongside Richard le goz, the father of Hugh le gros. As Richard Allen points out ‘it has been argued that while the family later held land at and around Subligny, they were actually of Breton origin, and that their toponym (rendered Suligny) came rather from the region between Pontorson (where there is a hamlet called Soligné in the commune of Tanis) and Saint-James (de Beuvron).(1)

Ottuel and Lescelina had five sons, one of whom was also named Hasculf; there was Richard, who became bishop of Avranches from 1142 until his death in 1153; Ralph, who was dead by 1142; Robert, who was the grandfather of Hasculf de Soleigny, and Geoffrey, who flourished around 1142, but nothing more is known.

Hasculf went on to found La Lucerne Abbey in 1143, and his brother, Richard, confirmed donations to the abbey the following year in 1144. The Latin text of this confirmation indicates that it was built in memoriam of their parents, and their late brother Ralph. Richards’ charter also coincides with the one in which Pope Lucius II confirms Lammana as a possession of Glastonbury Abbey. However, the coincidence may not have been wholly unintentional. Ottuel’s brother, Richard of Avranches, was married to Lucia of Blois, (Countess of Chester), and the daughter of Count Stephen of Blois by his wife Adela of Normandy. Adela’s father was William the Conqueror, and her brother was Henry I, King of England. The Soleigny’s were therefore related to the House of Blois through ties of kinship. These royal connections might explain Ottuel’s appointment as tutor to William the Aetheling, as well as the foundation of Lammana itself.

Lucia had two brothers; Henry of Blois, abbot of Glastonbury Abbey (1126-71), and bishop of Winchester (1129-71), and of Stephen, King of England (1136-54). It is possible that the foundation of a small monastic community on the top of Looe Island, staffed by Glastonbury monks, was intended as a memorial to those family members who perished aboard the White Ship, in 1120. Neither is the choice of an island totally unexceptional. Richard de la Mouche was elected abbot of Mon Saint Michel Abbey in 1151. According to the Norman chronicler Robert de Torigni, (and a fellow monk of the same monastery), Richard de la Mouche was cognatus, (a blood relative), of Bishop Richard of Avranches. Clearly, de la Mouche must have already been well respected and influential some years prior to his election as abbot of Mon Saint Michel. It was from this same abbey in 1135, that a delegation of twelve monks and a prior were sent in order to consecrate the church of the new Benedictine monastery on Saint Michaels Mount(2); which begs the question of whether Lammana was also consecrated around the same time. Curiously, the remains of stone work from an ancient wharf found on Wallace beach bore an uncanny resemblance to stonework on the mount.

Although Hasculf addresses himself as ‘son’ of John de Soleigny in his charter, he was in fact ‘avunculus of John’(3). This was a special relationship between a man and his sister’s children, particularly her sons, and comes from the Latin word avunculus, meaning ‘uncle’. The nephew, in turn, often enjoyed special rights against his uncle’s property, frequently taking precedence in inheritance over his uncle’s children. This maybe the reason why Hasculf uses the term predecessors, in his confirmation of Lammana to Glastonbury Abbey, instead of a less ambiguous and familial term such as ancestors; although a predecessor in its Latin form was interchangeable and could mean both.

According to Daniel Power, John de Soleigny was a courtier (curialis) of Henry II. He was also the lord of Bessin, in the Calvados region of the Cotentin peninsula, Lower Normandy. It would appear that he carried on in service to the royal household after the death of Henry II in 1189, and he maybe the same ‘John de Suboeitum who was with Queen Berengaria in Rome in 1193’; Berengaria of Navarre, (Northern Spain), being the wife of Richard I, the Lion-Heart. It is not inconceivable that in a highly militaristic society, he accompanied both Henry and Richard on their crusades to the Holy Land. As the lord of Bessin, John would have also shared certain territorial responsibilities in the Channel Islands, particularly Guernsey; as documents from the eleventh century show that the principal landowners were the lords of Saint-Sauveur, the vicomtes of Bessin, the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel, and the Duke of Normandy. As a result of this, his nephew Hasculf de Soleigny, latter became warden of Jersey; sometime around the year 1205 whilst in service to King John.

The importance then of this family, or perhaps the recognition of familial ties and service to the royal household over many years, was the reason why Henry II dramatically intervened to ensure the marriage of Isolde de Dol to Hasculf de Soleigny in 1164. She was the daughter of a Breton nobleman, John de Dol II, from the Ille-et-Vilaine region of Brittany. Isolde is the Breton form of Iseult, and is typically Cornish; indeed, there is reason to believe that she was born at Fawton manor, about a mile away from the village of St Neot. And her name is interesting for more than one reason. It may be linked to the Tristan Romance which came into vogue during the first part of the eleventh century in which there was a growing trend for children of the aristocracy to name their sons and daughters after the principal characters in the story. It was just this sort of trend which, according to Roger Sherman Loomis, ‘led to the naming of a certain Tristan who inherited the barony of Vitré near Rennes in 1030. The history of Tristan of Vitré seems to have influenced in turn the growing legend, for his father’s name, Rivalen, replaced the Tallwch of Welsh tradition …’(4) Appropriately then, she was also the heiress of the tiny hamlet of Lanteglos by Fowey, where we find on the opposite side of the river, the Tristan memorial stone. ‘We can at least affirm that the Cornish Tristan was historical’, argues Leslie Alcock, ‘indeed the Tristan memorial stone is the only strictly contemporary evidence for any Tristan. His father Cynfawr was historical too; and excavation at Castle Dore has revealed a large timber building which may well have been his feasting hall.’(5) The difficulty in establishing the exact origins of legends appropriated between regions is not always so easy to determine; but the overwhelming evidence in this case strongly supports the argument that the Tristan Romance is firmly rooted in Cornwall(6); and that it was appropriated by Bretons because of the strong ties of language, trade and family which then existed between Brittany and Cornwall.

Moreover, the topography of Cornwall’s legendary past may have been more than just a passing interest to the Soleigny family and the Glastonbury monks. Dol-de-Bretagne is linked by tradition to Saint Samson, a sixth century Celtic saint credited with establishing a number of monasteries, including a coenobite community at Golant, not far from a nearby church which bears his name. In the Acts of Henry II, Hasculf de Soleigny is said to have been the ‘standard-bearer of Saint Samson (that is, of the metropolitan see of Dol)(7)’. However, more importantly, is the possible connection between Cornwall, the Tristan Romance, and the legends associated with King Arthur. Although the Chevrefoil of Marie de France only recounts a tiny episode in the lives of Tristan and Iseult, it represents the growing popularity and interest in the corpus of French works focusing on traditional stories, especially those to do with King Arthur. Even though she tells us her name is Marie, and that she comes from France, nothing else is known about her life. There have been several attempts to identify her, ‘The most recent identification has been as Marie, countess of Boulogne after 1154, daughter of Stephen of Blois …(8)’ and niece of Henry of Blois. She may have wrote several of the short stories attributed to her in England from about 1160 onwards, for the court of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, where we also find the most celebrated of all the French Arthurian writers, Chrétien de Troyes.

This leads us to an intriguing possibility: that Lammana may have also provided the Glastonbury monks with a window on to Cornwall’s mythical landscape. Through an extensive network of marriage alliances, ecclesiastical offices, and feudal duties to a succession of English Kings, the Soleigny family were certainly ideally placed to assist the monks in collecting folk-tales from Cornwall’s legendary past; and as tenants of the Earls of Chester, from whom they may have descended, it is likely the Soleigny’s witnessed the subjugation of Wales by 1071; from which we see an increase in legendary tales relating to Arthur and his knights. For instance, the body of Gawain, Arthur’s nephew, was said to have been discovered on the sea-shore of Rhos in Pembrokeshire around 1120.

Glastonbury’s own abbot, Henry of Blois, was himself an avid collector of antiquities and objet d’art; with it seems an insatiable fondness for holy relics of the Celtic saints of Cornwall, Brittany and Wales. Of the many relics he gave to the abbey, those of the virgin martyrs Ursula and Daria, said to have been martyred by the Huns, are of particular interest. This cult increased in popularity after about 1155, but a variant of their legend ‘gives Ursula a Cornish origin and makes her sail to Brittany for her marriage.’(9) Another relic was that of Saint Winwaloe, a fifth century abbot who established monasteries at Landewednack and Gunwalloe in Cornwall, and Landévennec in Brittany. The purpose of the relics at Glastonbury, like so many religious houses of the time, was to increase the abbey’s status as a place of special sanctity. ‘After the Conquest,’ notes Professor James P. Carley, ‘the newly-introduced Norman clergy were uniformly dismissive of native saints. Like other institutions, Glastonbury reacted to this by commissioning Lives which exalted the prestige of early local saints. Despite some loss of property and revenue under the first Normans, Glastonbury weathered the change and even prospered, especially under the abbacy of Henry of Blois …’(10) Relics therefore, like the acquisition of land, was a vital means of gaining wealth for the abbey, and no doubt the same was true at Lammana. The cult of St Michael was not uncommon amongst the Normans, especially on high ground previously occupied by pagan deities, and on the top of islands. He was in fact the most revered of all the celestial saints.

Alternatively, the cult at Lammana may have centred on a relic brought back from one of the crusades. This was briefly touched upon by the Rev. H. A. Lewis in his Ab Antiquo, written some eighteen months after the Christ Child at Lammana was presented to the Looe Old Cornwall Society. A document held in the Cornwall Record Office states that Ralph de Soleigny inherited property from his father Hasculf, when the latter was said to have taken the cross in 1220. As we have already seen, John de Soleigny served both Henry II and Richard I, and it would seem extraordinary to say the least, if he had not accompanied one or both of them on crusade during his tenure of royal service. After the First Crusade in 1097, medieval Europe became flooded with a variety of holy relics – all laying claim to authenticity; like, for instance, relics of the True Cross, which probably circulated by the hundreds. But there is one relic in particular worthy of further attention in connection with the island chapel at Lammana. The Rev. Lewis relates in Ab Antiquo how he was told by a Mrs Vague of Watergate, then aged eighty-five, of an ancient piece of cloth thought to be from the Holy Sepulchre. The liberation of Jerusalem and, more importantly, the capture of the Holy Sepulchre for Christendom, were the two main goals set out by Pope Urban II as he travelled extensively throughout the continent preaching the First Crusade. ‘The same family’, wrote Lewis, ‘also speak, with tantalising lack of detail, of "other remains of the sepulchre …"(11) ’

What this cloth actually was, will of course, never be known; but another tradition of Looe links it to the Sovran cloth of St Veronica. Moved by the sight of Christ as he carried the cross through the streets of Jerusalem to Golgotha, Veronica is said to have given him her kerchief to wipe his brow. When he handed it back to her, the cloth was said to have the imprint of his face. According to one French tradition Veronica married a convert by the name of Zaccheus and brought relics of the Virgin Mary to Soulac-sur-Mer in Bordeaux. The Cult of the Virgin Mary was particularly strong at Glastonbury, and the idea that some relic associated with Veronica was installed at Lammana, should not be entirely dismissed.

By way of conclusion, I have shown that Hasculf’s predecessors were at the highest echelons of medieval society, and that they remained in steady service to a succession of English kings. The grant of Lammana to Glastonbury Abbey may possibly have been intended as a commemoration of those family members who lost their lives in the tragedy of the White Ship in 1120; an event so powerful in the memory of both families that it led to the creation of monasteries on either side of the English Channel. Lammana may have also served as base from which the Benedictine monks, with perhaps the assistance of the Soleigny family themselves, could collect the folk-traditions from Cornwall’s legendary past. Of these, the Tristan Romance, located not from the Soleigny manor of Lanteglos by Fowey, was one of the most widely transmitted.

In an age dominated by superstition and the constant fear of eternal damnation, relics were seen as a fundamental part of Christian worship; and it is not inconceivable that a relic claimed from the Holy Sepulchre itself, found its way back to Lammana following one of the crusades of Henry II or Richard I. Under the abbacy of Henry of Blois, Glastonbury Abbey became one of the wealthiest monasteries in all England, and we should not suppose for moment that Lammana was of little significance. The very earliest records of its existence date back to a time when the development of the Arthurian romance was fully under way, and Cornwall, said to be the very birthplace of King Arthur, must have been of particular interest to Glastonbury. Indeed, not so very far away at Bodmin, Norman clerics became enraged whilst on tour with relics of Our Lady of Laon, when a certain crippled man insisted that King Arthur was still alive(12).

In a very concise statement of the problem, the French philosopher and social historian, Michel Foucault, observed that: ‘The Normans reactivated the old Celtic legends that lay beneath the Saxon stratum of the population. These Celtic legends could be quite naturally reactivated by the Normans and used to the advantage of the Norman aristocracy and monarchy because of the multiple relations that existed between the Normans and the Bretons ...’ Its only when we start to look at the complexity of the these relations, and the family alliances built over many generations, can we begin to fully appreciate the enormity of the undertaking; and although some historians would have us believe that Lammana was of little significance, and that Glastonbury monks were only there to officiate on behalf of the Lords of the manor of Portlooe, I should like to argue the contrary. When we think of Glastonbury as it was then in the twelfth century, a powerhouse of both religious and secular works that influenced the development of the Arthurian romance, it would be both naïve and complacent if we didn’t try to uncover something of Lammana’s association with that once famous of all English abbeys.

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